Spirit in Action
Alums Serving the World - Brydie Hill & Mark Lassman-Eul
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we're going to visit with two folks with a world vision, working at the grassroots level to make powerful differences in the lives of many people. And what's more, they both graduated from my Alma Mater, Carol College, renamed this past year as Carol University. Before I introduce Mark and Bridey, I want to mention a couple of upcoming events that you may be interested in. If you listen to my interview with Matthew Hunter, Executive Director of FNVW, that's Friends for Nonviolent World, you may already know that on October 31st, over in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, they're sponsoring Ways of Peace, a conference on Christian Nonviolence, with a wealth of impressive speakers and presenters. Go to the FNVW.org site to check out the details. On that same day, Halloween and the day before, there's the 13th Annual Body, Mind, and Spirit Conference at UW Stout in Menominee, Wisconsin. Come to my northernspiritradio.org site for a link to them, and I'll have interviews related to that event for the next two weeks, including their keynote by Andrew Harvey, a deeply and widely-traveled spiritual presence and advocate of spiritual activism. But right now, we're going to speak with two other graduates of Carroll College, as was I, which is what brought them to my attention. Though of different generational ages, both have special connections to Kenya, where Bridey Hill ministers with Project Kenya Charity and where my first guest, Mark Lassmannuel, lived for three years working with Habitat for Humanity. Let's go to the phone now to speak with my first of today's Spirit and Action guests, Mark Lassmannuel, down in Springfield, Missouri. Thank you so much, Mark, for joining me for Spirit in Action. It's nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I ran into information about you in the Carroll College publication called The Pioneer. You and I both went to Carroll College, overlapping by just one year back in the '70s. Why did you choose Carroll College as the place to go to school? Well, I had been raised Catholic. It had gone to a Catholic grade school and high school. I'm a graduate of Thomas Moore High School in Milwaukee. And although I was offered a scholarship to St. Mary's University in San Antonio, which would have been a continuation of the Maronist Brothers educational system, I made the decision in my upper years of high school that I probably had had enough of that one point of view. I wasn't really opposed to the head point of view, but I guess I realized that being educated meant having some different points of view. Carroll was a college that was very appealing to me. I was looking for something smaller where you would have a small student to teacher ratio and you would actually be someone who was known to your teachers and to fellow students, and Carroll fit the bill there. Why I went there as opposed to some other places probably had a lot to do with financial aid, to be honest. It was relatively close to home, yet far enough away that I would have the experience of living on my own. It just seemed like a good fit for me, and that turned out to be correct. It was a great choice. The thing about you that was highlighted in the Carroll magazine was your work with Habitat for Humanity. How does that come from your experience at Carroll College, which is, of course, now Carroll University? What was there about that time that prepared you for that next step into the international world? I'm not sure if there was a direct connection. I guess two things happened to me at Carroll. One, there were some required religion classes back in those days. I didn't like that idea. I kind of resented the idea of having to take those religion classes, but when I took them, they opened up kind of a whole new world. To me, I had never really read the scriptures critically. Never really read them from an educated point of view with any kind of historical background to them. I had never really done any comparing and contrasting of the messages of various authors, particularly in the New Testament. I found those classes fascinating, took some more in an elective way. This had a big influence on my thinking. I also had a major teacher in history, which was one of my majors. I've got my name with Jack Dukes, who was also my advisor for a period of time. Although he was an expert on military matters, especially the German and Russian empires, he really was a pacifist in many ways. He would teach military history from the point of view of, "It would be good if we didn't have to use these things." He knew a lot about weapons and warfare and tactics, but was not a warfare proponent. It kind of made it clear, I think, in the teaching of his classes that some of the wars of the past century may have been avoided if good people had taken stands at certain points. Those things, I think, stayed with me. Probably the biggest experience that I had at Carol that, working with something like Habitat, was some of the service things that I did. I wasn't, rather than an assistant in the IRA in dormitories for two years and a January. That was probably my most significant experience I had at Carol. A close second would have been two trips abroad that I had taken. My first trip I took to England when I was a junior for the month of January was actually the first time I'd ever been on an airplane, much left left the country. I think I was the first person in my family to ever leave the country for something other than military service. The idea of seeing the world a little more, I'm getting the perspective from folks who are outside the United States and the influence of some of the classes and teachers, I guess, would have come together. It'd point me in that direction, although that certainly wasn't where I was heading when I graduated from school. Did you get a religious spiritual direction change or maybe you still practice as Catholic? Maybe you got affiliated with Presbyterians? Did you go on to other things? Or maybe you just got your own path that you're following? I have followed lots of paths, I guess, along the way. I have gone to churches of almost all kinds of denominations. I'm currently a tend, a Methodist church, but I would say, theologically, probably more of a Anabaptist, kind of a modern Mennonite is where I would put myself. I lived for a while in southern Georgia where habitats, headquarters was, was a charter member of a small Mennonite congregation there, and I guess that's probably where my spiritual roots, that's where I would identify myself these days, although I've taken something away from all the various traditions that I've been a part of. I also attend sometimes a UCC disciples church here in Springfield, just for a change sometimes from my home congregation, so I've tried a lot of different paths, I think. I'm getting the idea, Mark, that you don't like straight lines so much, you kind of wander from place to place. Habitat for Humanity is mainly what I want to talk to you about today, but I noticed in the meantime that one of the things that you went into and that you studied then as an advanced degree was educational administration. How did you go from Carroll College to educational administration to Habitat for Humanity? That I can't explain. When I left Carroll, I really thought, since my experience as being a resident assistant was kind of a profound one for me, that I would continue down that path, and in fact I did for a number of years work as a college student personnel type person. I've got the degree in educational administration. There are schools that offer a degree in college student personnel, but I just kind of thought that was kind of a limiting degree, so what I basically studied was adult education, the kind of thing that you would use if you were a corporate trainer or a community educator of some sort. In fact, I did my internship for that degree at the zoo in Milwaukee. I wrote tours and took people on tours and came up with education programs for adults that hadn't been offered before. That has translated directly into what I do for Habitat. That is essentially what I do for them now. I would classify myself pretty much as an adult educator. I do workshops, put together training materials, kind of a coach for people who want to implement Habitat in their community, so I do in fact use that degree all the time. In retrospect, glad I took it. So Habitat for Humanity, what was your first involvement with Habitat? My first involvement was actually working with students who were at Miami University in Ohio, going on some building trips with them. That was my first involvement. I actually heard about Habitat. I was helping teach the Sunday school for college-age students at a church in Oxford, Ohio, which is where Miami is located. Students came back one year and we were going kind of around the room asking how people had spent their summer. Of course, most people had done the usual. They had a summer job or worked at a camp and one of the young women said that she had spent the summer down in Georgia volunteering for this new organization called Habitat for Humanity. That was actually the first time I had ever heard of it. This was in the early 1980s and through her and through Habitat starting in some of the towns around us. There are cities around us, I guess, in Southern Ohio. We went out and did some volunteering work. That was my first exposure. So what was it about Habitat for Humanity that captured your interest, your enthusiasm? Why is it especially attractive thing to you? I'd say the first thing that captured my imagination about it was the fact that from the very beginning it's been an international ministry. I think that there's a tendency sometimes for Americans and for American Christians to somehow think of God as being American or that Jesus of being American, and of course that wasn't true. From the very beginning, Habitat was as much interested in its work abroad as it was interested in its work here. That really appealed to me. In fact, the first significant work that Habitat did was overseas. What's now the Republic of the Congo was then called Zaire. So that was one thing that appealed to me. The other thing that appealed to me and still does is that the very early founders of Habitat talked about it as being a two-pronged ministry to people who needed something, in this case more adequate housing, and a ministry to people who had a need to give something. They stressed how often in the Gospels Jesus talked about the obligations of those who have much and those who are rich to be involved in helping those who don't have as much and Habitat has always talked about this two-pronged ministry that was kind of a unique way of looking at the world for me. So those two things appealed to me then. They still appeal to me now. It's not just the surface levels. You mentioned a couple things that are on the top, but you get deep down in there the way that it's planned, how families participate in preparing their own building, how loans are done, zero interest, how people pay back their mortgages, and how that goes into helping other people after them. It's so well thought out. Can you mention some of the other details that I haven't mentioned about how Habitat works? Sure. A lot of the basic principles came from a guy by the name of Clarence Jordan who worked at a place called Coenia Farm in South Georgia. His idea of what he called a partnership housing ministry, it was only one of many partnership ministries that he envisioned. They were all about preserving the dignity of the people that were benefiting from the program by having them be involved as opposed to just be clients. One of the early Habitat slogans which isn't really used very much anymore was co-workers, not caseworkers. The idea was that people shouldn't be treated as clients in this work, people should be treated as partners. To that end, there's quite a bit expected if someone who is buying a Habitat house does in fact buy it and spends quite a bit of time working on their own project. The word that was coined was sweat equity, but that whole principle that folks would be involved was a big part of it. Also the idea that people from different walks of life would actually get together and work on these projects so that people from opposite sides of the tracks would participate together was a big part of the original vision. Clarence Jordan wrote an article that talked about a rich man and a poor man will sit down on a table together, the rich man will get to see what collard greens taste like. The poor man will get to experience what a T-bone steak tastes like and they'll find that they enjoy each other's company. That happens just over and over and over again on our Habitat projects. Another big part of Habitat's idea has been that we have asked our groups worldwide to always take some of the money that they raise locally. We use the term tithe, a biblical term, and send some of that money to the work of Habitat in another country. This is something we ask all our groups worldwide to do. We ask groups in the United States to take some of their money and send it to Central America or Africa. We ask groups in Africa to take some of their money and send it to Asia and so on. That's been a unique part of Habitat's work as well. We have groups in the United States that are actually sponsoring houses and other parts of the world. On the other hand, especially in special circumstances, the United States is sometimes the beneficiary of this gift giving. A couple years back when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the Habitat groups there along the Gulf Coast of the United States received more donations in from other countries around the world than the United States affiliates sent out that year. That's the way it should be. That's the way the whole principal tidiness is supposed to work. Another unique aspect of Habitat that a lot of people don't know about. I think that the international component of Habitat has been really significant for you. Can you tell me a little bit about your international connection? How important is that to you? If Habitat was only helping homeless in the U.S., would you be involved with it? No, I don't think so. Like I said earlier, that was one of the huge appeals to me right off the bat. When I first got involved with Habitat, that's what I was looking for. From a selfish point of view, I was looking for a chance to go ahead and live abroad for a period of time. I had done those short-term trips through Carroll College and a couple other short-term mission kinds of things. But I really wanted to have the experience. My wife and I both wanted to have the experience of living abroad for a period of time in Habitat. In those days, it's not so true anymore, but in those days offered a program that was very similar to being a Peace Corps volunteer, where you actually went abroad and served for a period of three years and worked in a local community. That was very appealing to me. We did that. My wife and I lived in Kenya, in Eastern Africa, in a very rural village in Western Kenya. Since then, I haven't always succeeded, but I've tried to travel abroad every few years and just kind of keep myself in touch. I remind myself what happens out there. I've done a couple of trips and a little bit of work with the Habitat group in Northern Ireland. I've been to Central America a couple of times. I've been to India, I think, three times. It's just nice to kind of keep touch. No matter how well-intentioned you are, sometimes if you live in the U.S. and never kind of get out, remind yourself. You kind of tend to forget how other people in the world live sometimes. I just feel the need to go do that from time to time and personally experience it again. But the international component to me, this idea of tithing from country to country, that's very important. The idea that this is kind of a worldwide organization that we're all gods, children, no matter where we happen to have been born, that's super important. One person I know up here who's part of the Chippewa Valley Habitat for Humanity, he says that his work at Habitat is his church. He doesn't feel the need to go to another church because he's living out the gospels when he's there. And yet, if you go to a Habitat for Humanity site, I don't think you'll normally hear people talking about God Jesus' religion. They're just doing the work. In your experience, is Habitat for Humanity religious, how overt are the religious and spiritual underpinnings of Habitat? Well, I think underpinnings is actually a great word because I believe that's probably exactly how it works, in most cases, that the folks who have started the Habitat group in their town and they have done the kind of behind the scenes organizational work, probably the people who continue to do the behind the scenes organizational work, the board of directors, the people who are on the committees and raise the money and work with the families, a lot of those people. By no means all, but a lot of those people come to the work from some sort of religious motivation, a desire to give back, a desire to serve their community. It is true, I think, that if you were to go out for a half a day with a group of friends or work colleagues or whatever, or you serve for a week long, fast build project or something, you may not come away with a lot of that experience. Although you may start asking yourself the questions or asking fellow people around, why is there no interest charge or why is some of the money we raise here sent abroad or why does the family have so many hours they have to work? As people start to answer those kinds of questions, it's almost impossible to answer them correctly without returning to some of Habitat's basic tenants, which are certainly Christian-based. But you're right, a person who were to experience Habitat for a short period of time come out and do a service project, which we would certainly value may or may not come away with that kind of impression of us. It's probably accurate to say that Habitat is a Christian-based organization, it's not necessarily overtly Christian, never has been evangelical. One of the things that has always appealed to me about Habitat is that even for our overseas workers, there's never been a particular statement of faith or creed or something that you would have to agree with in order to go and serve. Because of that, because it's a Christian-based organization, but not overtly Christian and not evangelical, we do get lots of people who come from other backgrounds who get involved. I mean, we have Habitat board leaders, the United States, who are Muslim, we've had Habitat organizations that have had Jewish presidents. There are people who serve with Habitat who probably have no faith background at all. That's kind of the line that we've chosen to walk. I'm sure that your experience living in Africa, you must have some wonderful stories to share. And I'm going to spare our listening audience from hearing my stories of when I was in Togo, although there's some really precious moments I experienced there as part of the Peace Corps. What stands out for you? Can you share with us some of the stories of what you experienced living in Kenya, working with Habitat for Humanity? What stories can you tell to your grandchildren? Well, I guess two of my favorites would be, we had worked with a man, I actually still remember his name all these years later. His name was McGulhar Maricio. His family had lived in a particularly poor, run-down, mud and wattle type of hut. We had worked with him, built a Habitat house there in the area. And when houses are completed in Habitat, we usually have what we call a dedication ceremony or a house blessing. And we invite people who are involved in the project to come, and of course the family is there and some representatives from Habitat. And we pray over the house and present the Bible and so on. He had invited his relatives to come to the dedication and we were waiting for them to come and waiting and waiting. And we had gotten several hours past the deadline time. And even for folks in Africa who were not as concerned with punctuality as we are, these people were late. And we actually found out later that they had been wandering around the neighborhood and walked past the new house several times and never considered stopping because they didn't think a relative of theirs could possibly own a house like that. So they figured that couldn't be his house. It was too nice, it was too new and so they kept going looking for the new place. And I kind of like that story. Another thing is I used to actually do a lot of hands-on work in those days and used to buy clothes at the market like everybody else and would often be walking through the neighborhood to get kind of dirty. And after a day a building was moving around bricks and mortar and that kind of stuff. And we actually had a house dedication at one point and I showed up, all cleaned up with my haircut. I actually had a shirt and tie on and I was standing there. And one of the people that I had worked with for several months in getting this house built came up to me and asked me where he could find Mark. Whether Mark had showed up at this event yet and didn't recognize me I guess cleaned up and dressed up. So I played with him for a while and sent him off in various directions until he finally did recognize me. So I was also given a goat at one point which we decided that we were going to keep and have a Christmas dinner. We were going to eventually eat the goat and have a Christmas dinner for all the people who had been working on the Habitat project that year. No one actually trusted each other to keep the goat. So my wife and I actually had to keep the goat out behind where we were living and feed the goat and so on and so forth. And since the goat belonged to the Americans they named the goat George Washington and we eventually did have George for Christmas. Maybe that's a little silly story but it's certainly one I remember. I remember having my own goat named George Washington. We're visiting today with Mark last renewal. He has worked the last 25 years with Habitat for Humanity both abroad and in the U.S. and he brings the wealth of experience working on community while community works together to build habitations. Mark it mentions in the article in the Carroll College Pioneer that you've adopted a few children from abroad. Could you talk about your children and how that came about? Why did you adopt from abroad instead of from the U.S. or why these special children for you? Okay, like a lot of things I mean that came to a personal experience when I finished working for Habitat in Africa. I worked at their headquarters which at that time was in a small town in southern Georgia called America's Georgia. Most of our staff were volunteers. I had a volunteer working with me who was a young lady by the name of Kay Nafsinger. Her name is Kay Hayling but she had been adopted from Korea back in the 1960s. In fact she was one of the first and several plain loads of children that had come to the United States that had been fathered by American service men during the Korean War and as part of the Korean culture we're not really accepted in that society. An organization had a rhythm called Holt International Children's Services. They kind of facilitated this adoption and Kay told me about her story and I wound up meeting her parents, spent several holidays with them. So adopting an internationally and particularly through that one organization became of interest to my wife and I. It's a fascinating organization. I want to spend a million minutes here telling about their whole story. But the Holtz were a farm couple in Iowa who basically gave away everything they had to finance some childcare centers and things for these children in Korea. And spent like the last 20 years of their life arranging for this organization that does these worldwide placements. And there's lots of things I like about Holt that I'm not going to go into. But my children come from western India and from the state Maharashtra which is the state where Mumbai or Bombay is probably the best known city. Although this whole organization manages the place about 85% of Indian children in India, all my daughters were girls and Indian society. And girls are somewhat less attractive as people who adopt I guess and they were older. My one daughter was six, another one was five, another one was three when we adopted them. And so Indian couples that they're going to adopt in India seem to prefer either boys or young girls to adopt. My time and girl gets to be five, six years old and in that society pretty much unadoptable. And so that's how we kind of wound up being paired up with our daughters. We did manage to take a family trip back to India 2006. And we all had a chance to volunteer at the childcare center that had taken care of my daughters when they were younger. And they had a chance to do some classroom sessions and things for some of the children that were living there now. And we continued to always sponsor a child there until they're adopted and we sponsor, I don't remember, eight, nine, ten children over the year or something like that. So it's been a big part of our life and we try to keep our daughters as connected to the Indian community as we can. Here in Springfield, Missouri we have a major university in Missouri state which has almost 18,000 students. So we have a pretty vibrant Indian community here and we stay involved with that too. We have Diwali which is Indian New Year coming up here in just a couple of weeks and my daughters will be attending that. And I'll include Indian dinner and some cultural exhibitions and dancing and those kinds of things. And so we participated as best we can in that community here. It sounds like you got some real gems with the additions to your family from India. Yeah, they're not new anymore. I think my youngest daughter is all the way up to 18 now, but yes, it was certainly a great experience for us. I want to thank you so much for your work, Mark. It's wonderful to hear of someone who came from the same college where I attended. A person I never met while I was there, but who went off and has so many parallel and rich experiences. You've done so much good work for the world and I assume you've got more ahead of you. Thanks so much for joining me today for Spirit and Action. Again, I appreciate the invitation. That was my first guest for today's Spirit and Action, Mark Lasman Yule, who has worked with Habitat for Humanity for 25 years now. I'm Mark Helpsmeat, your host for this Northern Spirit Radio production. Check northernspiritradio.org for links to hear this and other programs. And to drop us a comment, we love to hear from you. My first guest and my next guest and myself have a couple things in common. The thing that brought Mark and Brydie to my attention, first of all, is that they and I are graduates of Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. But we all also have significant connections with Kenya. In a moment, we're going to speak with Brydie Hill, who carries a deep passion for the people of Kenya and is the founder of Project Kenya Charity. She joins us from Jackson, Wisconsin. Brydie, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit and Action. Thank you for having me, Mark. It's wonderful to be able to talk a little bit about what I do in Kenya. You do this work in Kenya, but you're a Wisconsinite like me, aren't you? Definitely. I love Wisconsin. Actually, I left Wisconsin for a few years, but I had to come back. Isn't Africa too warm? Not always, actually. You know, it depends on the season. January, it's very, very hot and humid. But I was there this last July and it was actually pretty cool. Made for beautiful nights and beautiful days. Could you tell me about what motivated you to start going to Kenya? I mean, that's the opposite end of the world. Why would a good girl from Jackson, Wisconsin want to be off in Africa? My Africa experience started in college. I went to Carroll College, which is now Carroll University in Waukesha. They have a program called New Cultural Experience Programs, and it stands for NSAP, is what New Cultural Experience Program. Actually, a gentleman that I was dating at the time signed up for the Kenyan NSAP, and it sounded really unique, and I was like, "Hey, if he's going, I want to go with." And basically, it was a three and a half week immersion into Kenya, included home saves. You did a special project that was oriented towards your major, and at the time I was a social work major. So my special project was working at an orphanage and working with children who were HIV positive in the orphanage. So the first two weeks we did safaris, we did home saves, we did cultural immersion, we saw dances, how they made, you know, basket weaving, things like that. And then the last week was that orphanage experience for me. That's when it really was the most profound experience. Working amongst about 50 children, all who were HIV positive, all who had been abandoned, maybe found in garbage dumps, in toilets, thrown away literally from their family, from society, were meant to die. We're taken in by a Catholic charity organization. For that week, I was their mom. I think I might have been 19, 20 years old. And holding these little kids, singing to these little kids, playing with these little kids who really had nothing left in the world was just the most meaningful and most touching experience. And actually while I was there, that week, one of the children actually passed away. And I was present for that. Holding a little life in your hands and being there to, I guess, guide them on their journey into what I believe in heaven. So it was just life-changing and something I could never forget. And from that moment on, I just knew that Kenya, or helping people in general, was my calling life. Well, like you, Brydie, I'm a graduate of Carroll College, now Carroll University. Only I graduated back in the dark ages, back in 1976. And you finished up in 2000. They didn't have the new cultural experiences program back when I was there. And I think that Carroll was significantly smaller and perhaps less diverse than it is now. What's Carroll like more recently? Is it more diverse? Because in the article that they wrote about you in the Carroll Pioneer, they mentioned about a couple classmate friends of yours from Kenya. And I don't think there are any students from Kenya at Carroll back in my day. Yeah, Carroll, it was really wonderful in the late '90s and early 2000 period. Carroll had really flourished with international students. Thanks to efforts from some great professors like Dr. Bodhatan and Dr. David Black and others, they had recruited and found ways to do exchange programs with all different countries in the world, especially the developing countries. And so Carroll had a connection with some Kenyan universities and was able to bring students from Kenya over to Carroll to finish their degree or to maybe study for a year at Carroll to do their degree. And when I came back from that Kenyan experience, the United States, Wisconsin, Waka Shah, everything just did not feel like home anymore to me. And I've really grabbed on to those international students and understood, I think, a lot more where they were coming from and wanted to hang around with them. I wanted that experience in my life. So I became very close friends with actually two Kenyan students at Carroll. The first was Mark Matunga, who graduated in 1999, and then Alan Katama, who graduated in 2000 with me. Alan Katama's uncle actually came to Carroll on a Fulbright Professor Scholarship and actually taught at Carroll for a year while I was there. So it was wonderful to have that diversity when I was there to study and just really side my passion for international experiences. You mentioned that you came back and that America just didn't seem like home. And I've had that experience, too, when I returned from my three-week visit to Kenya, but especially after my return, after two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in West Africa. So I think I know what you're referring to, but please share with our listeners what changed for you? Why did America feel so foreign and not like home to you after your return? My worldview was changed in the sense of, I guess, I like to live by the slogan, "Live simply so others can simply live." So when I got back, everything that I was noticing, all the things we had, all the different clothes we could wear, the different cars, the homes, just everything that we have, all the possessions, all the money that we spent on things just seemed frivolous. You know, when I would need a new pair of shoes, I would look at those shoes and go, "Okay, I can feed 30 children at that orphanage for $50 or I can buy these shoes for $50." And so everything that I was doing, everything that I was seeing just felt so useless now. It just felt like, why do I need these things? Why do any of us need these things when there's children dying and starving and there's people who need, you know, just a simple piece of bread to survive? And so just looking at my fellow classmates and looking at just the houses and people around me, I was kind of angered at first and frustrated and then started to come to terms with it more and more and decided the way I live is important because maybe people will see that and understand and maybe emulate even some of what I'm doing in my life to show that I'm a world citizen, that I'm part of this humanity. But that took some time to develop. I mean, when you're only in your 19 and 20s, you know, you're still exploring and finding who you are. And over, I think the last 10 years of my life, I've really come to terms with accepting that Americans are wonderful people that we do have a lot and we do embrace that. But also understanding that I live very simply and I want my kids to, you know, be able to reflect to their friends, those same kinds of values and just keep embracing the world as my community. So how is it that you live simply? You mentioned that you have children and that can often complicate the pursuit of simplicity because though I can make choices for myself easily enough, my child still has to deal with peer pressure and the like and probably doesn't have the moral certitude and the strength that I have. I did deal with the same issue with my own son, but not only was he an agreeable kid, but we have strong support for this kind of alternative living from the Quaker meeting we're part of. In fact, our Quaker meeting was handing out the lives simply that others may simply live bumper sticker. So the simple lifestyle wasn't all that hard on us. How do you live simply and how do you deal with it, especially with your kids? What my husband and I try to do is, well, for one thing is we don't own our own home. We do rent. We have a small upper that we do rent. Nothing state of the art, you know, it's an older house. And then what we try to do is we try to live very conservatively with our food. We do a lot of the sustainable living, composting. We do water conservation as well. So we actually bathe like they would in Kenya. We have a tub, a bathtub, but then inside of our bathtub we have, I guess, like a big basin. And we do baths with the basin or instead of running the shower run, we fill the basin with hot water and then we use that amount of water. So everyone is monitored. I guess we keep track of how much water we use, things like that. Because we know that right now in Kenya there's a drought and they have no water. Even though we're conserving water for maybe a United States consumption, the idea if we do our part, you know, it'll help and it'll spread around the world. I buy a lot of our clothes stuck in hand. I would say probably 80% of my clothes for both myself, my husband, and the kids will buy from Saint Vincent de Paul's stores, Goodwill, because there's so much waste in the world for just clothing in general. Other things that we do is we try to have Christmas and other events like birthdays will sometimes designate a charity or an organization for those gifts instead of receiving more toys or a toy plus a donation, something like that. Maybe it's through Heifer Project. The kids can pick an animal that they want to adapt, you know, in response or for the year, things like that to kind of show that there's that interconnectedness and just constantly talking about the world and society. And, you know, I tell the kids my stories about children and about families that I meet and what their needs are. So I think my children then go and tell other students and definitely share at the school things that mom does or what it's career day. You know, how do you dress up like a mission worker? Or, you know, or how do you dress up like a humanitarian aid worker? And so I wrap my daughter up in African cloth and she goes and she tries to explain what her mommy does and I think that says a lot too. Your husband is evidently on board with this simplicity lifestyle which is essential if it's going to be carried out well. But how do you avoid feeling like a simplicity outcast? There's usually not a lot of societal support in the U.S. for it. More often you'll get community scorn for having the second-hand clothes, etc. How do you deal with that issue? Is there a community of support there for you? I think right now because my kids are younger and they're six and seven, it's probably a lot easier right now to get away with. Second-hand clothes, kids aren't as focused yet on how you look in little boys, my son who's seven, most of them go to school with their needs ripped out of their pants because they're kind of rough on the playground. So luckily I haven't had too much criticism. Plus a lot of the friends or the people that know me, like my church family and our neighbors, they know what I do. And they're actually kind of a part of it because they're always hearing my stories and they're getting emails from me. So they really embrace my life and they're very supportive of that which is wonderful. They may not emulate it or follow those same, I guess, simple living tools, but they respect it and they definitely do not harass or tease our family about any of it. And I think too growing up in a church family and I've been at the same church most in my whole life, my dad's a minister, so I'm very close to a lot of the people in the church. They see that connection and they see that deep devotion from me and from our family and how we give our offerings. You know, most of our income probably goes toward Kenya or charity and they see that and I think they respect it on one level but then they're also probably wondering how we do it. I'll ask you shortly, Brydie, to share more stories about your experience with Kenya. But first, I have a couple more questions about you personally. You went to Carroll College, now Carroll University, and that means you went to a pricey, private college, a lot more expensive than one of the state universities. Even though Carroll seemed to stretch better than some other private schools in terms of making it self-affordable to less affluent students through scholarships and other aid, even so, it carries a big price tag and there's a certain element of the upper crust at a private college. When you got back from Kenya, was it all too shiny and upscale for you? Did you feel like you had a community of support for your new economic and cultural outlook back at Carroll? I would have to say the thing that bothered me more about Carroll were probably fellow students who came from families or from a life where they didn't have that eye-opening experience or cared not to see that eye-opening experience. The faculty were very supportive and the idea that education is crucial and so important. I didn't mind paying a lot for the quality of the education I was receiving. Private schools are very expensive and sometimes the price does bother me, but at the same time, the education and the quality of the education I was receiving was very much worth it because without that education I knew I couldn't be going much farther and I wouldn't be able to do the things that I'm doing now. Part of it was I accepted the educational expense, but I didn't like some of the environment and that's why I really latched on to international students versus some of the other students that go to Carroll that don't need the scholarships or who come from backgrounds that just aren't as willing to see how the world really is, who are just naive, unfortunately, and Carroll tried to of course open their eyes, but not everyone is going to embrace that experience, really look for it. What percentage of the Carroll student body participates in things like the new cultural experience program or has the equivalent experience to kind of open up their eyes? When I was there, it was pretty popular. I think the faculty that were driving the program were just wonderful and I think that had a lot to do with it. The Kenya trip I went on had about 30 of us and then there were other trips that were going to believe. I think Nepal was a trip that came right after my Tanzania was included. Nowadays, I worked at Carroll up until this last year full time in their student affairs office. The NSF programs are much more toward the developed world. So Australia, New Zealand, Germany, England, France, I think almost all the programs are in developed nations. One for safety and then secondly, I think the faculty that Carroll has right now are more focused on those regions, have more of an academic study or purpose in those countries. Overall, there's so many experiences and kids are traveling at such younger ages nowadays too, that it's very different even from where I was 10 years ago. And a lot of kids have their passports by seven or eight and are on cruise ships with their moms and dads or in Costa Rica are just exploring the world at younger ages. And so sometimes I think those international programs at universities are changing to meet that demand. Another thing that struck me about you, Brydie, is that you switched from being a social work major to being a political science major after the trip to Kenya. What was that about? I mean in some ways it might seem more logical to get even more into social work because of that trip. I loved social work in the sense that I really like to help people. I like to hand hold your stories, experience those things. But at the same time, my hope was to make some changes in the world. And I saw political science and international relations as a way to maybe do that. More politically being a lobbyist. At the time I really found myself stepping into the Washington DC arena and doing lobbying or working for a specific organization to pursuing government policy changes reform. In the 2000 elections but in the fall of '99 I actually worked for Vice President Gore's campaign to get him elected as president because I felt that there was a very strong connection for me in that time for the environment. And a lot of the things that I felt Vice President Gore was running on in his campaign felt very much in line. And I really loved that political arena and I really loved working on that campaign. And it felt very comfortable for me. So I knew at that time that my major of political science and international relations was really what I wanted. And then once I graduated, I decided to choose family over a career right away. And I found the right person for me and got married. And so I wanted to devote my time and attention to my kids and to my husband. And so I took that break from the political arena. Now that I'm back into work, I just felt very called to kind of a mix of social work and international relations. So kind of put them together now. Well tell me, Brydie, about Project Kenya Charity. I think you're a founder, kind of a spearhead for it. What is it about? What do you do and where do you do it? Well Project Kenya Charity is something that kind of just developed from me but with support from my church actually originally. Back in 2000 and 6 I want to say Kenya was experiencing a drought like it is today now. I was friends with people in Kenya and one of my friends Mark Matunga and I had kept in touch since we graduated from Carol together. And he just, he explained to me how bad the situation was for his family, for his village. And said, "You know, you always talk about wanting to come back. Why don't you do something?" And I said, "Okay, you're right. I should." So I just started talking about it with people in my church and in my community. And they said, "Well, we'll go with you. Let's do something." And soon enough kind of an organization was born. And I led my first mission trip then in January of 2007 to Malwita Village in Kenya, which is where my friend Mark Matunga was born and raised from. We focused on community development and we helped them create a community garden for feeding and for nourishing the people during drought times. And we taught them how to compost. We bought a water pump that would pump water without electricity from the lake that was surrounding them. Lake Victoria to their garden, so it would be irrigated. We did medical work because we had a nurse along with us who provided medical care alongside some of the physicians that they already had on the island. We did a goat adoption program, similar to what Heifer Project does. We did try to, you know, get Heifer involved. But, you know, it's very difficult to get a large organization to come to your organization. So we adopted goats to widows of the community who had lost their husband or their spouse due to disease, usually from HIV. They received a pregnant female goat and then their offspring would go and be passed on to other people in the community. And then we had some teachers who taught in the school and shared their skills with these teachers. And we just had such a wonderful time. All the people on my trip just loved it, that when we came back to the United States and started sharing our stories with our community, more and more people said, "How can we get involved from then?" We just kept building it and building it. And I've been going on trips ever since and finding more projects in communities. They approach us with proposals now and ask for our support and our laws and our attention. And, sure enough, we have a board of directors and, you know, a budget. And we just kind of operate day-to-day now hoping to receive donations and help people. And your website is project-canya.org. And, of course, folks, can always find a link to that from my site, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. And if folks visit the site, can they maybe go on the next trip, help out with that kind of work? Definitely. I have had volunteers from Waukesha, from Jackson. I have a volunteer up at Neelville, Wisconsin, up near you. I've had volunteers as far as Colorado, actually. And I have a couple who's originally from California, but moved to Wisconsin recently, who is living there for a year through project-canya. So we've had a lot of people throughout the U.S. now take part in it. We actually even will, if there's a group of, you know, six or more that want me to take them on a trip, you know, I'm more than willing to do it. And it doesn't have to be in an area that we have a current project. My last trip in July of 2009 was with Bethesda Elementary School in Waukesha School District. They kind of contracted with me and project-canya to take them to see their sister's school in Kenya. And I had never been to that part of Kenya before. It was a new experience, but I put the trip together, and it was just wonderful and amazing. And we did mission work alongside of the educational experience. It was probably my favorite trip so far of all of them. It was just a wonderful experience this last July. I don't suppose you loaded them all up in a Matatu, cramming them in like real canyons where people are stacked on top of each other. We actually did. I tried to keep my trip very real. We tried to use all local-made products and support and vehicles. You know, whatever we can do to help their economy and their local artisans or farmers, we do. And so we actually did use Matatu several days rather than renting big expensive safari vehicles as they call them. Because it really adds to the experience. What is it like to really be a Kenyan on an average day? What do these Kenyan women or children or men go through? You know, when you're crammed in there with 20 people and how insecure you can feel and how odd it feels, I think it's part of the trip so that you can understand what it is to be a Kenyan every day. So have you seen people or villages actually improve? Do you have concrete feedback that this has made the difference? We do. We actually have several women. This is one of the stories that I really, I guess, am proud of and am happy to share. We do HIV/AIDS education and that education is in the schools but also then we've paid for guest speakers so they can speak in Swahili or in their native tongue to talk to adults about HIV/AIDS and sexuality in their communities. And we've had two women in particular that have started anti-retroviral drugs medication to treat. The first step was getting them tested, which they did with our help. These two women were both positive. And they are now on medication to help their bodies and their immune systems fight the HIV virus. Their spouses had already died from HIV-related illnesses. So it's really important because they're a single parent now and their young children depend on them. And so seeing them on medication, seeing them healthy again, seeing them putting on weight has been a really wonderful success for us. Another story that I love is we did an electrical trip. We had a gentleman named Tim Jan who is co-owner of Hurt Electric donate and volunteer his time as an electrician to go to Kenya and teach teenage boys how to install electricity into their school. So while Tim was there in our mission group, we did about three of the school classrooms. And each room was done with another set of teenage boys, you know, 18, 19, 17 years of age. And he taught them the basic skills of electricity, how to pull wire, how to wire a circuit, things like that. And in five days, they had done almost the whole school. And now as electricity gets brought to that island more and more, they can actually wire their own houses. They can work alongside actual electricians in Kenya and learn that trade and that skill and become something. So that was also another really important project that we did. Of course, when you're doing that, you're helping some individuals, you see the improvement for them. But there's so many other people dying of AIDS, people who are suffering in the most objective poverty. How do you maintain hopefulness and eagerness in face of such overwhelming odds? I'll be honest, it's very hard. There's been moments where I broke down and just said, "I don't know what else I can do." My spirits drop just because you see so much need and so much pain at times. But it's actually from the people in Kenya themselves that I receive my hope and my revival in my spirit. They have so little and they go through so much and they have so many scars, literally on their bodies, physically and emotionally, that when they share that with you, you wonder, "Well, how are they going on? How is it that this person just found the strength to tell me this story?" And that kind of revives me and says, "Okay, it's worth it." We can't reach every single person and we can't make them all feel better. But those few that we can, that's just worth it enough to know that one human being has a little bit of a better quality of life, can feel a part of humanity and knows that someone is praying and hoping and supporting them. It just makes it all worthwhile. And of course, you're doing this as community. You said that when you go, you've gone with the school, you've gone with your church group. And I get the sense that maybe this is broader than just the UCC, the United Church of Christ that you attend. When you say that you go as a mission trip, a lot of people think, "Mission, you're going to recruit people to be UCC members." And maybe that does happen, I don't know. Is that the purpose? Is that what this is about? Is that what a church mission group is about from the UCC where you attend? Not at all. Actually, the United Church of Christ, we're not an international denomination. We have a global ministries department, but the United Church of Christ is a denomination. It doesn't go out and recruit members internationally. It started out of my church, but now really, it isn't necessarily connected 100% with the church. It's affiliated with my church, but it's really grown into much more. I would say the last three trips of mine, I've only had one other member from my church on them. The rest are actually community members from Catholic, Baptist, non-believers, college students. So it's a really diverse group of people that go on my trips. When we're there, sometimes we do Bible studies or those who are comfortable wanting to share their face. They are more than welcome to. I want to say 75% probably of Kenya is Christian. So there's already a foundation for religion to be discussed and talked about and shared. And a lot of times it's the Kenyans that will approach Americans and say, "Oh, where do you go to church? What is your church like?" Because religion, especially Christianity, is a big part of the Kenyan culture. So being that some of us on those trips are Christian or are religious, it does give us that opportunity to share, but we're not there to recruit members to be Christian. We're not there to recruit them for the United Church of Christ. We're really just there to share our belief that we are all part of humanity, that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ or in the world, and that we're called to help one another. And we all have certain rights and a right to quality life, right to health care, right to education. And that's really what we try to do. The website is project-canya.org. We're speaking with Brydie Hill, and I'm sure that very soon you'll be back in Kenya. People should check the website and they can help donate. They can also help by going over. Certainly one of the most important things we can do is to enlighten ourselves, get out of the narrow world that we are enclosed in because the United States is so primary in the world. Thank you so much, Brydie, for visiting with me. I know you have to run off now. Please do say hello to Professor David Bloch. He was a friend and acquaintance, and particularly his wife, Teresa, was a friend of mine back when I was in Carroll. Say hello to them for me. Greet Carroll College, Carroll University for me, and keep up the wonderful work. Thank you so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you so much, Mark. Have a great day. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World", performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.