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Local author Josh McDowell to sell collection of artifacts to help underserved children in Pakistan BY ERIC HEINZ, DANA POINT TIMES
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ome children in regions of Pakistan are not taught to read and write, nor are they given the basic skills needed to build the foundation of their education. Instead, some as young as 4 years old are subjected to manual labor, mostly in brickyards. It’s the sum of economic hardship but mostly religious discrimination. On Pakistani passports, you’re required to state whether you fully believe in the tenets of Islam, tentatively support it or reject it entirely. This isn’t the religion’s leaders’ mandates, but the Pakistani government’s. Christians are at the bottom of the nation’s religious and social totem pole, which drives them to impoverished regions and workforces. Roger Gales, the senior pastor of Heritage Christian Fellowship in San Clemente, said wealthy owners of the labor yards purchase the rights to families or groups of people so they can work and provide for themselves. Gales described it as closer to indentured servitude, but he said the laborers see themselves as slaves. There are often cases of human trafficking and reports of severe abuse, starvation and other issues that have humanitarian groups responding. Gales established a school for Pakistani Christian children that has a predominant enrollment of former slaves. “We built one school, two stories, and then the government kicked out all the girls,” Gales said. “We built a girls’ school, which is completed and has been in operation for little over a year,” but it needs a second story to house everyone. Raising funds to build that second story is the purpose of the Christmas Market, which will take place in December at the church. The church and its congregation raised more than $125,000 to build the first school, purchase children out of slavery and provide for transitional resources. In the past few years, Gales and a few other associates have purchased thousands of children and their families from the owners to allow them to live at and attend the school. Gales said there are 1,600 students in the girls and boys schools combined. He said about 75 percent of the student population in last year’s enrollment were slaves at one point. “I think the most difficult transition is the
Dana Point Times December 2-8, 2016
Roger Gales, senior pastor of Heritage Christian Fellowship in San Clemente, started a school in Pakistan for Christian children, most of whom were slaves to the vast brickyard industry. Photo: Eric Heinz
education gap,” Gales said. “As slaves, they that’s just the way life is there,” Gales said. have no education whatsoever, and they Gales began the eponymous Mariam’s have to integrate into a school with people Fund after a 10-year-old Pakistani girl, who their age who are far ahead of them in the was working in the brickyards. education system. A 10- or 12-year-old is Mariam died from Dengue Fever a week learning to read or write for the very first before she was scheduled to be freed from time. They have to spend time with one-onthe brickyard, according to Gales. The one tutoring before they enter the school.” World Health Organization estimated cases On a social level, Gales said there isn’t of the disease increased in Pakistan 17 as far a transition. The students don’t face times between 2006 and 2011. stigmatism from being a slave because According to the United Nations, there so many of the other are millions of brick-kiln enrolled students were workers in slavery beslaves themselves. tween Pakistan and India. The Christmas Market Gales said persecution Paintings of Mariam The sale of the items will take has only increased in reand another student place 9 a.m.-4 p.m. on Dec. 10, cent years. It’s a precarihang on the walls of the and noon-4 p.m. on Dec. 11 at ous situation, and Gales Heritage Christian FellowHeritage Christian Fellowship. said he can’t have one ship’s worship center. For more information about the of his main associates’ school in Pakistan, visit names publicized as his Josh McDowell www.mariamsfund.org. life has been threatened In between the 300 by organizations labeled days he spends traveling by the U.S. government every year, Christian auas terrorists. He met with Gales a few years thor Jack McDowell met Gales through his ago after he fled the country in fear of his neighbor in Dana Point. and his family’s lives. That neighbor is Larry Rausch, a deacon The location of the school also cannot at Heritage Christian Fellowship,. When be disclosed for fear of either religious Rausch told McDowell about the school in retaliation or disagreements with cultural Pakistan and the efforts by Gale and others customs. to support and fund it, McDowell decided Gales continues to work with liaisons in he would give his life’s collection of items the country and the teachers at the school. from around the world to support building “I know I will go back, but I don’t really the second story of the girls’ school. have any solid plans right now,” Gales said, Those items truly span the globe. There adding that he may try again in the spring. are gold rings, Russian memorabilia, There are local police and federal solstamps from the Cold War and a Kremlin diers who help protect the school. admiral’s hat—about three or four of them. A few weeks ago, someone bulldozed the There’s a box full of coins with Soviet prowall that surrounded the school, parked the paganda all over them. And then there’s the tractor and left. tea set sitting on a rickety poker table that “The school is going well, but the persecuwas replicated from a 4,800-piece set of Chition against the Christians is constant, and na customized for St. Catherine the Great. Page 24
Those and thousands of other items from McDowell’s collection will be on sale at the Christmas Market at Heritage Christian Fellowship next week. McDowell has published more than 130 books about Christian literature and has spent decades running his ministry, globetrotting to help people in need. He said that has been his calling since he delved into Christianity. He’s been keeping these items in his home for years, which he describes as a small museum. “These, they took their shoulder bars right off their shoulders and gifted them to us because our work with the military children in Russia,” he said of the Russian memorabilia. Some of that work included taking rare medicine for operations to children who have been affected by nuclear radiation in Chernobyl. He said he also helped deliver vaccinations to Kazakhstan when they had a polio outbreak. McDowell has worked with many children throughout the world to help them receive the education and support they need. McDowell said when he heard about the school in Pakistan, he jumped at the opportunity to help. When he learned what the children endure through slavery, he said it made his blood boil. “Whatever we do, we do to help young children,” McDowell said. “This will be one of the most diverse of any Christmas markets ever in California.” The Christmas Market will offer more than 20,000 items, he said. Works of art, sports jerseys and historical pieces will be for sale. “We’ve (through the ministry) helped women, especially, how to market things to foreigners,” McDowell said. “We bought the first 2,000 items from someone to help them out. I figured I’d buy these items, hold on to them for a few years and then sell them to help the people who really need it.” McDowell has spent the last 30 years going to Russia periodically but he has visited more than 125 countries. “We help those who cannot fend for themselves,” he said. “The children and the elderly are the ones who have suffered the most from the transitions in Russia.” Although he said he wants to help the school as much as he can, McDowell said he doesn’t have any plans to visit it. He said the amount of security it would take is too cumbersome and the costs are unaffordable. McDowell said what he would need to keep him safe there is equivalent to secret service. He said he had to have Navy SEALs travel with him the last time he went to countries in Latin America. In the meantime, though, McDowell can share all the other parts of the world he’s visited with the San Clemente community next weekend. DP www.danapointtimes.com