By Jed Anderson, Castlegar News Reporter
(Reprinted from the Castlegar News, Thursday, April 8, 2010, page 14.)
A 12-year-old girl in Robson is planning to travel to Malawi this summer to help children who have been orphaned due to AIDS. Malawi is a third-world country in sub-Saharan Africa.
Celia Friesen has lived in Trail and Castlegar.
“Since I was five years old, I have wanted to help orphans. I love babies and children and really want to help,” said Friesen.
“Two years ago my big brother went on a mission trip to Greece. They worked with handicapped kids, cleaned up trash along the highways and other work. I was so excited for him and wanted to go too,” she explained.
“This year my mom and dad said I could go. There is an international team going to Malawi to help kids whose parents died from AIDS. This is a really big problem in Africa.”
“My team will be spending time with the orphans and planting fruit trees to help them have a good, sustainable food source,” said Friesen. “I’ll fly from Spokane to Florida for two weeks of training and team-building, and then we’ll work in Malawi for four weeks.”
“I’ll be raising money from now until May 14. I leave on June 30 and return August 7.”
Friesen’s mother, Bonne, is comfortable with her daughter going so far away to help the poor. She is often asked how she can let her daughter go to Africa at such a young age.
“That’s the first thing people say, but that’s always people who don’t know Celia,” said Bonne Friesen.
Celia will be going to Malawi with Teen Missions, an interdenominational evangelical mission organization that is not associated with any particular church or denomination. The Teen Missions staff, leaders and team members come from a wide range of evangelical denominations and help with building and outreach projects in poor regions of the world.
“Obviously, it’s not something any parent does lightly,” said Bonne. “But it’s an organization I went with myself as a teen and that my older son went with when he was 13. So this is a group – they actually take kids as young as 10 to other countries. The group has been in existence almost 40 years now, so they really know what they’re doing. They have bases all over the place. It’s not like they are going and being dumped somewhere. In Malawi they will have a home base there that’s run by people who are a part of this organization.”
She explained that Malawi is not a violent country.
“Malawi is a very stable country, comparatively speaking, although their population is seriously depleted by AIDS,” Bonne said.
“She’s been wanting to go for many years already. But as the world continues to be more and more difficult to travel in, it’s really important to us that she sees another culture, that she sees how people other than North Americans live. The majority of the world doesn’t live like we live here.”
Bonne said it is important for teenagers to experience other ways of life.
“Especially going into the teen years, I’ve just found that’s so major, to counteract materialism and the entitlement mindset and things like this,” she explained.
Teen Missions exists as much to serve the young North Americans who go overseas as it does to help the needy.
“It’s a double-edged sword. Their actual motto is ‘We’re not just building buildings, we’re building teens,’” said Bonne.
“They take the work very seriously. The children are trained very thoroughly before they go. They have a place in Florida where they go for a while to train. It’s amazing what teenagers and younger actually can accomplish if they’re taught and they’re focused and well-supervised. They take the work aspect of it very seriously,” she said.
“They take the (stance) that we’re here to help the people in another land, but often the bigger impact is made on the North American child. So it’s a win-win situation.”
For more information about Celia’s trip, visit celiafriesen.com/malawi2010.
