For the Teimuri family from Afghanistan, the numbers are irrelevant. With the help of the refugee committee at St. Mary’s parish in Barrie, Ont., the six children, their mother and grandmother have escaped two years of uncertainty and hopelessness living as refugees in Turkey to a new life and new possibilities on a quiet residential street in Barrie.

“If they didn’t help us we couldn’t live here. They’ve done everything for us. They really help us,” said 19-year-old eldest son Ezatollah Teimuri.

Ezatollah is working at Canadian Tire and going to school. In less than a year in Canada he’s learned an astounding amount of English. He hopes to one day become a police officer, an ambition he shares with his younger brother Sarellah, 18.

Their mother, Betullah Sadaat, has watched her family transform around her.

“At first we were very happy and we were very nervous,” she said with Ezatollah translating. “We didn’t know anything about the culture or how we could live. Now we are happy.”

St. Mary’s sponsored the Teimuris through the Citizenship and Immigration Canada joint assistance sponsorship program. The federal government picks up the major costs of resettlement while the parish is responsible for easing the way for the family as it enrolls children in school, looks for work, acquires a family doctor and learns to cope with day-to-day challenges.

“You certainly get some insight into lives you don’t normally come into contact with,” said John Jeffery of the St. Mary’s refugee committee. “It teaches you new things about Canada. You don’t understand how difficult it is to access things we take for granted, particularly the health care system.”

For Martin Mark, Catholic Cross Cultural Services sponsorship program chief,  the jump in successful sponsorships came as a surprise and a relief. When Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins set a goal of 150 families to be sponsored in 2008 Mark had no idea how his team could reach the goal.

“We used the easy way, and that means that all the cases were referred or negotiated with parishes or religious orders we knew were willing or very open — the easy ones,” said Mark. “They really understand that there is a need and they are more than happy to assist.”

The goal of 150 families was set in response to the huge numbers of Iraqi refugees — up to two million — languishing in Syria and Jordan, unable to return to Iraq. Many of the Iraqi refugees most in need are Christian families who found themselves under threat in their communities following the American invasion in 2003.

Catholic Cross Cultural Services sponsors and resettles refugees regardless of religion.

The archdiocese’s refugee sponsorship program has been able to add an outreach worker to help parishes learn about sponsorship and get organized to sponsor a family while the Spiritan Fathers have contributed a full-time volunteer. But with 1,610 active files the office is at its limit. The archdiocese won’t be able to continue increasing the number of families it sponsors without some additional back-shop capacity at Catholic Cross Cultural Services, Mark said.

With its current resources, Catholic Cross Cultural Services will be able to sponsor only 95 families in 2009. If it gets additional resources that number could be 165. Jeffrey believes parishes like his are ready to help. The Teimuris are the second family St. Mary’s has sponsored.

“It’s a matter of fairness,” said the Barrie architect. “If people need help they should have access to it.”

In most cases, sponsorship involves a minimum financial commitment for the parish depending on the size of the family being sponsored. The minimums set by Citizenship and Immigration Canada are $9,500 for a lone refugee and $25,100 for a family of five.

More important than the money is a committee of volunteers ready to help with the process and help the family when they arrive, said Office for Refugees outreach worker Nicole Desmarais.

“We can sit here in the office and want to bring hundreds of thousands of refugees, but we can’t do it without the parishes,” she said.

Rather than lamenting the small number of parishes involved, Desmarais is proud of parishes that have extended themselves far beyond the minimum to help refugee families.

“A lot of the parishes that are involved are involved at a pretty high capacity,” she said.

For the Teimuri family now it’s all about discovering their future in Canada. Seventeen-year-old Habib wants to be a doctor. His twin brother wants to be a teacher.

“We didn’t have an opportunity to study (in Afghanistan),” said Ezatollah. “When we moved here we decided just to study. We have to study here.”