“Mobility is freedom.”
That’s the realization behind Cindy Wu’s Ride with Refugees cycling ministry in Houston, which seeks to empower refugees through mobility. The ministry also includes the Afghan Women’s Bike Team, “an empowerment program for refugee women,” teaching them to ride and care for bicycles.
Freshta Amiri, one participant, said, “The bike team is really helpful for Afghan women.” Beyond the increased access to places like work or the grocery store, Amiri says the team has also helped foster community among the women in Houston, many of whom had few connections outside their homes.
Cindy was drawn to refugee work in part due to her interest in learning about other cultures. She majored in Spanish in college and saw herself in overseas mission work. “I wanted to be a spinster in Latin America,” Cindy said, sounding amused. “I wanted to be a single female missionary.” The singleness part of the call she envisioned was due to the setting in which she first came to know Christ. It was hard for her to imagine pursuing the ministry she envisioned if she were married. She had never seen any examples of marriages like that.
“Before I was a Christian, I felt more confident as a woman leader,” Cindy recalled. Though she loved God and wanted to follow Jesus, in the early years of her faith, she said, “I kind of felt like I had to die to the best part of who I was.”
Cindy did spend a year in Mexico City as a church-planting intern after college. By that time, she was dating David Wu, whom she eventually married. They moved to China for three years to pursue mission work.
Eventually, they went to Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Hamilton, Massachusetts, with three young children in tow. David and Cindy were exploring a move to the Middle East for mission work and had even begun applying to go to Egypt when they felt God redirecting them back home to Houston, where David eventually became a pastor.
“I was really struggling with that because I didn’t want to stay in the US,” Cindy recalled. “I was sitting in the library, stewing in disappointment.” In that moment, she said, “I really felt the Lord whisper the word ‘refugees.’”
The prospect of ministry among refugees combined two areas of calling for her: world mission and vulnerable populations. “Refugees are a population who are both global and some of the most vulnerable people in the world who deserve justice,” she said.
Despite that clear sense of call, Cindy says it was many years before she found an opportunity to fully live into it. After Cindy earned her MA in religion in 2011, she and David returned to Houston, where she continued homeschooling her children and began ministry as a pastor’s spouse at Access Covenant Church. “I was like that homeschool mom whose side gig and hobby was doing research on religious demography,” Cindy said, referring to Global Families: Christians Embracing Common Identity in a Changing World, which she co-wrote with a former seminary professor. Around that same time, in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, David encouraged her to publish her curriculum on welcoming refugees, which she had developed for her master’s thesis. (The second edition of A Better Country was published in 2022, featuring her son’s cover art.)
As their children grew, Cindy found new ministry opportunities. In 2022—the same year Cindy was ordained—David and Cindy co-founded Mosaic Formation, where she is the director of diaspora ministries. “We serve leaders in underserved contexts with spiritual formation, care, and training,” Cindy said of their ministry.
Cindy’s role initially included leading meetings, facilitating connections, and finding spaces for their work to flourish—all of the background work that empowers ministry efforts. The nonprofit eventually became the launchpad for the bicycle ministry.
“I love cycling, I do triathlons,” she said. Through Ride with Refugees and the bike team, she has an opportunity to indulge her passion and share it with others. “But ultimately, it’s about empowering them to have mobility,” Cindy said.
In seeking to empower others, Cindy appears to have undergone her own empowerment. In recent years, her work has expanded to include refugee advocacy. She has met with staff of her representatives in Washington, DC, and has written op-eds for the Houston Chronicle. She considers these particularly important moves in this season when resettlement programs are being dismantled. “These things that would have felt very intimidating in the past,” Cindy reflected, “I feel very activated to speak up.”
Cindy also helped create an advocacy team in the Midsouth Conference called Compañeras that helps support and find opportunities for women who feel called to ministry. “I’m very passionate about helping other women find their calling because it took so long for me,” she said.
Mary Peterson, a Covenant pastor serving a nondenominational church in Texas, has also worked with Cindy and other women in the Compañeras group. As a new pastor in the conference, Peterson has appreciated the chance to hear and celebrate others’ experiences. “Part of being a good companion is cheering one another on and sticking up for each other,” she said.
The group has helped women connect in a region that has a lot of geographic isolation. “Cindy’s done a fantastic job of really keeping us connected,” Peterson said. “She’s a gift to so many people and such a gifted leader.”
Amiri also applauds Cindy for her work bringing together Afghan refugee women. “I appreciate her because she’s working hard for us,” she said, adding that she can’t possibly say everything about Cindy that she wants to say; even if she had “two or three hours, it’s not enough.”
Cindy is currently working to help coordinate a Houston-wide prayer vigil this Saturday, March 22, to pray for friends and neighbors left “in limbo” due to recent halts to resettlement programs, frozen funds, and mass deportations. The event has inspired similar events across the country, including at Renew Church, a Covenant congregation in Lynnwood, Washington.
Reflecting on her journey, Cindy said, “I had a very meandering path to where I am now.” But the call to refugee ministry is one thing that has always felt clear. Whether through books and bikes, speaking up, or spiritual formation, Cindy is living into her calling—and empowering others to do the same.
Who Is a Refugee?
According to the UN Refugee Agency, “a refugee is someone who has been compelled to leave their country and cannot return because of a serious threat to their life, physical integrity or freedom as a result of persecution, armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder.” A person who has been legally designated as a refugee is subject to certain rights and protections. In the middle of 2024, there were approximately 122.6 million forcibly displaced people around the world, about 30 percent of whom were refugees. Less than 1 percent of refugees are resettled in a new country each year.
The term “refugee” is often confused with “asylum-seeker.” The biggest difference is that a refugee has been granted formal recognition of their life-threatening situation in their home country, while an asylum-seeker is still pursuing such recognition, i.e., their claim is in process. In addition, refugees are generally those who seek such legal status and protections while they are still outside the country in which they are eventually settled. Asylum-seekers, on the other hand, are more likely to seek entry into their chosen country of refuge and then petition for the relevant protections. It is widely considered a human right to be able to apply for asylum, although that is not always recognized in practice.
“Refugee” and “asylum-seeker” are internationally recognized legal designations for certain types of immigrants. In the United States, a related immigration status is Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Created by the Immigration Act of 1990, TPS allows people from certain countries—such as those facing natural disasters or armed conflict—to temporarily reside legally in the United States. It was first applied to Salvadorans, many of whom had fled their homes in the 1970s and 1980s due to state violence and widespread human rights abuses—what might usually be considered legitimate asylum claims. Not all immigrants with a TPS designation have fled persecution or sought asylum.
