She had so little, but for orphans with even less, she found so much to give.
By MIKE KILEN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
April 15, 2007
3 Comments
STEPHANIE MAJOR lived above the Main Street store and heard the whirling treadmills in the health club. The runners were unaware that behind the club door was a teenager's makeshift apartment.
She was 17 and on her own.
Her mother had died right before her eyes when she was 7.
Years later she couldn't get along with her father, so she left with a CD player and a garbage bag filled with clothes.
She worked every night after school, often closing the shop and slipping up to the apartment to hope.
With a family history of divorce and early death, her own drinking and lack of direction, she seemed doomed to the life of a troubled teen.
Yet, somehow, she survived, even prospered.
She stopped drinking, found a church and yearned to go to Africa to help orphans.
"In the worst times," she said, "I want to give back."
All she needed was $3,000.
She sat down to write letters to relatives and teachers, asking for help.
Stephanie's parents had divorced when she was a toddler.
When she was 7 and living in Omaha, she rose one morning, sat on the sofa and rested a book in her lap.
Then she heard the shouts of her stepfather as he rose from the recliner and stood over her mother on the sofa.
"She's not breathing! Call 911!"
Stephanie ran to her sister's room and the two raced down the sidewalk, in a dead sprint to get away from the bad news that her mother had died of a liver complication.
She moved in with her father, who tried to comfort her through the death.
But after he remarried, the family moved to a tough neighborhood in Des Moines, eventually settling in Woodward after their house burned in an electrical fire.
By the time she entered junior high, Stephanie had begun drinking with an older crowd. She let her grades slip.
"I went through my teen years before I was a teenager," she said.
Then one day, when she was 14, she decided to change her life.
She began going to the Victory Promise Church in Woodward with her family.
Even after her parents quit, Stephanie went to church alone.
"I felt a connection to the people," she said. "It was a thirst. I wanted to learn more."
For eight weeks straight, she filled out a prayer request card at church.
On it, she wrote: "I want to be baptized.''
Finally, when she was 15, Pastor Joseph Karge agreed.
"I felt new. Everything I had done in the past was clean and I was starting a whole new chapter," she said.
But by age 17, she couldn't tolerate her home life anymore. She had two older sisters who had graduated and moved out, leaving her with four younger step- siblings and a troubled environment.
"My father and I, we argued a lot," she said. "I wanted to do more things. I wanted to be on my own."
Her father, Alan Major, said it's hard to see eye-to-eye with a teenager. "I just let her do her own thing."
It wasn't solely an issue of a teen rebelling against rules. Stephanie was upset with the behavior of some of her family members. The decision to move out was hard. But Stephanie found an apartment above her place of work, a Main Street variety store and coffee shop called Apple Tree Mall.
Owner Sandy Peters said Stephanie was a good employee. She let the girl live upstairs, next to a small health club she was adding.
Stephanie took pride in living on her own and learning how to pay her phone bill, food costs and a few apartment expenses.
Last year, she heard that Pastor Karge and another congregation member, Mark Blair, were planning to join a trip to the Central African Republic for Project Hope & Charity, which helps support thousands of orphans whose parents have died of AIDS.
Stephanie asked if she could join them.
She would be by far the youngest in a group that included mainly middle-aged adults from across the country.
"This wasn't your typical youth group mission trip," said Karge. "This was a tough trip in a country with political unrest.
"But I saw her maturity, commitment and desire. Because of her own situation, she had a heart for orphans."
Stephanie was persistent about raising the money to go, writing letters to teachers and relatives and holding a chili supper.
She meticulously counted the money she raised and logged it on her computer.
A couple of weeks before the trip, she thought she was short. Then Karge called and told her one last donation had come in.
Just after she turned 18, she would be going to Africa.
Stephanie could easily have gone the other way, members of her church say.
She didn't.
On March 15, she boarded an airplane for the first time and made the long trip to Africa.
When the group landed, it was hot and Stephanie couldn't understand the language.
She said people were screaming at her, wanting to carry her luggage for money. She was scared.
But then she saw the children near the city of Bangui, where a fifth of the population of half a million are orphans.
"These kids deserved more than they were getting, yet they were happy," she said. "That is what is amazing."
She was struck by how grateful they were that a white woman from a rich country would come for 10 days to help them read and build a community center.
"Stephanie was probably the youngest by half the others' ages, and I was so impressed with how she was with the kids," said Blair of Des Moines, a single father and QuikTrip manager who was on the trip with Stephanie.
"The kids would just congregate around her."
Stephanie took joy in encouraging them with a word they knew - "super" - and seeing their wide grins.
On her last day, the children greeted her with a surprise.
"Hello," they said in unison, in English. "How are you? I am fine."
Stephanie stood up to tell them why she had come.
"When I was young, my mom died. I felt alone, just like you do.
"But keep smiling. It's going to get better. In the end, great things will happen."
The children smiled.
When Stephanie returned home in late March, she felt terrible.
She needed to find a new place to live.
She had quit her job and moved out of the apartment in the weeks before her trip, and she was temporarily living with her older sister.
Stephanie would be graduating on May 19 and had much to do before then.
She had to bone up on her role in the upcoming school play. There was Bible study and her car needed repairs.
But that isn't why she felt bad. It was because she realized she had worried so much about those tasks before.
The children she saw didn't have anything, certainly not a beat-up old Ford to drive.
It was an emotional return to America, Karge said. In Africa, Stephanie had seen the love of a community for each member, even when they had no material comforts.
"It's hard to process. They don't want to hear someone throwing a fit over not having a $90 pair of jeans," Karge said. "That's one of the reasons we should take every senior in America. It will change them forever."
It's too simple to say Stephanie found thankfulness and grace. Despite her troubles, she had a large measure of it.
Now she wants to take it further. She's starting a new job at a West Des Moines restaurant, will look for a new apartment after high school graduation and eventually attend night school.
Someday, she wants to be a counselor for children who feel alone.
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