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Catholic priests could return to Latin Mass
Inspiration Point: Believing in miracles despite
the deep water
|
Touch as a means of healing |
Newberg woman will travel to Africa to minister
orphans |
By Laurent
Bonczijk, Newberg Graphic reporter
E-mail Laurent at
lbonczijk@eaglenewspapers.com
|
When Kara Nichols dreams of
Africa she doesn’t dream of lions or leopards. She doesn’t dream of
snowcapped Mount Kilimanjaro or the depths of Lake Tanganyika.
Hers are dreams of children, children orphaned by wars and AIDS.
When Nichols goes to Africa at the end of July she will go to help
those orphans.
Nichols is the daughter of Ed Nichols, pastor at the Church of the
Nazarene, and Carrie Nichols, a homemaker. She heard through her
parents about the orphans and the upcoming trip to minister to them.
A licensed massage therapist, Kara says she has seen the benefits
of massage on her brother, Abram, who recently graduated from
Newberg High School. He had his left foot amputated because of a
growing benign tumor. “I took time to focus on him,” she said of the
time she has spent at home since graduating from Ashmead College in
2005.
She said that
working on her brother really drove home the benefits of massage
therapy. “I like to treat the causes of what’s going in the body
with the muscles. I wanted to help people, but I didn’t really want
to be a nurse.”
The more she looked into massage therapy the more she became
interested in it. “It’s just something that God led me to that
turned out to be something I really loved to do,” she said. “God has
gifted my hands.”
After hearing her parents speak of a presentation on Rwanda made at
a missionary convention, Nichols knew she wanted to be part of that
trip. “I had always wanted to help orphans,” she said.
What happens next she attributes to faith. The presenter, Sandra
Lucas, came to her church and before the service was complete
Nichols had been invited and had accepted to chance to participate
in the mission trip. “I don’t know how to describe it ... God just
wanted me to go,” she said.
Lucas said that having talked to Nichols’ parents she was aware of
the young woman’s skills and interested by them. As a therapist with
Lutheran Community Services she says that it is important for
orphans’ caretakers to include touch as the parents are not there
anymore to fulfill that need.
Nichols will be fulfilling a space her group had, Lucas said. “This
is the crazy way God works,” she said.
Now, the hard part. Nichols had to raise the $3,000 necessary for
transportation, lodging and vaccines. When it is all said and done
Nichols was poked with a needle about half a dozen times and spent
$400 on different vaccinations.
The orphanage she will minister at is in Gisenyi, a town in the
western part of Rwanda near the border of the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. The approximately 7,300 orphans there are scattered in
homes throughout the town because the local orphanage cannot handle
them all.
The Church of the Nazarene is already present in the city and helps
with the orphanage. The workers were orphaned themselves during the
1994 genocide, a three-month period in which 800,000 people were
killed. The majority of the children they care for now have been
orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. “The church is trying to help the
survivors,” Nichols said.
While Nichols took two years of French in high school, she doesn’t
think she will remember enough to get along without the two
translators who will be present. In the future that might not be a
problem, though. “Part of the reason that I want to go back to
school is so that I can be fluent in other languages,” she said.
The trip to Rwanda is grueling. It will take Kara two days to fly
there and another day of driving before she arrives in Gisenyi. The
group she joins will be teaching a seminar on play therapy and
Nichols says that her contribution will be to incorporate touch. She
says that touch is vital in order for the children to develop in a
healthy way.
Of course she will have to be prudent since many of the children
are the offspring of parents who died of AIDS. “If they have any
open cuts or rashes on their skin I will have to wear gloves,” but
she expects that her work “will probably be more shoulder and neck
work over their clothes.”
Although Kara admits her parents have some trepidation about her
planned trip, Carrie says she’s “excited about Kara’s trip. It has
been her dream since third-, fourth-grade?!” “Most of the kids have
felt a strong desire to help people,” Carrie said of her children.
Her oldest son is a psychology major who will soon teach middle
school; her oldest daughter is a social worker.
Next fall Kara will attend Northwest Nazarene University in Idaho,
where she intends to major in ministry or mission work. “I would
like to use massage skills and knowledge and incorporate it into
ministry and use it as an asset,” she said.
She has been raising money for the trip and will hold a garage sale
July 6-7 at her parents’ house at 1600 Libra St. Among the items on
sale will be some of her homemade jewelry.
Lucas said that the group was collecting donations in a Rwanda
Orphan Fund set up at U.S. Bank. All proceeds will go to help
orphans because all trip members have to raise funds to cover their
own costs. |
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From
June 30, 2007, Newberg Graphic
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