Growing Faith

When I first heard David U’s story, I was emotionally disarmed.  David, a church leader in Ethiopia, was attacked by a group of men brandishing guns and machetes one fateful morning in his home community.  Miraculously, David survived this violent attack and lives on to share his awe inspiring testimony of his love for Jesus Christ and the power of faith.  Although the dangers David faces are numerous and close-to-home, he continues to fight for his beliefs and to not be intimidated by those who choose to persecute him.  As David so courageously asserts, “The Lord has given me another chance to serve Him. The bullets didn’t get me. I have seen the darkest night, bullets flying past me. There were more than 30 attackers. It is by the prayers and support of other believers we survived so far. I can only say God wants me to continue His work here. I have some unfinished business here.”  In my work with Open Doors, a charity group who helps persecuted Christians around the world, I have heard a number of other, similarly inspiring testimonies of Christians who face horrific persecution in religiously suppressed countries.  These brave people often live in environments of dire poverty with dangerously rampant crime rates and a complete lack of religious freedom.  In spite of the hellacious conditions they have to endure, these people clutch firmly onto their faith and rise above the darkness that surrounds them.  What they all have in common is not just faith; that is an essential component of their plight, but what they also share is something of equal importance: Hope.  In the words of Orison Swett Marden, “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.”

When I first started looking into which course I wanted to take for my Senior Capstone at PSU, I was unsure exactly what I wanted to do.  I found myself drawn into a long episode of self-questioning: What am I passionate about?  What kind of project can I do that best utilizes the skills that I have acquired in my college career?   What Capstone can I take that can realistically be completed in a term?  Finally and perhaps, most importantly: Is there a project I can do that has relevance to my Christian faith?  All of these questions were dancing through my mind when I began sifting through the list of available Capstone courses that appeared on the fall term schedule of classes for PSU.  As I was scanning through the list, one course title jumped right off the page at me; it was called Mobilizing Hope.  I was a bit surprised to see a course with that kind of name because I really wasn’t expecting to find anything faith-related in the schedule of classes at a school like PSU (with all due respect).  But the word hope always makes me think of faith and the power of belief; not just because the name of the church I attend is called Hope Community Church, although I consider that to be a rather happy coincidence.  When I looked further into the details of the course, I was very pleased to see that it was a perfect fit for me and for my goal of basing my Capstone project around both utilizing and growing in my faith.  It was with all of these things in mind that I chose to participate in a letter writing campaign with the Christian charity group Open Doors.

When I first began my project I was a little unsure where to start.  I had been given a list of people to write letters to by Open Doors, but I knew that I would need to do a lot of research before delving into my letter writing.  I really didn’t want to commit the blunder of commenting on situations in places in the world that are very foreign to me without fully understanding the social, political and spiritual climates of the countries where my letters would ultimately be sent.  So, off I went, researching places like Ethiopia and Kenya, trying to understand what it is like to live in those parts of the world and what words of encouragement could I offer to the people living there.  When the time came to start drafting my letters, I found it to be less intimidating than I had initially thought.  Although I struggled at first to find the right words, I quickly discovered that all I really needed to do was speak from the heart.  From then on, the words came much quicker and I feel that I was able to express my words of encouragement in the right way.  The message I was relaying was simple, but nonetheless important: To keep trusting God no matter what life throws at you.  What I discovered in the process of writing these letters was that the things I wrote didn’t just have the effect of helping the intended audience, they also had a profound effect on me at a time in my life when I have faced a number of personal crisis’s and have had my faith tested. 

A major lesson taught in Mobilizing Hope was that there is a great benefit and value in dealing with those that live in the margins.  Through the essays and articles that I bared witness to throughout this term as well as in my experiences with Open Doors, I have seen how true this is.  The benefits are numerous, but for me personally, the most profound realization I came to after engaging with those in the margins is how truly lucky I am to have the luxuries and freedoms that I am afforded in my life and also, with the right kind of mindset, I have the power to make the world a better place, even if just in a small way.  In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “There remains an experience of incomparable value.  We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” 

I went into the process of choosing a Senior Capstone with only the slight hope of finding something that would relate to my faith, let alone enhance it.  In the end, I found something that caused my faith to be challenged and grow on a number of levels and gave me a much fuller understanding of the impact that faith, hope and the fight for social justice have on the world.  I learned that these three things are closely intertwined and really can’t exist without each other.  Therefore, I now understand that I have a great responsibility and opportunity to help make the world a better place through my faith and newly enlightened philosophy that hope is the driving force to all positive change in this world.  It is a light that God shines down into our darkness that gives us the strength to fight for what matters; for what is true, for what is good, for what is fair and for what is right.    

--Daniel Pribyl