Raising awareness, spreading hope

The Ball State Daily News Muncie, IN
By Sara Nahrwold

When 19-year-old Becca Schafer stepped off the plane, she was not only in a different culture or country but on a different continent.

The Ball State sophomore psychology major spent eight weeks this summer in Nairobi, Kenya, and worked with Missions of Hope International, a non-profit, non-denominational Christian organization that strives to meet the needs of underprivleged citizens around the world.

Schafer found out about the opportunity through the mission director at her church. She applied to the program and began raising the funds to go; the cost of the trip was about $6,000.

“I had to raise all my support and did a lot of research on where we would be going,” she said. The trip to Kenya marked her first trip to another country. She prepared for the journey for eight months and participated in a pre-departure orientation, which focused on what it would be like to live in a different culture and AIDS education. She got immunizations and a passport; she even learned some Swahili to better prepare for the trip.

“I read books on what it might be like and what it means to be cross-cultural,” she said.Before leaving the United States, she had mixed feelings.

“I was really nervous just because I hadn’t done much traveling in the United States or the world, and I hadn’t gone far from home,” she said. “But I was really excited to be going.”


A different world
In the capital city, she experienced “crazy” traffic and was overwhelmed by what she saw. The streets were lined with men with huge guns, and she thought they might have been policemen.

Schafer stayed in a guesthouse near the University of Nairobi campus. She said her room was similar to a dormitory but more private because each room had its own bathroom. The slums around the city were overwhelming for Schafer.

In one square mile, she said there were 1 million people living there. She said it was powerful to see such poverty in one place — especially compared to her home life — but she was hopeful about the work she was going to do.

“As we came in, we were bringing hope,” she said.

The culture shock for Schafer wasn’t as intense as others in her group experienced, she said. “I didn’t have as much [culture shock] as a lot of the people around me because I truly enjoyed every second of it,” she said. “It was just a shock of where I’m from versus where I was.”

Typical day
Schafer worked in the department of community health evangelism, where she went into the slums to help people with physical, emotional and spiritual needs. She walked around the slums to share HIV and AIDS education with people because of all the misconceptions that exist about it. She would take food to them and also helped lead some support groups for people living with HIV.
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One Womans Impact

Regina Wudarski (to the left)

Where are you serving the Lord?
I serve the Lord at Betania Church of Curitiba.

How do you see CHE helping your ministry?
The CHE in my life unfolded important windows on organizational development of my ministry, added spirit, and strengthened in my life at work with the communities, breaking the myth that serving God is almost unreal, but we are individuals, with a look to a supernatural human need.

Some goal (with CHE) you might see performed at the end of 2011.
We are engaged in creating a local infrastructure with spiritual, social and very dynamic, with a view of life and kingdom to meet women (and all needs).

Collaboration: How to move from ideas to action

‎1. Find common ground on issues facing populations you serve

2. Look for mission alignment among potential partners and their stakeholders

3. Identify resources to leverage in your target communities

4. Identify action steps for exploration of deep collaboration

From the CHE Global Network

Small Steps-Big Impact

As a small project, the local committeein El Ejido, Dominican Republic, decided to clean up the slum and at the same time do something for their neighbors in Haiti. In an effort to collect plastic bottles for their Haitian CHE counterparts to have enough bottles for the SODIS (solar water disinfection), they campaigned on the alleys and homes of the slum, collecting 700 bottles to send to Haiti this coming week. To us it was a good example on how to effectively help someone in need with local resources. Way to go, El Ejido!
Sodis Technology
The Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) process is a simple technology used to improve the microbiological quality of drinking water. SODIS uses solar radiation to destroy pathogenic microorganisms which cause water borne diseases.

SODIS is ideal to treat small quantities of water. Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours.

Solar water disinfection - the SODIS method - is a simple procedure to disinfect drinking water. Contaminated water is filled in a transparent PET-bottle or glass bottle and exposed to the sun for 6 hours. During this time, the UV-radiation of the sun kills diarrhoea generating pathogens. The SODIS-method helps to prevent diarrhoea and thereby is saving lives of people. This is urgently necessary as still more than 4000 children die every day from the consequences of diarrhoea.

Men Asked for Forgiveness

At the end of this lesson, three men came into the group of woman at the training and asked forgiveness on behalf of men for the pain men had caused women. They then gave each woman a white rose. There was hardly a dry eye. Women in this part of the world suffer greatly and are blamed for quite a lot, especially the daughters-in-law: for family misfortune, for not getting pregnant, for not producing a male child, etc.

The response from one of the harsher conference attendees was: “We need to ask forgiveness on behalf of women for all the pain we cause men.” A realization that the unkindness and need for repentance goes both ways.