Thank you for making our lives beautiful.

We are grateful to everyone who, somehow, has contributed in our lives in the past five years. You may not realise but those contributions have been very generous.

From the very first day of our arrival, five amazing years since, and even today Kiwis astonish us at everyday.

For those of you who don’t know who we are and why you have received an invitation to attend our “5th Anniversary and Citizenship Ceremony”, we are a bunch of Afghan men who, alongside New Zealand Defence Forces, served the people of Afghanistan for a decade. We resettled here in 2013 and now we are celebrating our five wonderful years in New Zealand. Also, we will be awarded New Zealand Citizenship.

The purpose of this event is to thank each and everyone of you for being an amazing support when we needed. We arrived in New Zealand with the mindset that we had survived Afghanistan so New Zealand should be a piece of cake. However, that turned out wrong soon after. The homesickness, the new country, new people, no friends and families were some of the factors that made us sit in our rooms for hours and hours – we kept thinking of the days we were with our families, the times when we were growing up – and to be honest, for most of us, those moments always ended with tears. Those emotions were so strong that could have broken us BUT that is when you came along. You were there all the time with us, sometimes you would come see us as refugee support volunteers, sometimes you would hang out with us as that cool workmate, sometimes you would shout our fare as a bus driver when we said we didn’t have money, sometimes you would welcome us in the neighborhood with muffins, and sometimes you bossed to mentor us.

You have always been there for us therefore we have invited you to come and join us to celebrate these five wonderful years, the amazing people, the unforgettable support and sense of humanism that is keeping us all together.

So please, please, please do honour us with your gracious presence. We are looking forward to seeing you.

Don’t Forget to RSVP as soon as possible.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at anytime.