A Confirmation Challenge, Fulfilled

By Shannon Hicks

Each year for the Confirmands at Newtown United Methodist Church are given a different challenge by Pastor Mel Kawakami. After months of lessons led by him, the Reverend Sue E. Klein, and rotating turns by parents, Confirmands are encouraged to embrace the meanings behind all of those lessons.

“What we try and do is inspire them to put their faith to work now that they are full members of the church,” Pastor Kawakami said this week. “This is not a graduation. That’s the point we’re trying to get across.”

Last May he challenged the church’s nine Confirmands by giving each of them $50 and telling them they could do whatever they wanted to with it.

“We thought it was a set-up,” Robyn Gaines, 14, a member of last year’s confirmation class, told The Newtown Bee last week. “We all kind of looked at each other and when the offering plate came around we put our money in there.”

The offer was real, and putting into NUMC’s collection plate was not the answer Pastor Kawakami was looking for.

“He gave the money back to us and told us giving it to the church was too easy,” Robyn said on May 8. “He told us this was going to be the first of many big choices we would face in life, and that he wanted each of us to think about that money and try again.”

Nearly one year after receiving that challenge, Robyn increased that $50 ten-fold. She recently asked fellow NUMC members to consider donating to Rachel’s Continued Wish, an online charity being operated through charitywater.org that continues the wish of a girl who only wanted to help others before she was killed in a car accident shortly after her ninth birthday.

On May 6, Robyn was allowed to speak to fellow congregants during each of NUMC’s worship services. She reminded them of Pastor Kawakami’s challenge to her Confirmation class the previous year and introduced many to Rachel Beckwith.

“In August I saw a story on the Today show,” said Robyn. “It was about a little girl named Rachel … For her ninth birthday Rachel wanted to raise $300 for clean water for developing nations.”

The then-8-year-old began asking friends and family to help her raise money for charity:water. She did not want any presents for her ninth birthday, she reportedly told everyone. Just donations that she would then give to help others obtain fresh drinking water.

“She was $80 away from her goal on her birthday,” Robyn continued that Sunday morning at her church. “One week later there was a horrible accident on the highway involving over a dozen cars and trucks. Rachel, her sister, and her mother were in it.”

Rachel and her family were involved in a 14-car pile-up near their home in Bellevue, Wash., on July 20. She was the only person involved in the accident to have serious injuries, and they proved to be fatal. The 9-year-old was kept on life support for three days, but she died on July 23.

Word of Rachel’s wish to help others soon began spreading and donations began pouring in from across the country. Rachel had been inspired, according to a report on CNN, to look into the nonprofit group charity:water after its founder, Scott Harrison, spoke at her church, Eastlake Community Church.

(Newtown residents may remember David Plaue’s recent campaign for charity:water. The New York-based charity is dedicated to bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. According to charity:water, one billion people on the planet — one person in eight — do not have access to clean, safe drinking water.)

After Rachel Beckwith’s death, the members of Eastlake CC took to Facebook, Twitter, and its own website to promote her cause. When national television shows like the Today show began sharing the story, that’s when it went national.

By last August Rachel’s initial charity:water page had raised more than $1.3 million dollars. A second charity:water page, called Rachel’s Continued Wish has been created, and has received more than $3,400 in donations from 102 people. Many donations have been made for $9, presumably honoring the age of the young girl who has inspired so many. Comments from donors of all ages and backgrounds continue to thank her and praise her mother, Samantha Paul, for continuing the efforts of her late daughter.

“As I was watching this story [on the Today show],” Robyn’s speech to NUMC members continued, “I realized that Rachel’s campaign was exactly what I was looking for. I decided that I would ask the church to help me with this project.”

And that’s exactly what she did.

“I asked people to donate whatever they could,” she said a few days later.

After each worship service that morning, the Lauralton Hall freshman waited in the narthex of the Church Hill Road church as parishioners exited.

“So many people came up and donated money,” said Robyn. “One woman had seen the segment on the Today show too, and was happy to be able to donate to Rachel’s fund.”

After the two services, Robyn and her parents went through the small collection box Robyn had been holding and counted up the donations. There was just over $500 in there.

“I was so happy, not about the money, but that people responded so well,” she said. “When people come together for a good cause, it really shows the kindness of people.”

Robyn said she had wanted to make sure she did something good with her $50, but she never expected to take so long. She tried to find something worthwhile, she said. One Confirmand used the money to buy clothes for a veteran, and another donated it to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital.

“I was waiting to find something that really called to me,” she said. The idea to support Rachel’s Continued Wish came in August, but then so did Tropical Storm Irene at the end of the month.

“We had that storm, and the delayed start of school, and then the October storm,” said Robyn’s mother, Barbara Gaines. “Then suddenly it was the holidays and we didn’t want to ask people to be donating money.”

A dance injury also sidelined Robyn for a little while, and finding a good time to speak to everyone at church “really took some time,” said Mrs Gaines. With the next member of the Gaines family preparing to be confirmed, Robyn had another reason to find that time.

“Her younger brother Trevor is going to be confirmed in two weeks,” said Mrs Gaines. “I told her it was really time to finish her confirmation effort,” she said, laughing with her daughter.

An announcement will be made to let members of Newtown United Methodist Church know how much was collected for Rachel’s Continued Wish this coming Sunday, which will be Confirmation Sunday for the Class of 2012.

“It was a great idea,” Pastor Kawakami said of Robyn’s idea. He wasn’t surprised, he added, at the amount of money parishioners offered up.

“This is a very generous community, so I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “This was with no forewarning, so people were not prepared. They literally opened their hearts and wallets spontaneously.”

Robyn has two more things to do to complete her Confirmation challenge.

“I’m going to send all of that [money] to her page at charity:water,” said Robyn, “and I’m also going to send a note to Rachel’s family letting them know that she made such an impact on us.”