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By MICHELLE BEARDEN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 3, 2008

Updated: 02/01/2008 07:45 pm

It started with a bag of rice and a Bible tract. That was all Karen Dunham had to give poor refugees when she began her ministry five years ago in the West Bank town of Jericho.

The Clearwater woman went where few American women dared to go. She felt led to the Middle East, she says, to bring humanitarian aid and Christian teachings to the Arabs.

The timing was a little off. Her country had just started a war in nearby Iraq.

Her family thought she had gone daft. Yes, they knew about the religious conversion she experienced a decade earlier. She called it a radical encounter with God. The former Realtor and single mother gave her life to Christ and everything changed.

"When I drank and did drugs, no one was worried about me. Then I found Jesus, and that got them upset," she says.

Dunham, 51, is the founder of Living Bread International Church, a mission based in Jerusalem with outposts in Bethlehem, Jericho and, soon, Hebron. No one gave her much of a chance when she first arrived there. Her car was bombed once; her living quarters, three times. She got the reputation of being stubborn.

"You can't work for Jesus and have fear," she says. "You have to run after the giants, not flee from them. Like King David."

Dunham remembers when donations only trickled in and support was sparse. Early on, her annual budget was 1,500 shekels - about $300 a month. Last year's revenues were nearly $1 million. It goes a long way, with just a few staffers drawing small salaries. The bulk of the ministry's work is carried out by as many as 60 short-term volunteers at one time, and another 20 or so who stay for months.

One of those volunteers caused quite a commotion when she quit her day job Friday to work full time with Living Bread. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Monica Sierra resigned her seat on the bench - one year before her term expired - to help the rapidly growing mission expand its relief and spiritual outreach.

Sierra made two visits to Israel last year to see what the ministry was all about. On her third visit, she decided she couldn't leave. The work was too powerful to ignore.

"The atmosphere of the refugee camps changes as the aid and the light of God move into each home," says Sierra, 41. "The impact of giving hope to even one child's life could stop a terrorist bomb from being delivered to Tampa, New York City or Jerusalem."

Not everyone gets Sierra's decision. Grace Borgeson does. She has made six pilgrimages to Israel - three to volunteer with Living Bread. The South Tampa mother of three, who leads Bible studies, had the same transforming experience as the former judge.

"I think God gave her a promotion," Borgeson says of Sierra. "What she was doing here was beautiful and excellent, administering righteous judgment. Now God is giving her the opportunity to do it on an international level."

Word is getting out about Living Bread. The nondenominational church buys airtime on cable networks around the world for "Door of Hope," a weekly half-hour television program. (It airs in the Bay area at 7 p.m. Fridays on WCLF, Channel 22.)

There's a Web site (living breadchurch.com) with updates on the ministry's ongoing projects. Weekly church services are held on Tuesdays in a wedding hall in the center of Jericho. Sometimes, you can hear the sound of bombs blasting in the distance. "Worship music," Dunham likes to say.

In July, after observing growing acceptance for Dunham and her success in distributing aid in the tumultuous West Bank region, the Israeli Army cut an official agreement with Living Bread. It granted the ministry status as a nongovernmental organization and gave church volunteers permission to work in the region's 27 refugee camps.

Dunham meets with the Jewish soldiers on a monthly basis. They provide financial oversight for her organization and direction on delivering aid in the West Bank.

Last week, an Israeli officer acquainted with Dunham's work these past few years made an observation to her: "It seems like you can go through fires and not get burnt." Dunham got a kick out of that.

"They're Jews. This idea of an American Christian woman coming into the camps with a message that's changing lives, that's interesting to them. If it ends the cycle of violence, then why not?"

Every aid worker goes to the camps with the same cargo: provisions such as baby formula, rice and clothing, and editions of the full Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. Dunham says it's corporate policy to bring the religious materials.

"Our corporation, with Jesus as head of the board," she says.

Dunham doesn't believe in surprises or hiding the ministry's motives.

She is Christ's emissary in the Promised Land. She says you can't fight terrorism from a church pew, that you have to go to the people. She has no doubt that her way is working.

"I'm seeing peace in Jericho; I'm seeing peace between Palestinians and Israelis. I see Arabs weep and beg for forgiveness," she says. "I see things that only God can do."

Some of this troubles Ahmed Bedier. He is the director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He has no problem with Living Bread supplying humanitarian aid; he commends their good Samaritan works and devotion to a population that has been severely oppressed.

But he draws the line at the Christian evangelizing.

"These are starving people who are not thinking rationally," he says of the refugees. "They'll do what you say to get the food to keep them alive. They'll pray with and say they're converted. And likely, they'll be back at the mosque on Friday."

Bedier wonders about public reaction here if a group of Iraqi volunteers had arrived in the United States to give food, clothing and the Quran to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He can't imagine it.

Before Sierra left for her third mission, Bedier gave her a copy of the Quran, Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" and a packet of do's and don'ts regarding the Muslim culture. He says she was warm and receptive about his concerns.

He doesn't doubt her sincerity and passion for the work Living Bread is doing. But sometimes, he says, "people are blinded by their zeal and things backfire. You have to question the motives of people who go into hostile environments to push their religion, when there's so much that needs to be done in this country."

Borgeson, 44, says she doesn't have a choice about going to Israel.

Like Dunham and Sierra, she says God is leading the way. She believes the ministry's volunteers are the vessels to deliver a message of peace and love to people so impoverished, they're willing to become suicide bombers in exchange for money and the promise their families will be taken care of.

"They get desperate because they think they've been forgotten," she says. "We're there to show them that God doesn't forget anybody."

In early January, a few hours after one of her twin 18-year-old sons came up with the cross in the annual Greek Epiphany celebration in Tarpon Springs, Alex Kavouklis boarded a plane to Israel. She joined several other friends in a short-term mission trip to Arroub refugee camp in the West Bank to help out at Living Bread.

It was her third trip. This time, she brought three of her five children, taking them out of school for a week.

The divorced mother, 44, admits not everyone understands her intense love of the Middle East. Some even questioned why she would take her children to a region prone to violence. Take them to New York; go to the Bahamas, they told her.

"I wanted them to see that not everyone lives in this South Tampa bubble. This isn't the real world here," Kavouklis says. "They need to see how the rest of the world lives. And it did impact them."

She never imagined herself the type of person drawn to Israel, or the relief work she's doing with Living Bread. She can't explain the close connection she feels with the Palestinian women, even though they don't speak the same language or wear the same clothes.

Kavouklis only knows that when the refugee women come to the church and they pat the top of their heads during services - a signal they want prayers - she is overcome with emotion.

"It sounds corny, but what the world needs is love. And I see so much love in a place that I thought was supposed to be filled with hate. It's not that way at all," she says.

Christy Malone, 41, also a divorced South Tampa mom, went last month as well, taking all five of her kids. Like Kavouklis, she was making her third trip. She says she's not the same person she was before she met Dunham and saw the ministry's work from ground zero.

She is taken by this land that birthed Christianity, Judaism and Islam. She hears enough of the bad news. But she says her work with Living Bread shows her there is good news, there is hope.

"I see Jesus in Karen and in everything she does," Malone says. "She's got power and love and authority all mixed into one. You want to be a part of changing the world, one person at a time. And she makes it all seem possible."

Reporter Michelle Bearden shows some of the work being done by Living Bread volunteers in her "Keeping the Faith" segment at 9 a.m. today on News Channel 8. She can be reached at mbearden

DUNHAM APPEARANCES

WHAT: Karen Dunham, founder of Living Bread International Church, discusses the ministry in the Bay area.

WHEN and WHERE: Dunham appears at a 6 p.m. dinner Feb. 20 (speech at 7 p.m.) and during services at 8:30 and 11 a.m. Feb. 24 at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 100 Pasadena Ave. N., St. Petersburg; and at Community Bible Study at 10:15 a.m. Feb. 21 at Hyde Park Presbyterian Church, 1309 W. Swann Ave., Tampa

HOW MUCH: $5 (nonmembers) for Feb. 20 dinner; reservations required by Feb. 18

INFORMATION: Pasadena, (727) 345-0148; Swann, (813) 240-9450; livingbreadchurch

.com

@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7613.

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