wfn.org | [ENS] Young Adult Service Corps missionaries engage in servant

["Mika Larson" <mini_mika@earthlink.net>]

ministries

August 3, 2003

Young Adult Service Corps missionaries engage in servant ministries

by Sharon Sheridan
Convention Daily 
 
[ENS] They left comfortable homes, often to the dismay of family and
friends, to follow a call to  become overseas missionaries. Through
their service, they broadened their own understanding of  their gifts
and how God calls them to use them. 
Nearly 500 overseas bishops, guests and United Thank Offering supporters
gathered Thursday night  at the UTO Sharing Dinner to hear Young Adult
Service Corps missionaries tell their stories. 

Four young adults, reflecting the convention theme of  "Receive, Repent,
Reconcile and Restore,"  described their experiences in Honduras,
Jerusalem, South Africa and Uganda. At the  presentation's end, the ECW
delegation from the Virgin Islands announced a monetary donation to
show its enthusiastic endorsement of the program.

The 2000 General Convention called for establishing the youth corps "to
engage in servant  ministry throughout the Anglican Communion."
Participants ages 18 to 30 serve one year overseas  in what Associate
Coordinator Willis Jenkins called "a unique mode of mission." YASC
challenges  young adults to reach out to a broken world, he said, while
"the communion does a real service to  us by accepting these young
people and mentoring them and forming them."

Teaching in Honduras

For Valeska Daley of the Diocese of Massachusetts, "the hardest part was
preparing the journey."  Daughter of Honduran immigrants, she thought
her parents would be proud she was returning to that  country as a
missionary, "but it was quite the opposite.

"They didn't know why I wanted to go back and serve them," she said.
Giving up control to God  also was tough for a "type A" person, she
admitted. 

In Honduras, she taught at a bilingual school in a small town and
accompanied a nongovernmental  organization on assistance trips to poor
communities. She vividly recalled meeting a 24-year-old  woman with
eight children - three born in the four years she had waited on a
hospital list to  have her tubes tied, a move her husband opposed.
"During the whole time, she kept talking about	God and her faith, how
she loves God."

Daley returned to her room and cried, questioning her own mission and
the difference in their  circumstances. "I felt so depressed because I
kept thinking, God, if I was in her position, would  I really have faith
in God?" she said.

"I am so happy that I had the opportunity to serve," she concluded.
"That night, I think God  allowed me to see the strength and faith of
others, especially the true meaning of faith."

Listening in Israel

A missionary to the Diocese of Jerusalem, Jonathan Partridge of the
Diocese of San Joaquin said  he never would forget what he saw one day
in Gaza. "I can still recall the shocking sight of  scattered stones
intermixed with the remains of children's clothes." He recalled the
rubble of a  destroyed building and boys playing nearby.

"It was Sept. 11, 2002, and I felt that I was looking at the world
through a kaleidoscope	backwards," he said. While most Americans were
commemorating the previous year's terrorist  attacks, he was witnessing
devastation wrought with American-made weapons when Israeli fighters
killed 15 people - including children - in targeting a prominent Hamas
member.

Through this and other experiences, he learned "terrorism was somewhat
of a relative term," he  said. "I wondered how does one repent for the
actions carried out by one's country? Repentance is  a difficult road to
walk.

"In the context of being a missionary, it meant taking time to listen to
people instead of being  an armchair expert," he said. "Particularly, it
meant just being present, and particularly with  the Palestinian
Christian minority." Back home, he said, it means communicating those
stories.

"Loving one's God is not about being nice," he said. "It's not about
mere tolerance. It's about  self-sacrifice. It's about stepping outside
one's comfort zone, and it's a love that comes from  God that transcends
ourselves."

Bridging cultures in Uganda

For Wesley Fletcher of the Diocese of West Texas, bridging cultures
called to mind how as  children she and her sister used to try to hold
their breath all the way across a bridge to an	island where her family
vacationed. "We never quite made it all the way," she said, adding, "the
bridge was always the most exciting part of the trip to the beach."

When she headed to Uganda to teach biology at an Anglican boarding
school after graduating from  college two years ago, she said, "I could
feel my family holding its breath as I boarded the  plane."

The answer to why she went to Uganda will continue to be revealed, she
said. "Tonight, it has	something to do with reconciliation. Mission
itself has something to do with reconciliation.  Mission work, for those
who have tried it, is hard work. "Mission is all too often a call to
suffer with and among people without having any answers or a cure," she
said.

"The biggest bridge we can ever imagine is being built right here in the
hearts of God's people,"  she said. Fletcher said she hoped one day
people would know the Episcopal Church "as a church  willing to reach
beyond ourselves to a world that is suffering ... that one day, because
of us,	people can say joyfully and expectantly, 'We all belong to the
same God. We are all forgiven, and  each of us is called.'

"Please join us in this bridge-building process," she said.

Serving HIV/AIDS youth in South Africa

Like Daley's family, Ranjit Mathews' parents wondered why he chose to go
to a less-developed  country. Mathews of the Diocese of Massachusetts
went to the Province of Southern Africa as an  HIV/AIDS youth organizer
in Cape Town.

The reason was that he needed "to see Jesus in a different context,"
said Mathews, who also spoke  at the presiding bishop's program on
global reconciliation at St. Mark's Cathedral.

In South Africa, he said, there is a sin "that is common even around the
world. It's manifest in  South Africa by the stigmatization of people
with HIV and AIDS. In different parts of South	African society, and
even in the church, there's a tendency to ostracize and belittle people
with  HIV." 

Mathews likened this to the sins of racism, homophobia and sexism in
American society. "What  exacerbates the sin is that there's a myth in
South Africa that if you are HIV-positive and you  sleep with a virgin,
then you will be cured of HIV," he said. 

He recounted the story of a friend he met in Cape Town who became
HIV-positive after being raped	by her HIV-positive uncle. "What
transpired after this gave me my own sense of hope," he said.  "Although
she was heavily ostracized, chastised by friends and neighbors who often
didn't speak  to her, and left alone in the proverbial corner, there
were revolutionary people who came to her,  and these people were in
some sense of the word Christian.

"She was brought to a place where she wasn't just looked at as if she
were an object of derision  but as if she were somebody to be actually
loved and cared for in the image of the Holy One," he  said. "She was
raised up because people like ourselves who call ourselves Christians
came up to  her and showed her in a very real and powerful way a love
that actually puts our arms around her	and says, 'We stand with you.'

"It's a testimony to the living God to see someone go from a place of
voicelessness and then be  raised up and empowered," he said. 

After the presentations, audience members questioned the speakers and
some of the other assembled  YASC participants. One woman wanted to know
whether Mathews' and Daley's parents now were proud  of their mission
work.

"It took a long time," Daley said. "They still think I'm a little crazy,
but they understand now  that I want to serve God. They're very
supportive."