Paying It Forward!

Making Christmas a Little Brighter
Written by April Scheinoha
Saturday, December 24, 2005 Edition of The Northern Watch Newspaper

Members of the Lincoln High School Student Senate donated and wrapped Christmas gifts Tuesday for Christmas for Pennington County, an annual program that provides gifts to less fortunate kids in the county. This year, 345 kids received gifts through the program, which is sponsored by the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department. The gifts were wrapped in the basement of the Pennington County Law Enforcement Center in Thief River Falls.

Mikayla Adolphson, 9, made sure there was enough tape on packages before they were wrapped Monday for Christmas for Pennington County. The annual program provides Christmas gifts to less fortunate kids who might not otherwise receive them. This year, 345 kids received gifts through the program. Adolphson joined Thief River Falls Women of Today members, including her mom, Julie, and other volunteers in wrapping the gifts in the basement of the Pennington County Law Enforcement Center in Thief River Falls. Volunteers donate gifts, money and wrapping paper to the program as well. The program is sponsored by the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department.



Thief River Falls residents Aaron (left) and Daniel Hustad made Christmas a little brighter for less fortunate kids Monday. Aaron, 8, and Daniel, 6, donated the contents of their piggy bank – $30 – to Christmas for Pennington County. The annual countywide program provides Christmas gifts to less fortunate kids. The brothers plan to give to the program every year.

Armed with money from their piggy bank late Monday afternoon, Aaron and Daniel Hustad walked into the Pennington County Law Enforcement Center (LEC) in Thief River Falls. For most kids, money practically burns holes in their pockets before it is spent on toys or other items. In the boys’ case, the money was being spent on something else – Christmas gifts for less fortunate kids.

“We’re going to do it every year,” said 6-year-old Daniel, a Thief River Falls resident.

Daniel and his 8-year-old brother Aaron donated a total of $30 to Christmas for Pennington County (CPC), an annual countywide program that distributes Christmas gifts to children who might not otherwise receive them. Through the program, ornaments are placed on angel trees at several Thief River Falls businesses. This year, 345 kids received gifts. Their Christmas was made brighter with donations from people like Aaron and Daniel, who were among many who donated money, gifts, wrapping paper and/or time to CPC.

The boys had seen a CPC tree at Kmart, and their dad, Jim, recently read about the program in The Times.

“I just asked the boys if that was something they’d be interested in contributing to,” Jim said.

Once they heard about the program, the boys were ready to help. It was a moment for them to “pay it forward,” meaning Jim and the boys did a good deed for someone else because someone did a good deed for them. For Christmas this year, the family received an anonymous donation from someone at Trinity Lutheran Church in Thief River Falls.

“It was quite shocking to me actually. I wasn’t expecting anything this year, and I don’t have any family in the area,” said Jim, who grew up in this area. Along with his sons, he moved to Thief River Falls from Seattle in January.

In their effort to “pay it forward,” the boys allowed their dad to empty their piggy bank. They usually save the money they get from their dad as well as the money they’ve found, Jim said. Sometimes they use their money on toys, Daniel said. Or at a water park, Aaron said. Based on their ages and the denominations of the bills in the piggy bank, Aaron donated $20 to CPC and Daniel donated $10.

They may not be earning allowances yet, but this wasn’t Aaron and Daniel’s first venture into charity work. With their cousins, they operated a lemonade stand in Seattle to raise money for tsunami victims.

Their tradition of giving continues with their donations to CPC. Their donations surprised Wendy Mattson, who coordinates the program for the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department. “All the years, I’ve never had anything like that happen,” said Wendy, who has been coordinating the program for more than 15 years.

When Wendy heard about the donation, she was organizing and wrapping some of the Christmas gifts in the LEC basement or, as Wendy calls it, Santa’s workshop. Deciding she had to meet the kids, she went upstairs to personally thank them. Wendy and co-worker Maria Srnsky, both teary-eyed, accepted the donations from the boys. Then Wendy and Maria took the boys, with their father in tow, downstairs to see how the money would be used.

The Challenger Elementary School students and their dad were surprised by the number of toys for kids served by the program. “I think it was cool,” said Daniel, who noted he saw “a thousand toys” in the LEC basement.

“I was surprised,” said Jim. “That was incredible.”

And many people would probably say that Aaron and Daniel’s actions were incredible.

A Thief River Falls Christmas

 
 

Widerskis Come A Callin...

 
 

Aaron's Turn

 
 

A Tall Christmas Tree...

 
 

A Tired Little Hockey Player...

 
 

Aaron's Third Grade Sunday School Program at Trinity

 
 

Twas The Night Before Christmas Eve....

And all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except Dad wrapping presents and Aaron unable to sleep. Yes, I finally made it out to get my shopping done. Although I haven't been very active in preparation for Christmas, the community has taken the initiative of bringing Christmas to my doorstep. I almost feel like Chevy Chase in the movie Funny Farm. All I'm missing is the carolers out on my snow-covered front lawn, though there's still a day left for that. Practically every day to every other day I've had an unexpected visitor bearing gifts, warm Christmas wishes, and baked goodies galore. A number of gifts have been anonymous and have left me wondering just how many friends we've made in the relatively short time we've been here.

In my last post, I wrote about our visit to the Law Enforcement Center to make a donation to needy children/families in Pennington County. Well, I received a phone call from April, a reporter at the local newspaper, the TRF Times/Northern Watch wanting to interview Aaron and Daniel. She had gotten a call from the volunteer coordinator at the Law Enforcement Center who was so touched by the boys' generosity that she thought it would be a nice human interest story. I drove the boys to the paper's office last week and they were interviewed (as best as you can interview a 6 and 8-year-old...) and had their picture taken together. Chances are they'll be in either Saturday's Northern Watch or next Tuesday's edition of the Times, so I'll try to get a copy of it to post, or if we're lucky, the boys will be on the TRF Times website itself.

We got a phone call tonight from the Wignesses where we're going for Christmas Day to tell us they have a hot tub and to bring the boys' suits. In case you're wondering the weather should be nice and mild for it, somewhere around 35 or 40 degrees, I figure. It was a sweltering 33.5 degrees this afternoon and we had our first slush on the roads in a month. Now I gotta wait for things to freeze again to go skating. We had freezing rain the night before, which resulted in several cars in the local ditches here. I did identify the minimum operating temperature range for the "Weasel," though. It won't start below about 5 to 10 degrees and I lose all defroster/heater ability below about 18 degrees, so I'll just have to plan around that in the future.

We will probably be going to the early service at Trinity tomorrow night as I can't imagine the boys at the 11:00 p.m. service... Aaron wants me to set his alarm clock tonight so he can get up at 7:00 a.m. by himself and open ONE present. I'm thinking he'll still be awake, though, when I go upstairs to bed. I managed to get all the presents wrapped save for a few stocking stuffers that I'll get done tomorrow night.

Merry Christmas to one and all and to all a good night!!

Am I The Only One Who Hasn't Shopped Yet??

Christmas week sure has shown up earlier than I had planned on... The boys have a short week at school this week, getting out early on Thursday at noon. I picked up a beautiful 8.5 to 9-foot tree last week for only $25 and I had it on the front porch for a couple days while I looked for my tree stand. After failing to find the stand, we headed out to the store we got the tree from and picked up a nice stand on Saturday. Come Sunday, Aaron was regularly asking, "Dad, you going to put the tree up today? Please put the tree up, Dad. Have you decided if you're going to put the tree up yet? Put the tree up now, DAD!!" I finally buckled and put it up this weekend. It comes to within about 4 inches of the 9-foot dining room ceiling. I was unable to fit the whole tree into the picture it was so big. Not quite in Clark W. Griswold proportions, though...

As for activities Christmas week, I'm still finding a free day to get out to the stores and get my shopping done once and for all. The choir at Trinity is on hiatus until January, so that gives me one extra evening I didn't have before. Aaron has another trip to the water park at Seven Clans Casino on Wednesday with his regular third grade class that'll be from about noon to 3:00. On Christmas day, we had a change in plans and will be heading over to the Wigness' house to enjoy dinner with Jerry and Marilyn and their kids.

Thief River has all their Christmas lights up now on the street and things are looking much more seasonal now. K-mart has a giving tree set up and Pennington County is doing a program where they give gifts to needy families with children. I asked the boys if they would like to take some money from their piggy bank and contribute and both were excited at the idea of giving other kids in town here the opportunity to enjoy Christmas like them. We drove to the Law Enforcement Center (Daniel was excited to see the police department from the inside). Once there, we actually met Sheriff Mike Hruby himself at the dispatch window and were directed to "Santa's Workshop" downstairs in the basement of the Law Enforcement Center. Once down there, we saw this long hallway, about the length of a swimming pool, each wall stacked about 5 feet high with wrapped presents. We were escorted into a side room where there were still more presents waiting to be sorted and wrapped. Digi-Key, the computer part company in town here donated all the boxes for wrapping and the paper. There was a virtual mountain of them waiting for presents. We saw many recipient lists for children from 3 years old on up to early teens so the boys could learn where their donation would be spent. The coordinator, Maria, told us she had just collected the unclaimed gift slips from the giving tree today and there were about 40 remaining for kids that hadn't had anything given to them, so she told the boys that's where their money would go. The kids on the Lincoln High School Student Senate will go shopping with the money in the next few days to finish the project. The volunteer coordinator suggested the boys could come back in a few years and wrap presents themselves. Aaron suggested coming back to donate again next year as he felt so good about sharing with the other kids.

The boys then went to the library in town and picked out a half dozen books to read over Christmas break and we're back home (finally) to relax before bedtime. It's truly going to be a white Christmas over here too. We got about a foot of snow on the front lawns and the sides of the street have about 2-1/2 feet of it piled up on the curbs. There's not a bare stretch of road in town. It got so cold last night, too, that the Weasel failed to start last night and I got a ticket for parking on the street on a "calendar parking" day (when they come through with the snow plow). It finally warmed up to 11 degrees by the afternoon, though, so I was finally able to start it and move it in the back alley. Unfortunately the defroster doesn't work now either, so I'm scraping the inside of my windshield with ice shavings across my dashboard like a winter landscape. Gotta love these Minnesota winters!!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow Some More...

From the above heading, you can tell what I'm looking at outside right now. We had another three inches of snow overnight and it's been snowing nonstop off and on since early this morning. We've accumulated upwards of 6 to 8 inches since just last Thursday. It's made it a challenge keeping the front walkway clear for the mailman to say the least. I think I'm kind of getting back in synch finally with the Minnesota winters as I correctly guessed the inches of snow just on first glance as I drove the kids to school. On my way home, I turned on KTRF to hear "Big Red in the Morning" (a local on-air personality) announce we had three inches of snow, exactly what I had guessed.

This past week's activities went off without barely a hitch. Saturday's string quartet performance at Redeemer became a "trio" as one violin didn't show up. We had two cellos, a violin, and the director played piano to fill out the sound. We went to Trinity after that with Dusty Grochow to attend the rehearsal for Aaron's Christmas program. Aaron had a speaking part like most of the other kids and did a great job.

Come last Sunday, the choir sang at both services the three pieces we had been given only two weeks prior. Only problem was I had only practiced them once, the first week they had been given us, and had not been able to practice last Wednesday as I had to practice for the Santa Lucia performance at Redeemer. Long story short, I messed up at the first service on one of the pieces where we were supposed to stay on one note in order to change into a new key and I went down to the note we had been singing previously, so the other two basses kind of followed me off the cliff like lemmings and you can imagine how it sounded at the very end. With that experience under our belt, though, and a SECOND practice before 10:30 service, we did great the second time around. Aaron's Christmas program went well also and I'm hoping the local radio station managed to tape the televised service for me.

In other news, Aaron has assumed the role of bedtime story reader for Daniel and I. He picks out his own book about a half hour before bed now and reads for at least 15 minutes. It's required that he read 15 minutes per night on a reading log for his class at school, but he has begun to regard it as something fun to do, not so much a "homework" chore. We did have a humerous reading the other night that had me in stitches. This was another in a long series of chapters in "kids say the darndest things..." As we're reading along, Aaron came across the word "salami" sandwich and was unable to sound it out. I thought I'd give him a hint by asking him, "What's your favorite sandwich meat at Subway?" Good ol' Danny managed to chime right in at that moment with, "chicken bacon ranch?" I thought Aaron's interpretation of the bible verse recently as "Possum" instead of "Psalm" was pretty funny, but I think Danny had him beat with his improvisational skills. Andrew was howling too when he heard it. :o)

Now I'm thinking of what to do outside with the lights. I now have the company of two other houses on my side of the street that have Christmas lights outside. My dilemma now is the snow has covered up the nice blue net lights I had on the front bushes, so I'm wondering how to clear them off or if I'll just have to bring them inside to melt first, then bring them back out. The biggest challenge I'm facing, though, is getting out to get the shopping done in time for Christmas so there's a minimum of time available for the boys to go snooping for their gifts. Aaron's already put me on notice he will be looking "everywhere." Wish me luck...

I'll try to post a few more pictures soon of the Christmas program at church, etc. I also want to get a nice snow fort built out front with all this nice wet moldable snow.

Still Number One in Minnesota!!

Despite last Saturday's loss to Blaine High School, the Prowlers have retained their #1 ranking in Minnesota in 1A schools. We have a week off from home hockey games this week with the Prowlers traveling to Blake, last year's defending champions, on Friday. Aaron keeps asking me for skates, though, and has me bring his hockey stick to the bus stop every afternoon so he can play street hockey every day with his buddies at the end of our block. It's snowed for almost a week straight off and on, so there's plenty of snow pack on the streets and sidewalks. It's 3 degrees above zero this morning, though most nights since Sunday have registered below zero...

I attended rehearsal last night at Redeemer Lutheran for Saturday's string performance at the Santa Lucia Swedish Festival. We practiced Christmas carols and will probably play 8 to 10 of them as a prelude to the festivities. There's only four of us playing though, so we have a nice little quartet. There's one other guy playing cello with me and a violin and viola. We didn't sound too bad in practice. We'll just see how it goes Saturday. The boys have to practice their winter performance at 3:00 on Saturday, two hours after I play at Redeemer, so it will be a busy weekend running between churches as the choir also performs on Sunday along with the kids in their Christmas music program.

That about does it for this weekday update...

A successful second outing for the Prowlers against Totino-Grace High School. 

Can't stop laughing from looking at Dad... 

Future Prowler hockey stars... 

Aaron discovers Dad's in the audience... 

Aaron in "Melton the Warm-Hearted Snowman" 

A New Winter Pastime...Prowler Hockey!!

You’ll have to bear with me a bit this week. It’s been a looooong week with many things happening. I’ll start with Tuesday. The Lincoln High School Prowlers (The local high school here) were ranked #1 in Minnesota in their division going into the season opener at the Ralph Engelstad arena here in town Tuesday night against the Roseau High School Rams. It was our first ever hockey game and we went to see the junior varsity teams playing earlier and watched the first period of the varsity game at 7:30 as the boys had to get to bed for school early the next morning. We ended up winning in overtime, though, with Michael Forney, the team captain, scoring the winning goal in the closing seconds of OT. Lincoln High shares the Notre Dame fight song and they had their pep band playing on Tuesday night.

Come Thursday, Aaron had his winter “informance,” another name for his holiday musical. The play was entitled “Melton, the Warm-Hearted Snowman.” He had several speaking parts and performed them all with grace and aplomb, reciting them from memory with no cues. Of course I was a bit of a distraction to him in between and he couldn’t stop laughing at one point, rubbing his eyes until he could calm down. He was grinning from ear to ear for about 90 percent of the performance and obviously enjoyed himself immensely. His class worked very hard on the program. I got to say hi to the assistant hockey coach while I was there too, as his daughter is in Aaron’s third grade class. He’s pretty optimistic about the Prowler’s season this year.

We ended the school week with our second hockey game on Friday night, this time against the Totino-Grace Eagles. They are so named as Rose Totino of frozen pizza fame donated much of her fortune to the private Catholic school in the Minneapolis area when she died and the school was renamed. Totino-Grace was ranked 6th in the state going into the game and the Prowlers beat them 6 to 2. It was a much larger crowd that night at the arena and the boys enjoyed themselves as usual. I videotaped that game.

I was wondering if we’d have time to catch a single game this year, but come yesterday (Saturday), there we were again at the arena, taking in the Prowler’s third game this past week in a row, this one against the Blaine High School Bengals. The Bengals had been beaten the day before by Roseau by about 5 to 1 or 2. Unfortunately the Prowler’s were unable to salvage that one and lost to the Bengals by a score of 7 to 4. We went with the pastor who lives on our street and his four boys. Pastor Dave had played goalie in college for one year and gave me some background on hockey rules, etc., so I know what I’m looking at on the ice. So it would appear we are well on our way to becoming hockey fanatics, to say the least…

In other news, we have been working on fixing up the youth room downstairs at Trinity so it’s something the youth can be proud of as their own place to “hang.” I fixed the ping-pong table and also replaced a broken man on the foosball table, so those are back in order and they have a couple of nice couches that were donated. At our meeting today, we discussed getting some donations together to purchase a television and DVD/VCR for the room so they can have a movie night sometime. The only other thing left would perhaps be a bubblehockey table to round out the recreation equipment. The youth also have their trip to San Antonio to look forward to next summer, but have a long ways to go as they have only raised about $1,500 and have to reach around $20,000 all told.

Aaron had an unexpected surprise at church today. He ended up playing foosball right across from the varsity hockey captain, Michael Forney, a three-sport athlete who also was captain and quarterback of the regional champion Prowler football team. I told Aaron he’s the one he should get an autograph on his hockey stick from. Michael has signed on to play for the University of North Dakota as a forward next winter. Aaron also played ping-pong with Michael before we left. He’s a nice kid who enjoys being a mentor to the younger kids. He visited Aaron’s school earlier in the year to hand out Prowler memorabilia. I’m hoping Aaron may continue his interest in hockey and after learning how to skate perhaps pursue playing the game next season. All he needs now is a pair of skates as he already has his hockey stick.

This next Wednesday I’ll be practicing again for another orchestral performance at Redeemer Lutheran for their Santa Lucia Festival on Saturday the 10th. It’s an annual Swedish Festival and we’ll be playing Christmas music. It’s been a bear having a cello over here so far, though, as the temperatures get so low that humidity is next to nothing, which can cause a string instrument to crack or become unglued, so I’m constantly monitoring the humidity in the house here and refilling the humidifier. It’s an interesting paradox as the outside humidity is often well over 80 percent while the indoor humidity plummets to the single digits. It was 1 below zero this morning and we’re expecting high temps in the single digits throughout the early part of this coming week. Snow is here to stay for the winter and many parts of town are covered by ice, making driving somewhat treacherous.

I’ll sign off for now so I have time to post a few pictures for you of Aaron’s performance and the recent hockey games. Just three weeks from today until Christmas!!! :o)

Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving was very enjoyable with its accompanying food, friendship, and fun, but I was given another reason to be especially thankful this year for all we are blessed with here in the United States.

I was shopping at K-mart the day before Thanksgiving for some ping pong table supplies for the youth at Trinity when I decided to take a detour by the boys clothing section to check out the Thanksgiving sale prices. Given my height and the typical lack of an available salesperson at K-mart, I was approached by a nice lady named Bonnie who needed help getting some boys' pajamas off of a high display rack. I got them down for her and what was expected to be a quick 5-minute "in-and-out" shopping spree transformed into a lengthy and I might add very enjoyable conversation. I thought Bonnie looked familiar, but couldn't quite place it. It turned out she was in the local Northern Watch newspaper recently having just returned from a mission to Swaziland helping with the orphans of a village there. She recently moved back to TRF after a lenghty hiatus (sound familiar?) to be nearby her only son who works for the Pennington County Sheriff's Department and her grandchildren.

It was enjoyable hearing about her history as she is a registered nurse by profession and, per her account, was one of the first infection control nurses in the United States, having been in the second infection control class of all time at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She spent time on an indian reservation early on, which gave her experience dealing with poor to nonexistent medical environments with little to no supplies or equipment. She described having a rather small doctor there on the reservation who didn't have the physical stature to endure amputation procedures himself, so she would often have to performing the sawing of the limbs herself that were the result of diabetes and other injuries/infections. She also worked for many years as a nurse at Northwest Medical Center here in town before moving out to California.

I learned more of Bonnie's recent visit to Swaziland where she told me the story of a bag of chips. There were apparently around 80 young children gathered in the village for a special treat. A gentleman in the village had a single bag of potato chips, but it was one of those old bags they used to sell in the US vending machines before everything became "super-sized." There were nowhere near 80 chips in the bag to go around the 80 children, but it was like the fish and loaves of bread of long ago. Each child in an orderly fashion would approach the man, receive a chip or piece of a chip, say "Thank you, pastor," then quitely walk away for the next child to receive their portion. At the end of the dispensing of chips, there was not a single child who complained or asked for more (as I recalled Oliver Twist's famous statement). It was moments like that and seeing how little these children there have that motivated Bonnie to use her own savings to travel to Swaziland at the youthful age of 75 and help as best she could.

Bonnie attends the United Methodist Church here in Thief River, which supports her mission. Unfortunately there have not been many donations to help in her cause and I offered the space here on my blog site to share her story with whomever may be reading. Below I have posted Bonnie's picture as well as below that the original article from the Northern Watch newspaper. Please read through to the end where you can see how to help Bonnie in her mission. As we have allowed our turkey, dressing, and all the fixings to digest, here is a truly good example of something to be thankful for through the end of this year and in the coming year and consider perhaps sharing some of our bountiful harvest with those far less fortunate.

For a little background on Swaziland, The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small country in southern Africa (one of the smallest on the continent), situated on the eastern slope of the Drakensberg mountains, embedded between South Africa in the west and Mozambique in the east. The country is named after the Swazi, a Bantu tribe. It is a largely Christian country with a historically British influence as a British protectorate. It is not a country marked by civil unrest, unlike several other African countries engulfed in civil war in recent years. For more info, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaziland.

Thanks for reading!

Bonnie Van Schaick with orphans of Swaziland (2005)
 

A Reason To Continue Being Thankful...

From the November 5th Edition of the Northern Watch

Spending her time with African orphans

Written by April Scheinoha

Orphans in Ngculwini, Swaziland, Africa, enjoyed playing hand-clapping games with Thief River Falls resident Bonnie Van Schaick. The games were similar to games American children play on school buses. Van Schaick went on a two-week mission trip to Swaziland in August. (Submitted photo)

Each day, Bonnie Van Schaick thinks about the orphans she met in Africa. She thinks about the girl wearing the dirty pink flannel shirt and the boy who was so happy that someday he and others would be able to eat an onion that was growing in their garden.

For about two weeks in August, the Thief River Falls resident spent time in Swaziland, a south African country slightly smaller than New Jersey. Van Schaick worked on a mission in the town of Ngculwini (pronounced GU-la-win-EE). “I always wanted to go on this type of mission,” she said.

Van Schaick, who moved back to Thief River Falls this September after a 16-year hiatus, went to Africa with a program created by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, a Christian teacher and author. While living in California and attending services at the Crystal Cathedral, Van Schaick heard Wilkinson speak about Dream for Africa. As part of the program, volunteers help local Africans plant and care for gardens. “I’m sitting there listening, and I thought, ‘I wish I wasn’t this old. I planted my last garden 40 years ago, at least 30 years ago,’” the 75-year-old Van Schaick said.

Then Wilkinson talked to those people who were not able to help in the gardens or didn’t wish to go. He noted there were other programs through which people could help. Wilkinson told a story about a man who received eyeglasses from one of those programs. The story touched Van Schaick. “He was a pastor who never got to read the Bible,” she said.

Van Schaick knew she could help others through that program. As a nurse in the 1950s, she worked with a similar program on the Red Lake Reservation.

Within days, Van Schaick was busy preparing for the volunteer trip in which she would pay her own way. Once she arrived in Africa, she was prepared to help people see better. “I thought I was going to do eyeglasses, but again God had another plan,” Van Schaick said.

The plan changes

The machine that helps determine eyeglass prescriptions didn’t make it through customs. Van Schaick, a retired nurse, then thought she was going to work in a hospital. That was until she learned she would only be observing the work there.

Then Van Schaick found another way to help – spending time with orphans. Even though she hadn’t anticipated that mission work, Van Schaick said, “Of course, that’s where I really needed to be.”

Each day, she and two male volunteers would travel 26 miles in a van from their hotel to Ngculwini. Other volunteers who were gardening in another town would drop them off.

Van Schaick went to an abandoned building similar to a warehouse. Five days a week, orphaned children would gather there. About 85 kids ages 2 to 13 would walk on their own from their community of huts to the building each morning, Van Schaick said. Most were between the ages of 3-1/2 and 8.

Orphans are at the end of the pecking order in their town, Van Schaick said. She noted that orphans will stay at a neighbor or relative’s home after both of their parents or their only parent dies. However, they’re not welcomed there because they’re taking up space, using water and eating food.

That’s why they come to the abandoned building. They are served food donated by various organizations. The food is cooked by two women who live in Ngculwini and volunteer their time to feed the kids. During the time that Van Schaick spent there, the women cooked food donated by German Seventh-day Adventists as well as food donated by Zionists. “Each kid would stand in line, and have rice and then beans,” Van Schaick said. The women don’t eat the food because, as they told Van Schaick, it’s for the kids.

It was the kids’ only meal for 24 hours. They had no milk or juice. If they wanted water, they went to the creek. “It was just worse than any dishwater you’ve seen,” Van Schaick said about the creek.

Van Schaick especially noticed the poverty of Ngculwini when a boy picked something off of the ground, wiped it on his clothing, put it into his mouth and then sucked on the item. She wondered what he had in his mouth and asked him. It was a grain of rice.

Meeting the kids

Van Schaick and the other volunteers got a lot of attention when they arrived at the abandoned building or what Van Schaick called the orphanage. “These kids would come up and just touch you,” she said.

Like many kids in that age group, they had questions. They spoke English and asked Van Schaick about America and the things she did when she was younger. “All these questions, you have no idea where they came from,” she said.

Go-Go plays with the kids

Some of the orphans had a special name for Van Schaick. “The little ones, they called me Go-Go,” she said. Van Schaick later learned that Go-Go is a term the kids use to refer to their grandmas.

Van Schaick, who has two grandchildren, showered attention on the orphans much like any loving grandma. “The look in their eyes was just unbelievable,” she said. “They relished anything that remotely resembled love – a pat on the hand, a hug.”

The kids apparently liked spending time with their Go-Go. They crowded Van Schaick as she hugged and played with them, she said. Van Schaick would count their fingers with them and play hand-clapping games similar to those that many American kids play while riding on school buses.

Then Van Schaick noticed a 5-year-old girl sitting beside her. “She had the dirtiest pink flannel shirt on I’d ever seen in my life, but you could tell it was pink,” Van Schaick said. Van Schaick touched the girl’s shoulder. The girl jerked, and turned away from Van Schaick.

The girl sat near Van Schaick the next day, but wouldn’t look at or touch her, unlike the other kids. In the midst of playing with the kids, Van Schaick later realized the 5-year-old girl with the dirty pink flannel shirt wasn’t sitting near her. Then she felt something move across her back. She noted it felt like a caterpillar was on her back. Then someone pulled at the cross necklace around her neck. Shortly thereafter, someone began using his or her hand to comb Van Schaick’s hair. Out of the corner of her eye, Van Schaick got a glimpse of a pink shirt. Then the girl stopped combing Van Schaick’s hair. She disappeared, only to return a few minutes later and stand next to Van Schaick and place her arm on Van Schaick’s leg. Later, she sat on the ground in between Van Schaick’s legs, and, with her back to Van Schaick, placed one arm on each of Van Schaick’s legs.

Van Schaick counted the girl’s fingers and the girl knew the numbers. For the first time since Van Schaick had been there, the girl responded to the people around her. “I think about her everyday and wonder if she’s getting attention from anybody,” Van Schaick said.

As much as her heart went out to the kids and others living in the town, Van Schaick was glad she didn’t live in Ngculwini. “You always were happy to see the dust coming down the road because you know you were going home,” she said.

The hand-clapping and counting games weren’t the only games the kids played in Ngculwini, but they had to be creative when it came to playtime. “They don’t have any toys,” said Van Schaick, who noted the kids played with a ball fashioned out of a knotted plastic bag filled with leaves.

Van Schaick and the other volunteers were surprised when they saw the ball. “We just sat there with tears in our eyes that this was all that they had,” she said.

Supporting a minister and his dream

While working at the orphanage, Van Schaick also met a pastor named Walter. “I found out he never had a Bible,” she said. Van Schaick had brought a medium-sized Samsonite bag filled with paper, crayons, pencils, and three or four Bibles along to Africa. She gave one of the Bibles to Walter.

“When you think about it, we take so much for granted,” Van Schaick said.
A house is being built for Walter. Work is also beginning on a church and school. Walter intends to raise chickens at that location as well.

While hearing about Walter’s plans, Van Schaick realized Walter needed a more reliable form of electricity. She suggested placing a transformer nearby with a solar backup system. Van Schaick also noticed Walter needed a well from which to draw water for the school. That entire project is estimated to cost $20,000 to $22,000.

How you can help

Van Schaick has already used some of her savings to pay for soil samples in preparation for the well. Others who would like to contribute to the project may send their tax-deductible donations to the United Methodist Church, P.O. Box 595, Thief River Falls, MN 56701. Checks should be written to the aforementioned church. In the memo area, write “Walter Project.”