By Carol Bolden
Mission minded from the beginning, Adventists set out to fulfill the gospel commission, sending their first foreign missionary to Switzerland in the early 1870s. Throughout the years, thousands were sent overseas, eventually developing a presence in 207 countries. Those missionaries contributed to the strength of the communities they served and returned as changed people.
Rocky Mountain Conference young people and adults are building their own tradition of service, having visited four countries in 2017 and having had a part (since 2012) in at least 67 evangelistic series, baptizing more than 555 people and helping build 8 churches and schools. Here are their stories from this year: Nate Marin and Jim Hughes, teachers at Campion Academy, took 36 students during their recent spring break to Peru to “do something of significance.” Wanting them to be immersed in the culture, they stayed at Azul Wasi, an orphanage in Oropesa, 45 minutes out of Cusco. While being daily exposed to the language, the food, and the culture, they ran an all-day dental clinic with Dr. Stacey, a dentist from Loveland, providing the local people with free dental care. They held a Vacation Bible School for the town children during the day and another at night for the kids living at the orphanage. They tore down three unused buildings, did the groundwork for installing a septic tank, and poured the second floor for the main building, a major undertaking. The orphanage and its town were greatly helped by the work of these students, and they returned with a new appreciation for the benefits they enjoy in the United States.
Continuing a 12-year tradition, 20 Campion students traveled to the Central American paradise of Belize during their spring break to continue building a junior college in the town of Corozal in northern Belize. Some extended their influence to Ladyville and Hattieville, two small villages around Belize City, where they held a week of prayer in the Adventist schools there each morning and spent their after- noons practicing sermon presentations for the evangelistic meetings held at five nearby churches each evening. The builders finished pouring a slab of about 4,000 square feet and the entire first floor for four new classrooms. These students returned with pragmatic experience in teamwork and an appreciation for the humble, helpful people of Belize who have a passion for Christ.
Tent City on Oahu was the destination for 31 young people from Colorado and Wyoming where they made a difference for this homeless community tucked into the woods behind Waianae Boat Harbor. Here is where 300 of Hawaii’s homeless pitch their tents. Here the students held a day camp and evening programs for more than 70 kids, residents of Tent City, along with an evangelistic campaign. A few miles northwest of Tent City lies Camp Waianae, the Hawaii Conference summer camp. A handful of students working there were able to make improvements on the camp by painting the dining hall, erecting a fence, and taking care of many little things neglected because nobody wanted to do them. The takeaway from this mission trip, according to Jocelyn Curiel, a student from Aurora, Colorado, is that “there’s need everywhere”—even on a Hawaiian island.
Thirty-two people from countries around the globe joined with Cara Greenfield, a Seventh-day Adventist from Loveland, all traveling to Mondulkiri Province in Cambodia to help continue a project she began with her husband in 2006. That was when they were missionaries with Adventist Frontier Missions and before health issues brought them home. The school they opened in 2014 in the town of Sen Monorom with 48 students in grades K–2 is no longer adequate for the 75 students they currently have. A new complex is needed. Their solution is a rammed earth construction with classrooms and a gymnasium, which will easily house their growing student population. Building crew supervisor Walt Sparks, an Estes Park church member, along with his crew, learned to use sign language to communicate with the Cambodian builders when a translator was not available. Cara is thrilled with the progress of the stu- dents as well as the headway made on the new school.
What might flow from the efforts of these young people and adults, only God knows. Maybe, like medical missionary Dr. Leslie, who spent 17 years in the Congo, and who returned home thinking he had accomplished little, others may return to their fields of labor one day to find, like the team who returned to the Congo, a network of reproducing churches in the dense jungle where Dr. Leslie labored.
–Carol Bolden provides administrative support for the RMC communication department. Email her at: [email protected]