July 16, 2008

Young Adventists Offer Church Hope

2008 1520 page5 capohn McVay, president of Walla Walla University in College Place, Washington, is an earnest and happy man. Never have I seen the two combine as fully as a few weeks ago, when he spoke about the actions of some young people at the Seventh-day Adventist-owned institution. He was, frankly, beaming.
 
In the face of a culture in which young adults are often seen in less-than-wholesome “spring break” activities, a group of WWU students, led by seniors Contessa Mensink and Janelle Walikonis, and sophomore Becca Parshall, did something wonderful. Hoping to support an orphanage in the beleaguered African nation of Zimbabwe with a $15,000 donation, they raised a total of $37,600, far more than double the target.
 
All of the students at WWU, McVay said, “have displayed an enthusiastic and authentic spirituality” that shows “energy and wonder in their commitment to our Lord.”
 
That commitment, to love God and serve others, found great expression in the effort to raise money for the Murwira orphanage, whose manager, Paula Leen, is a Seventh-day Adventist. After speaking with Leen over Thanksgiving, Parshall “could not finish the food on my plate” at the family dinner: there were, after all, children starving in Zimbabwe, which has the highest rate of inflation on earth today, and where unemployment is a staggering 80 percent. “I got motivated,” Parshall said.
 
2008 1520 page5Motivation may be an understatement: Becca and her friends organized students to share the store of Zimbabwe’s plight during WWU’s week of worship. There were students from Zimbabwe in College Place, and their testimony added poignancy and immediacy to the story—one told a story of having been forced to serve as a “child soldier.”
 
In addition, the students produced short videos that were played during morning worship that week. There was “dead silence” among the usually boisterous assembly; Janelle Walikonis said the students’ “gaze was not averted” as the scenes unfolded on screen.
 
Events such as a “date auction” and other fund-raisers brought in the funds. “Students here were so impassioned with a need to serve,” Parshall recalled. “Everyone here knew about ‘Mission Zimbabwe,’” as the project was known, she said.
 
“People who had the least would give the most,” Walikonis added. “Every student felt like they
were contributing. The faculty talked about the situation in class.”
 
Even McVay took the plunge—literally. He was part of 
a “Zwim,” or swim, for Zimbabwe where people pledged money for each lap completed. Total raised 
at that event: $4,000.
 
The impact of such fund-raising, in a place where inflation is topping 100,000 percent right now, might be the difference between life and death. The Murwira orphanage helps 1,000 people, Parshall noted.
 
“When I go to heaven, I have a date with God,” Becca Parshall told me. “I want Him to show me the faces of the people this has touched.”
 
For an outside observer, visiting Walla Walla for the first time, an impressive aspect of this accomplishment is the spiritual basis on which it was grounded. “How can you say prayer doesn’t work,” Janelle Walikonis asked, recalling a time when the video projector wouldn’t function. “We prayed for the projector twice,” she added—and it worked.
 
That miracle, and other smaller miracles, touched the lives of the organizers as well as the recipients. “It was a huge leap of faith [for me] to say, ‘God, please help,’” Parshall said. But, she added, “there was no way we could have done this on our own. The community gathering together and rallying for this affirmed 
my faith.”
 
I don’t think I mentioned it to 
these dynamic young Seventh-day Adventists, but this story of prayer 
and action combined affirmed my faith, too.

________________
Mark A. Kellner is news editor of the Adventist Review.

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