John Conway leads Spotsylvania Presbyterian Church to provide help and hope in Karbururi, Kenya.

By Karen Randau

Community service has always been an important part of John Conway’s life. Coming up through Boy Scouts of America to earn the rank of Eagle Scout, Conway learned to serve others, revere something bigger than himself, steadily work to achieve big goals, and develop hobbies such as fishing, hunting, boating and gardening. “If it’s outside, I generally like it,” Conway says.

And at age 34, Conway is applying that Eagle Scout training as a volunteer church advocate with Food for the Hungry.

“Community service and achievement were a huge part of the Boy Scout experience, and so was adventure,” Conway adds.

So it wasn’t that huge a leap to go from camping in the Virginia wilderness and serving in his Fredericksburg church to sleeping in a bombed-out building in southern Sudan, Africa. “It was better than some of the accommodations that I saw were available to returning Sudanese refugees who had fled the civil war,” he says.

Conway visited Food for the Hungry projects in Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan in 2005. He was looking for something that his church, Spotsylvania Presbyterian Church (SPC) in Fredericksburg, could do as part of their mission efforts.

“I saw Food for the Hungry training programs in Kenya, nurseries and food-for-work programs in Ethiopia, and a seed fair in southern Sudan,” he says. “I met a lot of people and fell in love with Africa.”

Conway returned to lead SPC in collecting and sending two crates of Bibles and Christian books to southern Sudan. Since SPC likes to use their mission budget to make a lasting difference, they knew they wanted to be more involved.

The church sent Conway back to southern Sudan in 2006 as part of a Food for the Hungry construction team that erected a school. They worked alongside community members and helped model the love of Christ.

 

Working With a Kenyan Village

When Conway’s close friend, Keith Wright, moved to become Food for the Hungry’s Kenya Country Director, Conway’s heart followed. He learned about the Community-to-Community (C2C) program and soon began creating a partnership between SPC and a needy community in Kenya.

Conway visited several Kenyan communities with Wright in 2007. “They ranged from doing almost no development work to having a well-established program,” Conway says. “It gave me an idea of not only where SPC could start, but also how successful C2C churches work.”

SPC decided to partner with the village of Karbururi on the Ethiopian border. Food for the Hungry was already helping the community embrace a strong relationship with Christ. The community had built a church about a year earlier. When Conway visited, the community also had built three rooms of a new primary school. SPC committed to helping Karbururi build an additional room each year for five years, along with teacher housing, an administration building and a teaching garden.

“All the places we visited were disadvantaged, but we thought we could make the biggest impact in Karbururi because it was the least developed of all the communities we visited,” Conway explains. SPC worked with Food for the Hungry to develop a long-term plan to help Karbururi.

Raising Funds for the Projects

As co-owner of Conway & Robison LLC, a consulting and certification agency working under the USDA Department of Agriculture export program for wood packaging, Conway works to certify producers of wood packaging for export and audit the programs of these producers. The company helps smaller and developing countries create their own export packaging programs to be in compliance with a major international trade treaty. Through his membership in the industry’s National Wooden Pallet Manufacturers Association, Conway was invited to speak at a worship service at the association’s annual meeting.

“The worship service started with singing, a devotional and then the presentation of our Pallet Mission Project,” Conway says. “I spoke about a potential fundraiser to help people in Karbururi. I didn’t know where it would lead since people were just beginning to feel the pinch of our current economy, but we managed to raise $12,000.”

That $12,000 helped Karbururi build a 38,000-liter water catchment tank for their school. The community worked through a local contractor, and the school children’s parents provided the labor. The schoolexpects the tank volume will last between rainy seasons, the entire school year. This will make regular school attendance more likely for the children.

“It may not seem like a lot of money,” says Conway, “but it’s making a huge impact in the lives of these children.”

Conway and others from SPC visited Karbururi during the summer of 2008. They met with church and community leaders, teachers and parents to learn about their vision for the community. Conway was impressed with their vision and their plan. SPC’s Vacation Bible School raised funds to erect fencing to enclose the 5-½ acres of the Karbururi’s school property, and the fence is now being built.

Learning From People and Experiences

“I’ve met a lot of people in Karbururi, but a couple of them really stand out. One is a boy who had an amazing smile. I never actually met him, but I see him every time I visit. He’s really shy. He seemed to be behind every tree smiling at me. When we gave some kids a ride, he was there smiling. He was active in the church choir, and he played guitar. I’ll never forget that face. It’s the one I’ve seen as we’ve worked to sponsor 30 kids from Karbururi through SPC. We recently received sponsorship packets for our mission month, and this boy, Halake Wakala Dida, was in the batch. I promise, he’ll have a sponsor soon.”

The other person whose influence will always stay with Conway is Andrew Boru, a Food for the Hungry employee who helps with the Karbururi school and serves as a pastor. Through Andrew’s example, Conway is learning how to live a life focused on the most important priorities: God and family first, then the “things” that help shape the way you, your family and your community live.

“There is a big difference between Karbururi and northern Virginia,” Conway says. “We have so many distractions and choices, and they don’t. Everything there is focused on what you need to do to survive, worship and go to school. Andrew really impressed our team. He has a passion for the Lord and a focus that would make him a leader anywhere.”

The work that Conway is doing for Food for the Hungry, along with the people and places Food for the Hungry has allowed him to experience, have transformed not only his own life, but it has changed his entire family, given SPC a vibrant relationship with Karbururi and shaped the worldview of many SPC members.

“We’re always growing as Christians,” Conway says. “Throughout the relationship with Food for the Hungry, that growth has steered my family to focus our church service on mission work. This is where we feel our spiritual gifts are leading us, and Food for the Hungry is a big part of that. Our children tell all their friends about our sponsored children. When the kids go to bed, we pray for our sponsored children and think about what they’re doing. For my wife, Chrissy, and me, our Food for the Hungry experiences have helped us shape what we want to do with our lives and how we want to raise our kids.”

The Conways believe God is leading them to work in the mission field doing international development some day. He has applied for a master’s degree in international development.

He says, “I’d really like to use what I’ve learned in business and manufacturing to help individuals and communities improve their livelihood and become self-sufficient. We don’t know what’s going to happen or when, but we’re preparing ourselves—just in case.”

What else would an Eagle Scout say? After all, the Boy Scout motto is to “be prepared.”