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By Melissa Lauber

If it's true that home is where the heart is, then last month, the members of Old Otterbein UMC in Baltimore enabled Ishamel Dabo to come home for Christmas.

However, this wasn't any ordinary journey. It was a leap of faith, costing $1,400 and spanning more than 4,000 miles.

But when he arrived in Baltimore from his native Sierra Leone Dec. 11, Dabo was reunited with his mother, whom he had not seen in seven years.

Dabo and his brother Ibrahim, who arrived in the United States seven months ago, were separated from their sister and mother Miatta, when civil war created bureaucratic confusion in their country.

When Ishmael got off the bus in Baltimore, Miatta fell to her knees and raised her hands to God. 'I could do nothing else,' she said.

She embraced her son, certain that this reunion is a miracle. But this is a miracle with echoes, which are absolutely the best kind.

The echoes are still reverberating through Old Otterbein, said Steve Barbour, who oversaw the efforts to bring Ishmael to Baltimore. Their outreach has brought the historic church to life in a new way.

Founded in 1771, Old Otterbein is the oldest continuing congregation in United Methodism. The current church was built a few years later by German immigrants with bricks that served as ballast in the tall ships that sailed into Baltimore's harbor.

Today about 35 people gather in the pews each Sunday. But Old Otterbein is a church filled with the prayers of old men. Its walls are steeped in centuries of Bible stories, and the congregation looks out onto the city through 2,016 handcrafted panes of glass, 80 percent of which are the ones their ancestors gazed through in 1785.

In the 1990s the Baltimore Orioles' baseball stadium was built a long fly ball away from the church's front doors. The congregation, sensing an opportunity, began selling peanuts to people walking past on their way to the ballpark. Today the sales help pay the bills.

'We became known as the ?Peanut Church',' Barbour said. But they knew God wanted more from them and, with the help of their pastor, the Rev. Millard Knowles, members began to look for opportunities to be in ministry.

They didn't have to wait long.

Barbour said that Miatta and her daughter had been worshiping in the church. They were nice people, and the church learned a little of their history during informal fellowship times. But then, last Mother's Day, Ibrahim showed up in church with them, and the congregation discovered he had not seen his mother in years.

They welcomed Ibrahim and, during a meeting of the new men's group, he shared his and his brother's story.

It was the stuff of novels, Barbour said, with teenage boys caught up in national upheaval, the deprivations of refugee camps, a life-threatening journey aboard a boat to Gambia, and their coming of age and attempting to build a future.

When the men learned that Ibrahim's brother, Ishmael, was stranded in Gambia, they began to pray for him and correspond by e-mail.

The prayers, Ishmael said, enabled him to get a U.S. student visa. The lack of a $1,400 ticket, which would take him from Gambia to Senegal to New York to Baltimore, was all that stood in the way of his seeing his mother again.

The church saw this as an opportunity from God. 'We were developing a new attitude, one of ?Let's just do it; let's just trust God and do it,'' Barbour said.

And they did.

'Of course, we have meetings; we're Methodists, and so we have meetings. But now we're doing mission,' said Barbour, who boasts that Old Otterbein is now a Mission Partner Church. (For more information about this special ministry status, see gbgm-umc.org/units/mpu/globalmp.html )

The church is also learning that ministry involves risk. After buying the ticket, its $5,000 furnace broke down. Another leap of faith was required. But they are also anxious to share their story and inspire others who may wish to dive into ministry with refugees.

When Ishmael was introduced to the church Dec. 12, the church's lay leader, John Hill, who once played football for the Buffalo Bills, rang the historic Cokesbury bell and reminded the church of their recent study of 'The Purpose Driven Life,' in which they asked, 'What makes God smile?'

'God's gotta be grinning from ear-to-ear now, folks,' he said.

As part of the introduction, Ishmael and Ibrahim joined Barbour in front of the church. The brothers opened their Bible and sang a song they learned in a United Methodist church when they were children.

They sang of patience and eagle's wings and deliverance, as their mother smiled amid her tears. It was a miracle that involved risk, which is also one of the best kind. And it echoed in the lives of a family and a church.

It is echoing still.