Transcript

Mr. Kevin Allen: Welcome to this edition of The Illumined Heart. Today we’ll be talking about a parish initiative of a California Greek Orthodox Church which has affected and connected Orthodox faithful a world and a half apart. It’s a story about the building of a beautiful Orthodox church building as well as a home for their priest and a freshwater well in Tanzania, tropical Africa, by an outreach-oriented parish here at home. And it’s about the impact this has had on both, the villagers of Kobunshwi, Tanzania, a poor rural village, and the parish that built it, again, St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine, California. I’m pleased to have with me in studio today Fr. Steven Tsichlis, the senior pastor of St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church, who oversaw the project; Fr. Steve is also the president of the Archdiocesan Presbyters’ Council of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese; and Alex Gorbenko. Alex is both a member of St. Paul’s and the chairman of the missions committee, and he’s been an important part of the mission and fundraising team for this project. So, welcome, Fr. Steve and Alex, to The Illumined Heart on Ancient Faith Radio.

Fr. Steven Tsichlis: Kevin, thank you. It’s good to be here.

Mr. Alex Gorbenko: Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Very pleased to be here.

Mr. Allen: Fr. Steve, I’ll begin with you for some context, because this story gets us into a lot of interesting areas. One of the things that I discovered is that Orthodox Christianity in Africa did not actually come through the ways one things—through slave traders or missionaries who came with the colonial rulers. It actually developed somewhat indigenously, if you will, by Africans in Africa. Can you tell us a bit about the history of Orthodox Christianity coming to Africa, Father?

Fr. Steven: Well, I think I can talk a little bit about that. Actually, in Uganda, for example, which is where Archbishop Jeronymos is originally from, there was a man named Reuben Spartas, who actually was trying to seek out what the original Christian church would be, and his alternatives at the time were Anglicanism and Lutheranism. And he actually did research and sort of discovered that there is this thing called the Orthodox Church. At first he didn’t really know, though, where to find it, and ultimately, then, out of this searching, he came into contact with some Greek people who ultimately put him in contact with the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Then, out of that emerged an indigenous church, from the people themselves seeking the mother Church, seeking the original Church.

In Tanzania, there was a priest whose name was Fr. Sosthenes Kiyonga. He was actually Lutheran, and again looking for something more original. There had to be something before this. He discovered, again, pretty much on his own, the Orthodox Church, and ultimately, again, was led into contact, through Greek immigration, through Greek immigrants in the area, was led into contact with the Patriarchate of Alexandria, and ultimately was trained and ordained as a priest.

And then these men begin doing missionary work. There’s an interesting story to tell about Fr. Sosthenes, because in 1974, he came to a village called Konyabuguru, which is near Bakoba in Tanzania, and he was there to kind of just teach the Orthodox faith, just going from village to village and place to place. And the people there had to walk eight kilometers to fetch water. Fr. Sosthenes prayed, and ultimately a spring sort of just appeared in the midst of the village. It’s not dried up since then. And out of that event, pagans, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Muslims began to join the Orthodox Church. That’s the kind of thing you saw in ancient times, in Ireland, for example, with Celtic missionaries. It’s really very interesting; a lot of parallels.

Mr. Allen: So Orthodoxy, it’s fair to say, is seen as somewhat indigenous to Africa as opposed to being some sort of a colonial export?

Fr. Steven: Absolutely. It is seen as something that the indigenous peoples themselves have sought out and now put themselves in communion with and now are developing themselves.

Mr. Allen: I would think this history, obviously, benefits Orthodox mission work.

Fr. Steven: It does, because we’re not associated with colonialism. We’re not associated with anything other than actually freedom.

Mr. Allen: We sided with the freedom fighters, if you will, for their independence from colonialism, isn’t that the case? The Orthodox Church.

Fr. Steven: That’s absolutely the case.

Mr. Allen: And it was banned at certain times by the rulers, Orthodox Christianity.

Fr. Steven: It was, absolutely.

Mr. Allen: Nice to be on the right side of things, isn’t it?

Fr. Steven: For a change. [Laughter]

Mr. Allen: Is Orthodox Christianity, Fr. Steven Tsichlis, growing in Africa, and then specifically in Tanzania? And how would you characterize the growth?

Fr. Steven: Actually, I would say it’s growing by leaps and bounds. I think there are 60 countries in Africa right now. In 1983 there were only about twelve countries that had any kind of presence of Orthodox Christianity there. Now, 2008-9, 40 countries in Africa have an Orthodox Christian presence. In Tanzania, about 35% of the population is Muslim, 35% is Christian, and then the remaining 30% are different kinds of indigenous religions, but Orthodoxy is growing there. In Tanzania, there are more than 200,000 Orthodox Christians at this point.

Mr. Allen: Really!?

Fr. Steven: Yes, and there are 166 communities, 85 churches that are kind of what we in America would think of as churches; in other words, they’re concrete buildings. But there are 166 communities, 85 churches: those other communities worship sometimes just simply under a tree or, when there are enough people gathered, they begin to just put some tree limbs together and fix some mud there, and they kind of have a church out in the middle of nowhere.

Mr. Allen: Do you know, has Tanzania had the unfortunate conflicts, Father, that other parts of Africa have had between Islam and Christianity?

Fr. Steven: Fortunately, they’ve not, and in fact in our particular case, the land that we built, that we provided the money for building this church on, was actually donated by the chief of the village and the village elders, who are themselves Muslims. A lot of that has to do with what I think is the very charismatic personality of Archbishop Jeronymos of Tanzania, of Mwanza, and the fact that he approaches things in a very practical and down-to-earth way. He says: Clean water is not a Christian problem or a Muslim problem; it’s a human problem. Bringing in medical care is not a Muslim problem or a Christian problem; it’s a human problem. So he’s able to enlist aid from folks here in the States like us to go in and to help develop these poor rural villages. And it’s a powerful witness to Christianity, very powerful witness. So this village chief, actually he took the bishop and [me] around after we went there after our first year, and was so impressed by what the bishop was trying to do that he actually donated more land to do this. So perhaps at some point there we could actually build a school or perhaps a convent or something else.

Mr. Allen: What gave you the idea, Fr. Steven Tsichlis, and the specific context or the opportunity to begin the ministry of building a church and a priest’s home and a water well and possibly, as you say, more, in Tanzania particularly?

Fr. Steven: Well, St. Paul’s is very blessed in a lot of ways, but one of the ways in which it’s blessed is that Fr. Martin Ritsi, who is the director of the OCMC, the Orthodox Christian Mission Center in Florida, he’s a son of this parish. He grew up here, and in fact was sent to seminary from St. Paul’s and actually came back to St. Paul’s and served as the assistant priest at St. Paul’s for about nine months. At that point, he just couldn’t stay in a parish any more and he had to go overseas and do missionary work. He actually did start out doing missionary work in Africa. So St. Paul’s has had a sort of long history with him and therefore with the mission center.

On our 25th anniversary as a parish, one of the things that I talked about was that we need to build a church in Africa, to connect our parish more strongly with the work that’s being done by the Orthodox Christian Mission Center. So that’s what we did! And I met with Fr. Martin. We had sent a couple over to Albania to serve as missionaries two years prior to this. We met with Fr. Martin and this couple, and actually Carolyn Karakos was there, another person in our parish. And he recommended that it should be with Archbishop Jeronymos that we work with, and that we should build a church in Tanzania. He felt that that was the right place to go to. So from that, that’s how we established our connection, through Fr. Martin and the mission center.

Mr. Allen: Maybe I’m getting a little too much in the weeds, and maybe, Alex, you want to respond to this or not. Did funds go through the OCMC, or at some point did they go directly to Africa? You know, you hear these stories about money never getting to the mission field and so on. I’m curious how that worked.

Fr. Steven: Well, we sent most of the money, for example, to build the church and the priest’s home; those funds were sent through the mission center. Part of that just simply is about accountability. The mission center is a wonderful, I guess I’d say, funnel, to get money into the mission field. There really isn’t a problem with the money not getting there if you get it to the mission center.

Mr. Allen: A practical question: Do they take a cut from it before they send it?

Fr. Steven: I think there’s, like, a five percent sort of administrative cut, I guess I’d say, but actually, to be quite frank, it’s something that’s necessary, because Fr. Martin Ritsi, he has so much on-the-ground experience and has been all over the world wherever missions are active. I mean, he knows the score in ways that a local parish or a local parish priest like myself will not. So it’s really important to work with them and through them.

Mr. Allen: How many Orthodox faithful are there in Kobunshwi?

Fr. Steven: About 500 people.

Mr. Allen: Really?

Fr. Steven: Yeah. The village itself is about 2500 people, which actually, for Tanzania, that’s not really a village; that’s like a town. But there about 500 Orthodox there.

Mr. Allen: Okay, so it’s a good number of faithful!

Fr. Steven: It’s a good number of faithful.

Mr. Allen: Alex, question for you. How did you respond to the idea of coming up with a substantial and a significant amount of time and money, obviously, for a project that was all the way around the world, not in your own backyard, not directly affecting your parish and parishioners.

Mr. Gorbenko: Well, when I first heard about it, we were sitting in church, and my wife looked at me right away and said, “We should even consider going and being part of this mission.” I first thought, “Wow. An Orthodox church going abroad like this.” I thought it was quite amazing. My wife and I decided to go and be a part of it. And in the meantime, my wife got pregnant and she couldn’t make the journey. I thought, “Oh goodness! I’m not going to be able to go now either.” And my wife said, “No, you are going. This is going to be a great experience for you.”

My wife had been to Africa a few times in the past, neither time on a mission, but she knew how life was there. So I was very blessed to make this trip. It was an eye-opener for me, and it warmed my heart like I never could have imagined.

Mr. Allen: Tell us!

Mr. Gorbenko: From this wonderful experience, I became the chairperson of the committee at St. Paul’s for a missions team, and I have been working diligently to try to expand on our efforts. We got Santa Barbara Church, up in Santa Barbara, California; they are building a church there now from our efforts.

Mr. Allen: Oh, really? In Kobunshwi, or another town or village?

Mr. Gorbenko: Another village, called Kazinga, which we attended a baptism and a wedding there; we saw over a hundred people be baptized there, and we took photographs of it and partake in all these different functions. When we came back home, we shared it with Santa Barbara and told them that this was the actual land where they were going to build their church. It was just a beautiful piece of land that, again, was donated to them and was perched up on top of a hill that was surrounded by three sides of a lake. Our mission efforts continue every single day.

We just had a hunger strike at our church that was part of our mission team also.

Mr. Allen: I heard about it. How did that tie in?

Mr. Gorbenko: That tied in that we actually interviewed 50 children in Tanzania, got their bios, took their pictures, and when we came back here to the States, we actually created these nice little… They look like passports; they’re actually called “Passports of Tanzania,” and you open them up and it’s their picture, their age, and their bio. These were learning tools for the children that were in the hunger strike this past weekend. The children had to kind of emulate the children in Africa and live their lives and kind of know what they don’t have and what they do for their daily chores: if they didn’t eat breakfast, if all they did was collected firewood and water all day.

So we tried to present this to the children and have them live these lives. Did the children eat the whole weekend? Well, for 30 hours they did fast from eating food. They did have water and they had vitamin water. Tried to keep them hydrated; it was very important.

Mr. Allen: Really?

Mr. Gorbenko: But we had educational portions throughout the day, and every single portion kind of emulated the life of the children there. It was amazing, every educational part of it. When we look at that we’re raising money here for the children in Africa, the educational part here is so amazing, because these are going to be the missionaries of the next decade. Fr. Steve kind of elbowed me when we were sitting there in some down time this past weekend, and he pointed around the room and said, “Alex, those are our future missionaries.” It is absolutely true.

I think that the Orthodox Church in this country needs to change and needs to move forward, because if St. Paul’s can do it, every church can do it. Is St. Paul’s kind of a model for this right now? Yes, they are, but I think every church can, to some degree, have a good impact.

Mr. Allen: And that’s one of the reasons we’re doing this program. I agree completely. I’m wondering… I’m assuming there are some people who had at least questions about: Why are we spending money that goes to foreign countries? We have needs here. How did you overcome those or how did you tend to deal with those? Not getting into personal issues or personal people, but…?

Mr. Gorbenko:  Absolutely. What’s interesting is that our country, the United States of America, we’re all blessed. For us to get a drink of water, my goodness—if we don’t have water, we can just walk to the park and there’s drinking fountains that have clean drinking water all over this wonderful country of ours. When you see people there after a downpour collecting water, because they don’t have any water, even in their proximity. They go through drought periods there, too, and the water they do have is full of parasites, and they get diseases. 50% of their disease there is from water-borne diseases.

Mr. Allen: Oh, really?

Mr. Gorbenko: Yes, it is. If we can just get them clean drinking water, we can move forward.

Mr. Allen: So the point I guess you’re making is that those who might have objected, you overcame those objections by talking about the positive good that could be done with so little for us as Americans.

Mr. Gorbenko: Yes. You know, we try to reflect on how we can help these people that don’t have anything, and the thing is that we help people here. We help people in our own towns. We are a very big part with kids and cancer. We drop down right into Mexico and do St. Innocent’s, Project Mexico. We do a lot of things around everything that touches us, but going to Tanzania and going to a third-world country was something very special because we really notice the impact that we’re making.

Mr. Allen: That’s so amazing. I saw these photographs. Father, where can people look at the photographs of this incredibly beautiful parish that you built there, church building that you built there?

Fr. Steven: Well, actually, they could go to St. Paul’s website. It’s just www.stpaulsirvine.org or if they want to look up more about the whole Church in Tanzania, we’ve developed a whole website for the Church in Tanzania, and that’s just www.orthodoxytz.com.

Mr. Allen: I encourage people to look at this building. It just brought tears to my eyes, looking at this. First of all, it’s a beautiful building. I’d love to have our church here in Orange County be as beautiful as that, but it would probably cost a zillion dollars versus—by the way, how much did it cost to build that beautiful building?

Fr. Steven: The church building cost $40,000.

Mr. Allen: $40,000.

Fr. Steven: Absolutely. And of course we went there, and we laid a brick or two in, but you hire indigenous people, and the bishop insists that the Orthodox members of the village themselves be involved in the construction. So $40,000; $17,000 for constructing the priest’s home, and there’s a priest now who’s just been assigned, Fr. Chrysostomos. He’s married; he has three children. And we’ve paid his salary now for a year, and we’ll continue to do that in the future. We got icons for this church, hand-painted in Greece, but we had them painted in Swahili. They’re beautiful, but those cost, again about $7,000. And then money for the well was $5,000. And we took 200 Bibles with us to give out at the consecration of the church, and that cost $2,000.

Mr. Allen: So for under $75,000—let me get this straight—you were able to build a well, build a priest’s home, and build this beautiful church building with icons. Wow.

Fr. Steven: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Allen: Is that typical for what it would cost to do that?

Fr. Steven: It is. It absolutely is.

Mr. Allen: Alex, how did the fundraising effort work? Did you have certain events for that purpose, or did you just pass the proverbial hat around, or what did you do?

Mr. Gorbenko: It was quite a few different things. We had some people that were from outside the church that were very generous in making some donations. We had fundraisers within the church, and then we did pass the hat around. So with all these efforts tied together, that’s where we got the initial construction of the church going, and then when we came back from Tanzania, we started some more fundraisers, and we started planning on building the priest’s house. Then we yet again had another fundraiser to get the well going. So by the time we went back to Africa for our second time, we already had the money to build the priest’s house and to dig the well.

Fr. Steven: In fact, I just want to point out two things. One is that there was a woman who donated $8,000 to the construction of this church in memory of her husband who was an Orthodox Christian, yet she was not Orthodox. There was a woman who donated $10,000 towards the construction of the church who was not Orthodox at that time, but now she is. And people like Alex, when he had his 50th birthday party, he said, “I don’t need presents,” and his gifts were basically to raise money to dig the well. Those are the kinds of things that we need to do. What’s interesting is that even non-Orthodox people want to be involved in this kind of work, because they know that it is good and right and true.

Mr. Allen: Now, have you both been there twice, or, Father, have you been there more?

Fr. Steven: I’ve been there twice, and Alex, too.

Mr. Allen: Okay. It’s hard, probably, to express or put into words the impact that building this infrastructure, if you will, has had on the villagers of Kobunshwi, but I’m curious as to your reflections on what the impact has been. I mean, here are white people from far-away America coming and helping. And I know you did that out of great humility and desire to serve, not out of any superiority of any sort, obviously. What has the impact been? What did you notice? Any anecdotal stories or anything like that?

Mr. Gorbenko: Sure, I’d love to share a story. We ended up bringing 16 large boxes of medicine with us back to Tanzania, and the reason being is that there is so much corruption, buying medicine from other countries, India and Pakistan. They were receiving medicine—we’ll just take amoxicillin, for instance; they were receiving 500mg amoxicillin, and none of the patients were getting well. So they sent part of this medicine to a lab, and they had it investigated, and there was only 150mg of amoxicillin in there. None of the people were getting well, so we ended up bringing 16 boxes of medicine, and Adam—

Fr. Steven: Adam Mwesigwa is the assistant to the bishop, to Archbishop Jeronymos, and he actually has been here to the States and visited with us to St. Paul’s. But we had gotten these medicines through a program called MAPs: Medical Assistance [Programs] International. And for $5,000 that we raised, we were able to take $25,000 worth of medication, because MAPs works with all these different pharmaceutical companies, and they get these donations, and they make them available to churches like ours that want to do good work in Africa and other places all over the world.

Mr. Gorbenko: The amazing thing is, we were driving to Santa Barbara, to go to St. Barbara to meet with their missions team for future work. And Adam, Nadine, and myself were driving in the car, and I said, “Adam, are they out of the medicine that we brought?” He said, “You know, Alex, the medicine lasted about three months, but the amazing thing is villagers are coming up to me every single day and saying, ‘The medicine that came from America was a miracle,’ ” because these people didn’t even understand that they were getting bad medicine from other countries, and they weren’t getting well, but the medicine that we brought, people are actually getting well. And that touched me like I cannot even imagine. That gave me drive to keep going and to get more medicine and just continue.

Mr. Allen: Oh my. I am inspired by this story personally just listening to it. If people would be interested, for example, who are listening to this program, in perhaps participating with your efforts to do work like bringing more medicine, how would they get money to you so you could include it with your ministry work?

Fr. Steven: I think they could just simply write a check, if they wish, and send it to St. Paul’s. Just make the check out to St. Paul’s and specify that it is for our mission work in Africa.

Mr. Allen: Or for the medicine work.

Fr. Steven: Or for the medicine, absolutely.

Mr. Allen: Okay. So obviously there has been tremendous impact, both spiritually and physically, with your efforts. Let me ask the question to both of you in reverse. How has this projected affected each of you personally, and if it’s affected the parish at large, how so?

Mr. Gorbenko: It has affected me in how I can do things better. What we’re trying to do as a mission goal is not to just put a band-aid on the problem in Tanzania or any other third-world country that we’re trying to help. We also want to try to start micro-economies there. We want to get some welding equipment there and hire the indigenous people to operate this, and in the future hopefully get manufacturing of welding equipment happening right there in Africa. We’re working on all these efforts right now with Ed Per. He’s a project manager in the construction field, and we met him in Africa.

Fr. Steven: He’s an OCMC missionary as well.

Mr. Gorbenko: Yes, and we’re working with him right now. We’re actually going to start looking for equipment, because we already have money set aside. So we don’t want to just put band-aids on problems. We want to actually have these people become self-sufficient. If it takes decades, so be it, but that’s what we see.

Mr. Allen: What an incredible mission tool without overtly missionizing, just being there to further the interests of human beings out of love.

Fr. Steven: Absolutely.

Mr. Allen: I don’t know how much direct missionizing and evangelizing that there is that goes on with that, but I think that people are really touched by love and by the concern that we would have as Orthodox Christians, for them and for their families.

Fr. Steven: Oh, I think they are. I think there’s no doubt about that. For example, after the consecration Liturgy for this church, I was asked by the bishop to hand out the Bibles to the different families that were part of the parish. I mean, I can’t tell you what it’s like to give someone a Bible. They don’t own a book, and they start crying when I hand them a Bible.

Mr. Allen: In what language?

Fr. Steven: It’s in Swahili.

Mr. Allen: And that’s their mother tongue?

Fr. Steven: There are obviously many different native tribal languages, but the overarching language is Swahili.

Mr. Allen: So if you’re literate, you would read Swahili?

Fr. Steven: You would read Swahili. I mean, Uganda’s a little bit different. There, English is the official language, but in Tanzania, it’s more Swahili.

Mr. Allen: I heard a story—maybe you might have told me—you got a gift for bringing all of this?

Fr. Steven: Yes! [Laughter] I got a goat!

Mr. Allen: You got a goat?

Fr. Steven: It was a gift presented to me by the village, and she was pregnant!

Mr. Gorbenko: And you got some rabbits!

Fr. Steven: And I got some rabbits as well. But you have to understand, those are very, very precious things there. Actually, on the last day that I was there and we were at the seminary in Kasikizi, which is actually the St. Nicholas Seminary there, the priest at that time who was serving Kobunshwi came up to me and said, “So, Fr. Steve, what are you going to do with your goat and your rabbits and so forth?” I said, “Father, they’re yours!” and he was thrilled. I can’t tell you, because that there, something we wouldn’t think anything of is huge wealth to them.

Mr. Allen: Interesting, eh? I guess anything that produces food and so on is considered wealth. Well, it is! When it comes down to it, you’ve got to eat!

Fr. Steven: It keeps you alive!

Mr. Allen: You’ve got to eat every day. We transact that with paper and coinage, but at the end of the day, that’s what we need to survive.

What’s next with this project? I know you’ve spoken some about it. Anything in particular that you’re working on, either with the project at Kobunshwi or elsewhere that you haven’t already spoken about?

Fr. Steven: I think, as Alex said, we’re really happy that Fr. Simon Thomas, who was an assistant priest at St. Paul’s for a few years, and the community now at St. Barbara’s that he pastors, has agreed to work in Tanzania and build a church in the village of Kazinga. We’re going to go back, obviously. We’d like to develop a medical team from parishioners at St. Paul’s but also we’re open to maybe other parishioners from other parishes in southern California to go back with us.

Mr. Allen: Nice. When will that be, by the way?

Fr. Steven: You know, right now we’re thinking perhaps next winter, which of course there in Tanzania it’s never really “winter.” They just have rainy season and not-rainy season. But I think right now we’re talking about December or January, possibly, as target dates. Again, we would take our medication with us. We offer it to everybody, free of charge: Christians, Muslims, Orthodox, Lutheran, Catholic—it doesn’t matter.

Mr. Allen: Well, as we’re wrapping up, anything, Father, you’d like to add to our conversation?

Fr. Steven: Alex is in the process of putting together actually a DVD, a little documentary, just about 20 minutes long. We were very blessed to have a young woman named Alethea Avramis with us, who’s Greek Orthodox and at the film school at UCLA.

Mr. Allen: Oh, nice.

Fr. Steven: And she filmed about 15 hours, and out of that we’d like to put together a little documentary, and I’d like to send it to every church, every Orthodox church in the country, basically with just a short note saying, “You know, if we at St. Paul’s could do this, you could do this. Maybe you can’t build a church, but you could certainly raise enough money to dig a well. You can certainly get a box of medicine from MAPs and we could take it over. You can support the mission center.” There are hundreds of things that can be done that don’t necessarily involve the huge amount of time, effort, and energy that we’ve put in. I’d settle for anything, and it makes a huge difference in the lives of the peoples there.

Mr. Allen: Well, I just want to say thank you for all of us, and appreciate the passion that both of you have for pushing the envelope, for doing something that maybe some of us didn’t think that we could do as a minority of Orthodox Christians in this country, but it’s great work. So, kudos, and thank you very much. Fr. Steven Tsichlis and Alex Gorbenko of St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine, California. For those of you who are interested in more information, Fr. Steven has given the parish email, and I’m sure you—

Fr. Steven: We have our parish website, and I’m sure if you just Google “St. Paul’s Greek Irvine,” we’ll come up.

Mr. Allen: Great. So thanks to you both for sharing your story today.

Fr. Steven: Thank you!

Mr. Gorbenko: Thank you, Kevin.

Fr. Steven: Good to be here, Kevin.