BOISE — While in a detention center near Shreveport, Louisiana, an asylum seeker from Honduras named Romel learned how to make bracelets and began preparing gifts for the new family he hoped to see soon in Boise.

Romel, a gay man who fled Honduras for personal safety, spent months traveling across borders and living in detention centers. On Saturday, he was welcomed at the Boise Airport by the congregation of the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.

“He has already adopted us as his family,” said Rev. Sara LaWall, minister of the Boise Unitarian Universalist religious community who spoke from Louisiana on Friday.

LaWall and her Boise congregation have worked to help Romel get out of detention and post bond. With LaWall by his side, Romel sat through a video hearing with a judge in Miami Thursday and was eventually granted bond.

While LaWall was in Louisiana, members of the congregation flew to Miami to testify to the wide support network that Romel will have in the Treasure Valley as his asylum case makes its way through immigration court.

Romel, who did not give his last name because his asylum case is ongoing, left Honduras for a number of reasons, one was for personal safety. Romel left Honduras with his boyfriend, but after crossing the border into Mexico, the two were kidnapped and his boyfriend was killed.

“There have been lots of tears,” LaWall said.

She added that Romel walked from Chiapas to Veracruz, two states that border each other in Mexico.

LaWall said Romel was not part of the initial migrant caravan from central Mexico to the U.S. and Mexico border, but he was part of the waves of migrant groups that followed.

Romel was detained in Texas in July, once he crossed the border, and was then sent to a detention center in Louisiana.

LaWall said the fellowship had been interested to help an asylum seeker since a former colleague, who now works at the border with Mexico, had asked if the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship would be interested in helping someone.

“Once we heard (Romel’s) story, we felt passionately about helping him,” LaWall said. “There is a thread for us as a denomination that has fought for LGBT rights for decades, we felt called to his story as a gay man, and felt a connection to that story that we could support.”

Romel has one distant contact in the U.S., but she was unable to help him.

“He had no one and that is why he stayed in detention,” LaWall said. “We felt called to be his people.”

Romel will wait as his asylum case goes through immigration court. He’ll be living in Boise with his legal sponsors. LaWall said he has already begun to call his sponsors “mom and dad.”

From Louisiana on Friday, Romel said, “I am so happy, I can’t believe it, I have no words for it.”

LaWall said the congregation was able to raise around $20,000 to help Romel, and the GoFundMe campaign is ongoing.

“I believe that my calling in this work as a minister is to lift up a vision of community, the kind of community (in) which we are connected and we are one human family,” LaWall said.

She added that, as a mother of two children, “if it were my child, I would want someone to help them.”