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Ringseth will retire as Open Bible pastor, move
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Feeding an African nation's hungry, one tree at a time |
The Thomas family returns on leave from their
posting at a Friends church in Rwanda |
By Schellene Clendenin, Newberg
Graphic reporter
E-mail Schellene at sclendenin@eaglenewspapers.com
|
Breanna, Aren, Gwen and Alandra
Thomas know nothing about Pokémon.
At ages 11, 9, 7 and 4, respectively, if one offers the children of
Debby and David Thomas a Dilly Bar, they have no idea it is an ice
cream treat sold at Dairy Queen. They don’t understand why there are
so many wide, well-kept sidewalks in the United States, that are
rarely used.
Everyone in Rwanda walks in the rutted streets, spending little
time inside their homes. And when the Thomas family drives through
an African town, people and children crowd as close as they can to
their vehicle for a better look.
The children may not understand references to pop culture from
movies and cartoons or the latest toy craze in the United States,
but they are familiar with the fallout from war, of poverty, the
effects of genocide and the ways in which an AIDS epidemic affects
children their own ages. They also might be able to explain the
importance of learning sustainable ways to feed one’s family through
agriculture.
Debby Thomas, a missionary with the Evangelical Friends Church in
Rwanda, calls them “Third culture children.”
“They don’t fully fit in with either culture,” she said.
The family returned to America in May for a visit and will return
to Rwanda in December. The children have for the past nine years
been raised in Rwanda, a mountainous nation slightly smaller than
the state of Maryland. Periodic droughts, deforestation resulting
from uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuel, overgrazing, soil
exhaustion, soil erosion and widespread poaching are just a few of
the challenges of living in the country, according to the CIA World
Fact Book.
Their parents are missionaries in the Friends Evangelical church.
And because of that, their responsibilities include leadership
training, traveling to more than 70 churches they oversee in Rwanda,
financial accounting, and communicating with donors and visitors.
About 90 percent of the people who live in Rwanda live in poverty
and most make their living off agriculture. When Debby Thomas began
to consider alternative ways to help the people in the region, she
asked herself, “What can people do with a small plot to increase
their harvest in simple ways?”
Her solution, the Moringa tree. The tree has several uses. It can
be eaten, made into soap that helps cure ringworm and other skin
infections, or ground into a powder and sold at market for profit.
It takes about 10 trees to feed a family, wrote Breanna Thomas in a
flyer published by the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends.
“You can eat the leaves like spinach,” Debby Thomas said. “They
have 100 percent of vitamins (people need per day) and they kill
intestinal worms.”
“We are trying to help people through agriculture,” she said, “to
show that we care and to have contact with them to show them the
love of Christ.”
More than 8 million people live in the country, and life expectancy
hovers at age 48. In 2003 more than 250,000 people in Rwanda had
contracted AIDS — about 5 percent of the population — and more than
22,000 had died from the virus, the CIA reports.
Debby Thomas prefers teaching Rwandans new methods of raising the
trees and educating them on the problems associated with erosion and
over planting, instead of throwing funds and food at the communities
again and again.
“Instead of giving them a fish we are teaching them how to fish,”
she said, alluding to the Bible passage. So far the Thomas’ have
distributed more than 35,000 moringa trees to people in the
communities in which they work. |
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From
July 1, 2006, Newberg Graphic
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