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Blessing the least of these
By Shirley Brosius                                                   

Before Typhoon Frank drew attention to the Philippines in early 2008, women from First United Methodist Church in Millersburg, Pennsylvania, visited the region and planned to do something about the poverty they observed.

In February 2008 church members Gracie Troutman and Alicia Stoneroad participated in a medical missions project that included ministry to children and rice distribution. Touched by the lack of play equipment, the women vowed to return to the island of Bancal Pugad in 2009 to build a school playground.

"We're going to be building a swing, a slide, and a basketball backboard," said Troutman, who had wanted to take a missions trip ever since high school. "It has to be made out of something other than wood because of the weather and conditions on the island."

Stoneroad, a native of the Philippines who grew up in that region, remembers racing boats, made from leaves, down sewer ditches when she was a child. She had only one toy-a doll.

"We weren't rich," she said. "So that's what my parents could afford."

The project, named "Ryan's Playground," will be built in memory of Ryan Capuli, who unexpectedly died at age 2 while undergoing heart surgery. His father, Romy Capuli, serves as the church-planting pastor at Fil-Am Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and has led four missions trips back to his Philippine homeland.

The 2008 team included 20 people from the United States. Upon arrival in the Philippines, they were joined by 220 local volunteers, including doctors, dentists, nurses, surgeons, and pharmacists. Military personnel maintained order as lines for treatment lengthened.

Local pastors had already identified residents most desperate for help, so the missions team got right to work. A total of 3,000 people received medical and dental treatment, but some had to be turned away because there were not enough volunteers to process their care. More than $150,000 worth of medicine was distributed.

Capuli preached in the Tagalog language to all who were treated, and thousands of voices echoed throughout the Malabon amphitheatre as people prayed to receive Christ. Their names were recorded, and local pastors were assigned to follow up with those who made decisions. Last year a church was planted as a result of the medical mission trip, and Capuli expects the same this year.

About 1,600 families received 25-pound bags of rice, worth a total of $13,000. One woman's bag tore, spilling rice onto a dirty concrete floor. "She was on her knees," Gracie Troutman recalled, "scraping that rice together, putting it back in her bag."

As part of the children's ministry, the missions team distributed 1500 bags of candy and salvation bracelets (elastic bands with beads that explained the gospel by colors).

According to Stoneroad, the Filipinos have, since World War II, considered the Americans to be heroes and have appreciated their generosity. The women said they felt like the "Pied Piper" as they presented Bible stories at school and medical mission sites. The children followed them around and were very well behaved as they listened to the gospel.

"They did not squirm, they did not talk," Troutman said. "They were just very attentive."

But the women were dismayed to notice students shared pencils and had no books. They carried no toys, and a bare dirt yard served as the school's playground.

Stoneroad, who served as translator for the missions team, said it was hard to eat lunch in front of the children. "You see the kids watching you," she said. "You can't help but give them what you're eating because they're so hungry."

Some children clustered outside the school buildings, peering in windows, because they couldn't afford the $2-a-year tuition and required uniforms to attend, yet they wanted to see what was happening.

When the team returned to the states, Troutman offered a slide presentation to her home congregation, sharing her plan to build a playground. Church members have climbed aboard the project by donating Beanie Babies and Matchbox toys to be distributed on the return trip. With 300 families living on the island, toys will be needed for at least 600 children.

Romy and Kaye Capuli and Elvin and Maria Enad, missions directors at the Fil-Am Church, then visited the Millersburg congregation to further explain the plight of the Filipinos, where seventy percent of the people live below poverty level.

"We take the groups back because we want the Filipino-American community in America to look back to the Philippines and help their poor countrymen," Romy Capuli said. "With a little investment, you could make a difference. A $10 gift bag of rice can feed a family of four for at least a month."

Capuli believes that meeting people's needs is essential before sharing the gospel. "If you tell them God loves you and don't do anything for them, it has less impact," he said. "Poor people don't understand that."

Cindy Rowe, missions committee chairperson at the First UM Church, said her life was changed last year when she took a short-term trip to South Africa to paint a church and to teach school children, so she immediately signed up to go to the Philippines.

"Helping with children, and the whole sense of helping beyond the boundaries of the United States-it's a new experience, something that doesn't come along every day," she said. "God puts that (opportunity) right in front of you."

Rowe said she has been struck by the commonality of faith among Christians around the world as she has worked shoulder to shoulder in outreach. "You don't know them from anybody, but you have that special bond," she said. "A non-Christian couldn't do that, because you don't have that same thing that ties you together."

 

The playground
Building the playground is expected to cost between $5,000 and $8,000, and Rowe has secured matching funds for donations made by church members of up to $2,000. The church is also raising funds by selling tote bags and tee shirts with the text: "Ryan's Playground" and a picture of a sliding board. Beneath the picture reads: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me." -Jesus.

Members of the congregation are busy making more bracelets and filling bags of candy. They are also donating over-the-counter medications that will be distributed by the mission team.

And best of all, several people, including the pastor and her husband, plan to travel to the Philippines when Capuli leads his fifth missions trip there in February 2009.

"It's very difficult to go outside of our comfort zone," said Pastor Karen Atanasoff. "But we don't know how the rest of the world is living unless we experience a different perspective on the world and the way life works."

Atanasoff has gone on several mission trips, most recently to Uruguay to build a camp for Christian outreach with the denomination's Volunteers in Mission.

"It renews my faith that Jesus can reach all corners of the earth," she said. "It keeps me grounded. It's also my call. You have to lead by example. As ordained pastors we're called to Word, Order, Sacrament and Service."

She noted how Christ sent out his disciples two by two and called us to make disciples. "We are to respond to God's least and lost," she said. "We are to take what we believe to others."

Atanasoff said she hopes the trip will strengthen the congregation's understanding of how they have been blessed and their understanding that Christians are part of a bigger family of faith than a local congregation.

Mission Central, the mission warehouse of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, will contribute 200 school kits-cloth book bags with handles that contain paper, pencils and other school supplies-and 200 health kits, which include towels, washcloths, combs, soap, toothbrushes, nail files, soap and sterile bandages.

The Millersburg women returned from their trip to the Philippines with many special memories. Stoneroad fondly remembers the five teenage volunteers assigned to assist her group of volunteers. "They volunteered their time," she said. "Pouring out their love. Everything for the kids. I couldn't believe it."

Troutman recalls a man who said, "Now I can understand; I can see," after she presented the gospel in flannelgraph. "You go expecting to give," she said, "But you come back receiving more than what you gave."

Shirley Brosius is the author of Sisterhood of Faith: 365 Life-Changing Stories About Women Who Made a Difference. She and her husband live in Millersburg, Pennsylvania, where she enjoys reading, walking and playing board games with five grandchildren.



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