Giving a Peace of Me

Jim Tomforde and daughter Staley spent time with some of the children from the orphanage they worked at in Uganda.

A boy and his father were walking on a beach where thousands of starfish had washed ashore. Desperate to save them, they gathered as many as they could and returned them to the water. Holding up one starfish, the little boy impatiently asked his father, “What’s the use of trying? There are too many to make a difference.”

The father replied, “That starfish in your hand? It makes a difference to him.”

This parable is one of Jim Tomforde’s favorites. Realizing the significance of each individual’s part in healing the world, he chose to use some of his work vacation days to do just that.

In 2003, he and daughter Staley went on a mission trip at the end of her sixth-grade year to build six school houses in Mexico. With funding help from their church, Grace Presbyterian, they provided the school with laptops, which had a bonus benefit of enabling the school families and the Tomfordes to keep in touch with each other.  Jim and Staley were hooked on the idea of making a difference.

“Once you’re on a network to help those less fortunate, you get to hear of lots of other needs out there,” Jim said, explaining how he was made aware of a need for clean-up crews in Gulfport, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “So we just got in our cars and drove over there. They needed help with things like cleaning up, putting up sheetrock and painting. The biggest part of this is those who volunteer try to give hope.”

When Staley learned of a mission being organized to Uganda through her school, Second Baptist, she signed up. When she was chosen to go, Jim volunteered to go too. “Uganda is ravaged by AIDS, and we worked at an orphanage. Ninety percent of the kids had malaria. I took off two weeks from work to go, but it was so worth it,” said Jim, an insurance broker.

Upon return, the pair loaded the hundreds of photos they’d taken onto their computer. Jim’s wife, Leigh, was so moved by the faces of the Ugandan children that flashed across the screen, she decided she needed to do her part as well. Leigh enlisted as a volunteer in the library at Yellowstone Academy, a private school serving children from low-income families, where she also reads to the children.

Staley, currently a freshman at Rhodes College, says the mission trip influenced her choice of major. She is considering choosing economics. “I hope to get a better understanding on how the world works and how important a country’s economy is to its functionality. Being in such a different culture as I was in Uganda gave me a new perspective of my own lifestyle and opened my eyes to a vastly different way of life,” she said.

Her father said his volunteer experiences have changed his world view. “I know there’s no simple solution to things. No black and white answers,” said Jim, who currently serves on the board of a non-profit foster home, Boys and Girls Country in Hockley.

John Coulter stands with International High School student Antonio Barrera, now in 10th grade, who accompanied John's mission to help children in Nicaragua.

John Coulter is another resident whose life has been transformed by the experiences of helping others.

John was making six figures working in the finance department of a Fortune 500 manufacturing company when 11 years ago he felt a pull to join a group going to help residents in Santa Patricia, Nicaragua. Many villagers were still homeless decades after Hurricane Mitch had ravaged their homes, schools and churches.

“That was my first trip over there. I fell in love with the people. They are so happy and enjoy life with having so little,” he said. “That trip, we helped build a second floor to a school.”

John returned several more times to Santa Patricia, five times as the mission-trip leader for his church, Memorial Lutheran.  Taking his wife, Heather, 16-year-old twins Claire and Andrew and 12-year-old son William along with him on some of the trips involved the whole family in the joy of helping others and led to spiritual growth. Perhaps as a result, he said, they understood when John gave up his corporate position to become a math teacher.

This is John’s third year teaching math at HISD’s International High School, a charter school held on Sharpstown High School’s campus that is dedicated to teaching students to be successful in a global economy. He started fundraising there, selling bottled water for 50 cents, after noticing a lack of drinking fountains and realizing the benefit of sharing his mission trips with his students. The money goes to a scholarship fund that allows some of his students to accompany him to Nicaragua in the summer.

“Last year I took one student with us,” John said. “He really helped as a translator while we were assisting to build a house for a family.”

Mission trips provide a chance to share one’s talents with those less fortunate. For instance, the Memorial Lutheran Church mission staff includes a medical mission team, which brings along some $20,000 worth of mostly donated medications.

Heading up the team is Dr.  Holly Smith, who normally works with community hospitals and clinics contracted though The University of Texas Medical Center and specializes in pediatrics and internal medicine.

“My first mission trip, we were treating the villagers when someone told me of a dying baby. I asked to take a look, and they handed me a tiny bundle of a 1-month-old premature little girl who was severely dehydrated. Her mother had no money to pay for a taxi to get her to the hospital, and as my IV equipment was not for someone so tiny, we paid for her taxi fare and hospitalization fees. The neat thing is, 18 months later, when we returned to the village in Nicaragua and saw her again, now an adorable toddler running around,  I felt like if we hadn’t been there, she would not have survived,” said Holly, who encourages medical students to join her team on missions.

Another mission group also focuses on health care and health education. Amigos de los Americas, a non-denominational organization, started out with a goal of immunizing populations in need, said Dr. Bart Putterman, a local obstetrician/gynecologist.

Long before he became a doctor, in 1974 at age 16, Bart took his first mission with Amigos to Colombia, and to Ecuador the subsequent year. “Both areas we went to were very primitive. They were fishing villages. I was sent out on the rivers to inoculate the people.”

Bart’s involvement in Amigos led to several lifelong commitments. First, he became a doctor. Second, he stayed involved with Amigos and has served on its board for the past 10 years. Bart’s passion for helping others affected his daughter, Carrie, who also became involved with Amigos.

Now a third-year law student at the University of Texas at Austin, Carrie uses her rare spare time between lecture halls, law library and books to volunteer for the Immigration Clinic at UT, providing free legal counseling.

“My whole reason for going to law school was inspired by Amigos,” Carrie said, explaining she felt a need to help those in Mexico separated from family members due to immigration technicalities. “Amigos taught me the importance of cross-cultural understanding and compassion. I was often surprised how many times the people of Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras taught me the meaning of sharing and giving.”

Another young woman, Julia Fleckman, also connected her career path and college major to her Amigos experience. Julia chose to study political science and Spanish as an undergraduate at Colgate University and hopes to earn a graduate degree in public-health education.

“My experience with Amigos was life changing,” she said. “In my first two summers as a volunteer, I had to take a leadership role within the communities I was working in, meet with community members, teach grant-writing workshops, help develop project ideas, and oversee the construction of these projects.”

As all Amigos projects are youth-run, Julia says she had many opportunities to act as a senior project supervisor. Julia plans to use her degree working for local non-profits that provide public-health education and services to immigrants and other underprivileged groups.

All of these volunteers have saved lives, with the help of their training or simply by extending a hand to help, even when the need seemed too overwhelming to make a difference.

All of them, just like the little boy and his father, have returned starfish to the water.