10/06/05 - Silver Chips Online - Montgomery Blair High School

silverCHIPS October 6, 2005
FEATURES 19
eens on a mission to spread faith
Blazers bond with people of different cultures and reaffirm their own relationships with God
By KATY LAFEN
Freshman David Cano remembers
seeing Hakim emerge from the
bustling crowds of the Indonesian
marketplace and timidly approach
the outskirts of the tent. His shorts
were ragged and his shirt was dusty
from clouds of dirt kicked up by a
passing cattle herd. Nervous and
hot, Cano wiped a bead of sweat
from his brow and approached the
boy with a flyer from his church
in hand.
“Hello,” he began. “My name
is David, and I am from a church
in the United States. I would like to
talk to you about some life changes
you might want to make in your
religion.”
Hakim was the first of many
Indonesians Cano would greet
with pamphlets and messages of
Christianity during his month in
Jayapura, the capital of the Indonesian
province of Papua. For all of
July, Cano and a youth group from
his Pentecostal church traveled
through Jayapura and offered the
“In the real
world, it’s hard
to just go up to
someone and
start hugging
them, but there it
was okay.”
-senior
Synthia Mariadhas
people there both food and faith.
Traveling so far from home to
spread religion can be a faith-building
experience, as several Blazers
know from their time spent as missionaries
abroad. As these Blazers
bonded with people of different
cultures, they also reaffirmed their
own faiths and strengthened their
relationships with God.
The decision
Before traveling to Indonesia,
Cano was a quiet and withdrawn
member of his church. While he
regularly attended Sunday school,
he rarely participated in discussions
and knew less about his religion
than he should have, he says. The
youth pastor of his church suggested
the mission trip to Cano’s
parents as a way to get their son
more involved. At first, Cano was
intimidated by the idea of living in
a completely foreign environment
for an entire month. But his parents
persisted, and Cano began to see the
trip as an opportunity to learn more
about his faith.
Unlike many of his friends
from church, Cano was not born a
Pentecostal. Originally from Peru,
Cano joined the church with his
family shortly after moving to the
U.S. Soon, he grew to love his faith
and developed a desire to share it
with others.
Math teacher Karen Brandt’s
urge to take part in missionary work
stems from the significant changes
her faith has made in her life. Ten
years ago, Brandt was struggling
to recover from the physical and
emotional effects of a car accident.
She believes that, without her faith,
she would not have been able to
pull through those challenging
times. Though she was in great
pain and could not attend church
easily, she read the Bible and found
great hope in its words. “One of
the passages that helped me the
most said basically, ‘God is always
there. If you pray, He will answer,’”
Brandt says.
Brandt signed up to join her
church’s trip to Puebla, Mexico this
February to share the peace that
her belief in God has brought her.
“With all the impact God has had on
my life, this mission trip is the least
I could do. I know this trip will be
life-changing,” she explains.
The mission
As Cano stepped off the plane in
Jayapura, he, too, knew the month
ahead of him would be like noth-
support system.”
Wisniewski witnessed how much that
support system was needed as she treated
the men and women who came back battered
and broken from the rice paddies of
Vietnam. “I wasn’t there on the battlefields,
and I can’t pretend
to know, but
I saw firsthand
the effects of war.
Knowing that,
I can’t imagine
declaring war on
another country,”
she says.
Under fire
A l t h o u g h
p h o t o g r a p h y
teacher Frank
Stallings served
in Vietnam, he
never had to walk
through the doors
of a military hospital
like Wisniewski’s; he never received
any major injuries while on duty. But that
doesn’t mean that the year he spent there
didn’t leave its mark.
Three months after he received his draft
card in October 1966, Stallings was on a
plane to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Once
ing he had ever
experienced.
Although he
had occasiona
l l y h e l p e d
distribute religious
flyers to
mailboxes in
the U.S., he had
never directly
a p p r o a c h e d
anyone about
converting to
Christianity.
During the
four weeks in
Indonesia, his
group split its
time between
delivering food
and clothing
to nearby orphanages
and
a p p ro a c h i n g
people in the
street with pamphletsdescribing
Christianity. Hakim’s receptive
attitude helped Cano become accustomed
to approaching strangers.
Hakim’s family was Hindu, but
he no longer believed in his religion;
he did not understand the need for
so many strict rules and rituals.
After discussing the Gospel for an
hour in the marketplace, Hakim and
Cano became friends. Hakim was
intensely curious about Christianity;
he had seen other missionaries
in the streets before, but none
had approached him as Cano had.
Whenever Cano’s youth group was
at the market, Hakim would take
a break from selling his mother’s
herbs to ask a new question about
Cano’s religion. By the end of the
trip, Hakim was determined to
become a Christian.
Senior Synthia Mariadhas experienced
a similar connection
with the people of El Oasis, a Seventh
Day Adventist orphanage in
Mexico, when she traveled there
with her youth group last summer.
“Right after I got there, two girls
ran up to me and hugged my legs
and wouldn’t stop talking. It was
because of us all being Christians
that we could easily talk and be
happy,” she says. “In the real world,
it’s hard to just go up to someone
and start hugging them, but there
it was okay.”
The memories
Establishing meaningful relationships
like the ones Mariadhas
and Cano made is important to the
overall experience of a mission trip,
says John Hevey, a pastor and mission
trip organizer from the Friendship
Baptist Church in Sykesville,
Maryland. “When people live together,
they get to know each other
as neighbors. This atmosphere
makes it easier for people to reach
out and get to know God better,”
he says.
Since her return from Mexico,
Mariadhas has become extremely
close with the members of her
youth group and makes time to
attend more church activities than
she did before. She assigns herself
“projects” every day to improve
herself, such as giving up rap music
and praying every morning. “I just
can’t get enough of that feeling I
had in Mexico, where everything is
perfect, where I don’t have to think
about the problems. It’s just God
and nothing else. I have started
viewing the world so differently,”
she says.
rom bombs and bullets to blackboards and books
eachers make the transition from taking orders on the battlefield to giving orders in the classroom
from VETERANS page 18
tories of injured soldiers returning from
ietnam. What drew her in, Wisniewski
xplains, was the sense of camaraderie that
eveloped among the patients. Once, she
ecounts, two
atients made
t their mission
o help anther
patient
ecover from
is injuries,
ven though
he doctors
ad said he
ould never
e able to walk
gain. Every
ay, they suported
him as
e struggled
round the
o u r t y a r d ,
is arms
tretched over
heir shoulders. After two weeks, he could
upport himself, and by the end of the year,
e could walk and talk. Such empathy and
ompassion are unique to the armed forces,
isniewski says. “At that time in a civilian
ospital, that never would have happened,”
he explains. “They didn’t have that kind of
User support specialist Anne Wisniewski worked
as a Navy nurse. Photo courtesy of Wisniewski
Children from the orphanage in El Oasis, Mexico harvest potatoes with some help
from senior Synthia Mariadhas’s church youth group. Photo courtesy of Mariadhas
there, he served in the First Cavalry Division,
which followed directly behind the
troops on the front lines and acted as a fuel
station for choppers.
Stallings’s role, like others in Vietnam,
had its dangers. His division’s weak defenses
were vulnerable even away from the front
lines of attack. “We were sitting ducks,” he
explains. “We received sniper fire all the
time.”
Stallings soon stopped thinking when the
bullets flew. “After you’ve been there for a
certain period of time, you become a vegetable.
I don’t know of anyone who was with
us who had any sense after 90 days. Everyone
was nuts,” he says.
The one time he was wounded, by a
round of shrapnel in his hand, Stallings
didn’t notice it until later, and even then,
he didn’t think much of it. He soon became
desensitized to seeing others get injured as
well. “After a few months in — I hate to say
the word — it became routine. You just became
numb,” he says.
Stallings’s tour in Vietnam ended shortly
after the 1968 Tet Offensive. The last 50 days
were the most harrowing ones for him, because
the fighting quickly escalated. But he
made it home safely, and although he suffered
from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
for eight years, he managed to overcome the
impact of Vietnam. Part of what helped him
do that was to set his sights on a new goal:
teaching.
Three days after she returned
home, Mariadhas wrote a letter
to one of the girls in El Oasis
thanking her for the kindness her
village extended to Mariadhas’s
church group. “I told her that we
may have impacted their lives, but
after seeing how accepting they
were of us, that place was the closest
thing to heaven I’ve ever been.
They completely changed my life,”
she says.
Cano returned home with a
new understanding of his religion.
He feels that his missionary work
has brought him “one step closer
to Christ” and that his friendship
with Hakim has broadened his understanding
of his faith. “It really
helped me understand that being
religious is not just going to church
and singing,” Cano says. “It’s more
about helping others so they can follow
in your footsteps to pass on the
kindness to someone else.”
Cano knew Hakim for just under
one month and will probably never
hear from him again — the rural
area where Hakim lives rarely receives
mail. Years from now, Cano
may forget Hakim’s skinny legs or
toothy grin, but he will never forget
the bond of faith the two shared in
the marketplace.
From battlefield to classroom
According to Dr. John Gantz, the director
of Troops to Teachers, former military personnel
can bring valuable skills to the classroom,
especially leadership and sensitivity
to diversity. They can also add a personal
perspective to history lessons, he says.
Moose agrees, explaining that when he
teaches the Cold War in class, he shows his
students the certificate he received for his
service. He also uses the time he spent in
Europe to make more effective lesson plans,
such as discussions on other countries’
health care plans that tie in his experiences
in Italy.
Thanks to his time in the Navy, Bunday
improved his interpersonal skills. “Prior to
joining the military, I had this vision of buying
myself a private island and living on it
by myself like a hermit,” he says. But when
he taught at a rural high school in Indiana
with a high dropout rate, Bunday couldn’t
just ignore the problems of his students. The
military gave him the know-how to help
them work through their difficulties.
From rural Indiana, Bunday made his
way to Blair, where he has found teaching to
be his passion. Now, he stands as the officer
without a uniform, with the students as his
troops.