Locally Purchased

Tents Will Be Going

To Troubled Darfur;

Higgins And Hartsell

Discuss Mission Trip

By BILL JONES

Staff Writer

A pair of canvas tents purchased by the congregation of Asbury United Methodist Church and Holston United Methodist Home for Children will soon be on their way to Africa to house refugees from the violence-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan.

The 10-by-8-foot tents have been painted with messages of hope and cheerful scenes by Holston Home students, Greeneville High School students, and other local residents.

Cindy Adorante, an administrative assistant at Holston United Methodist Home from Children, said the Holston Home students learned about the situation in the Darfur portion of Sudan by watching films and studying with Pastor Sam Puckett before the tents arrived.

Pastor Puckett said he had the students first think about what message they wanted to send and then transfer that idea to a paper drawing.

Then, this week, the students painted their messages and scenes onto the Holston Home tent, which had been set up in the gymnasium at Holston Home's Beacon School, Puckett said.

Worked For 3 Days

Pastor Puckett, who is Holston Home's chaplain, said 31 Holston Home students worked to paint the tent.

"They worked for three solid days," he said of the Holston Home students. "There were four to six students painting at a time from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for three days."

He noted that the process revealed that some students had artistic talents which were previously unknown.

Pastor Puckett also said the students were happy about being able to offer hope to the refugees.

He pointed out that, among the messages on the tents, are the words "God Loves You" in both English and Arabic.

"They know the tent is going to be the home for a family in Africa," Administrative Assistant Adorante said of the students. They don't know who the family will be. But God does."

Tents Erected Thursday

Adorante noted that Greeneville High JROTC students helped erect a large Army Reserve tent over the two display tents on Thursday.

In addition, she said, she, her husband, Joe, and Art Masker, Holston Home's chief executive officer, spent Thursday night with the tents on the GHS football practice field.

On Thursday and Friday, the tents were on display, beneath a larger tent erected by soldiers from the U.S. Army Reserve's Greeneville-based 733rd Engineer Company and Greeneville High School Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps students on the football practice field at Greeneville High School.

The Rev. David Woody, pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, said students at Holston United Methodist Home had already decorated the tent purchased by the home before the tents went on display.

On Friday, he said, the GHS students and members of the public were invited to decorate the tent purchased by his church.

"Within six months, families of six or eight people will be living in these tents," Pastor Woody said.

Mission Trip To Sudan

He explained that the Rev. Jeannie Higgins, minister of discipleship at the church, and Dr. Mike Hartsell, a Greeneville physician and an Asbury Church member, had returned last week from a mission trip to southern Sudan, where they worked with refugees.

While there, Woody said, Higgins and Hartsell took part in an effort to treat 2,100 refugees with anti-malaria drugs and distribute some 600 mosquito nets to children and their mothers.

He explained that malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes, is one of the leading killers of refugees in Sudan and surrounding countries.

At the GHS football practice field on Friday, Higgins and Hartsell recalled their journey to Sudan.

Dr. Hartsell said tents such as the two on display on Friday provide critical shelter to refugees displaced from their homes by violence in the Darfur region of Sudan because the tents provide protection from the searing sun as well as from rain in the "rainy season," which just ended.

With the rainy season, Rev. Higgins noted, come hordes of mosquitoes.

That fact, she said, makes the mosquito nets that are being distributed to refugees perhaps even more critical than tents.

Net 'Will Save A Life'

"A mosquito net costs $10, and it will save a life," Higgins said.

Dr. Hartsell noted that a single mosquito net can actually save a number of lives, since both mothers and their children can take refuge beneath them from mosquitoes that carry often fatal malaria.

Higgins said Asbury United Methodist Church purchased 250 of the 600 mosquito nets that were distributed during the recent trip to Sudan by a mission team from the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church that included both Dr. Hartsell and herself.

She pointed out that students from Greene County's Nolachuckey Elementary School raised about $400 to help purchase mosquito nets. Highland Elementary School students also are raising funds for mosquito nets, she said.

Dr. Woody said the two Tents of Hope tents were to be left on display until after Friday night's high school football playoff game at Burley Stadium.

After the game, he said, U.S. Army reservists and Greeneville High School Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets were scheduled to take down the tents.

"We will pack them and ship them to Washington within the next two weeks," Wood said of the tents. "From there, they will be shipped to refugee camps in Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic."

Woody noted that last week, tents purchased and decorated by other groups across the U.S. were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Although the Greeneville Tents of Hope effort began too late to take part in the National Mall display, the two locally-purchased tents will be added to the others for subsequent shipment to Africa.

Project's Background

Tents of Hope, according to its Web site, is a national community-based project that envisions a powerful union of artistic creativity and social concern in response to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

The goal of the one-year project is to draw attention to the genocide in Darfur while encouraging donations of material support for the millions of uprooted persons in Sudan, many of whom have been living in tents for years after being violently forced from their homes and villages.

"The mission of the Tents of Hope project is to support a one-year process in which people respond as communities to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, by creating tents that are both unique works of art and ongoing focal points within communities for learning about, assisting and establishing relationships with the people of Sudan.

"The tents are not answers in themselves," the Web site says. "Rather, they are points of entry for more concrete forms of Darfur advocacy."

Jerry Fowler, director of the Committee on Conscience, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, commented about the importance of the tent project to refugees in Darfur.

"For refugees, the tent is a symbol of loss.

"Every time they come back to their tents, they are reminded of what they used to have, what was taken from them, and their longing to return home," Fowler said.

"Yet, even though the tent represents loss, [the tents] immediately humanize their situation by creating a new life."