Internet Aided Couple’s Mission of Mercy

RIDGECREST — Through written updates, missionaries dating back to the Apostle Paul have kept open the sustaining conduit to fellow Christians. But when home is half a world away, “snail mail” lacks immediacy, and whether news will even reach its destination is a matter for prayer.

That’s why Episcopalians Frank and Debby Buffum got online before they took their leap of faith to work with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in India.

The retired Ridgecrest couple knew computers, but unlike many computer-literate residents in this High Desert community near the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, they were novices on the Internet. Hours before they boarded a plane for Calcutta, a fellow church member gave Debby Buffum a crash course in “dots” and “coms.”

Then the Buffums flew off to help care for Calcutta’s disabled and orphaned children, armed only with a yearning to serve and a sheaf of e-mail addresses.

The Buffums’ plunge was sudden, but they said the inspiration for their volunteer mission had been building for a lifetime.

Debby Buffum, a 56-year-old retired high school physics teacher, had pored over every inspirational work Mother Teresa has published.

She had written to Mother Teresa’s organization in Calcutta and quickly received a reply, a letter directing the couple to an orphanage for more than 100 abandoned and neglected children that is run by nuns who depend on volunteer help.

Debby Buffum and her husband, a 62-year-old former Navy analyst, landed in India in January. One of the first treks they made through the teeming Calcutta streets was to an Internet “cafe,” where customers from many nations make connections at electronic terminals for a low hourly rate.

Back home, Lynne Thompson, the parishioner who had introduced Debby Buffum to the Internet, was surprised when the first digital missive lit up on her home computer.

“I’ve had e-mail for months and hardly used it because I’m still figuring out the ins and outs; Frank and Debby caught on instantly,” she said.

The Buffums began sending regular dispatches, offering vividly detailed accounts of their work with the sisters, impressions that might have been lost had they waited until they returned home to record them.

The couple told of first meeting the children at the orphanage, and how they delighted in pushing the buttons on Frank’s watch. “They just wanted to be held,” Frank said. “They were such an effusive bunch of little guys and gals.”

The sisters put the Buffums to work rounding up galvanized steel buckets for daily baths.

The healthy children live on the orphanage’s ground floor. On the couple’s third day there, the sisters gently suggested they needed help upstairs, in the rooms of the severely handicapped youngsters. “That’s where you were really needed,” Frank Buffum said.

Climbing the stairs was a daunting prospect, but the Buffums said they quickly found ways to soothe. “I just started rubbing the twisted limbs of one of the children,” Debby Buffum said. “I held them and learned their names. I didn’t see the body, but the person.

“They couldn’t verbally respond, but you could look in their eyes and see a peace.”

Debby prayed silently and continually for the children as she went about her work, then sent computer messages asking fellow parishioners at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church for their prayers.

In California, on the parish hall bulletin board at St. Michael’s, Thompson tacked up legal-sized sheets covered with the Buffums’ testimonies of suffering and compassion. Church members jostled to read them--then prayed.

The Buffums say the effect of those faraway prayers was palpable.

“It was a great comfort to me when things got hectic or stressful to know that people back home were praying,” Debby said.

Lou Burrows, head of outreach at St. Michael’s, appreciated the steady flow of updates. “I saw it as an opportunity to participate vicariously in what they were doing,” Burrows said. “And the details allowed us to be more specific in our prayers for them.”

“Those of us who live pretty comfortable lives experience pain in the world on an intellectual level. Personally hearing from people experiencing it firsthand makes it much more real to me.”

One child who came alive for the St. Michael’s congregation was Sylvie, an 8-year-old quadriplegic with bedsores that had penetrated to her hipbones. Parishioners prayed as the Buffums recounted how they scoured six medical supply houses, finally locating a child-sized inflatable doughnut for the pain-racked little girl to recline on.

“Seeing little Sylvie resting, smiling and at peace, was a real gift,” Debby said.

The couple were impressed at how much the Missionaries of Charity accomplished with such limited resources, and say the sisters’ respect for each child is key to the miracles they accomplish.

The Buffums returned to California recently, and during an interview at their Ridgecrest home reflected on their challenges in India. They said they have learned that pain is universal, as is the method for easing it.

“The desperation and need of Calcutta is everywhere,” Frank said. “Treating the needs of the souls in your own community is very important--we just don’t quite do enough of that.”

“You have to be infectious with his love,” said Debby, “and allow him to work through you.”