CHARITABLE WORK Global Santas reach out to desperate people in troubled lands

Two ambassadors of Samaritan's Purse are globe-trotting gift-givers.
SEATTLE TIMES
CENTERVILLE, Wash. -- It's rare when Paul and Joyce Chiles are not in Uzbekistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone or Iraq.
The horror and sadness they see in the world's trouble spots has rewards that uproot them so often from their pleasant 100-year-old farmhouse.
"There must be some rewards; we're not getting paid much," says Joyce. "Remind me, honey!" she coaxes Paul, her physician husband and high-school sweetheart.
The Chileses, who are devout Christians, live on a 2,700-acre ranch in south central Washington.
Backed by the $100-million-plus yearly budget of the efficient but sometimes controversial Samaritan's Purse, the Chileses travel the world, together and alone, acting like Santa Claus.
Quick action
With a snap of her fingers in Tashkent, Joyce can buy toilets and a washer and dryer for a run-down orphanage. A few e-mails and phone calls, and she's got a hot meal every day for starving Russian elderly, a $25,000 program good for two years, including the purchase of a small house.
Paul can quickly arrange to help update the skills of Afghan physicians who haven't had new training since the Taliban took over. Hospitals looted in Baghdad? Here's $150,000 in immediate medical supplies with no red tape for Shiite, government and Catholic hospitals.
It's been this way throughout their married life.
"What I do now is go and seek people who have really desperate needs and give them what they need with no strings attached," says Paul. "How could anybody ask for anything more rewarding than that?"
In a multifaith era, organizations have learned to be more sensitive. But shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Franklin Graham, the president of the Boone, N.C.-based Samaritan's Purse, denounced Islam.
Paul was in Afghanistan and was about to meet with administrators to deliver medicines to a Shiite hospital.
"We wanted to be above board," Paul recalls. "We said, 'We're from Samaritan's Purse; are you familiar with it?' And they said, 'Ahhhh. Franklin Graham. Evil religion. Is that the one?'"
"And we said, 'Yeah, that's the one!'"
Paul said, "I can't speak for his personal views; that's him. As far as the organization goes, there's been tremendous acceptance everywhere we go."
Religious understanding
Paul tells the story of working with Afghani commander Mohammad Atta (not the Sept. 11 hijacker of the same name) in Mazar-e-Sharif to get the area's first hospital running. After a year of visits, Atta came to them and asked if they were Christians.
Yes, Paul told him, "We told you that right up front." When Atta asked him why they didn't have a church, Paul told him it was because they were in a Muslim country.
"Take that building there and make it your church," Paul says Atta told him. "We want you to worship God in your way in our country."
There was "Great respect," Paul says. "Both ways."
Change for the better
A sea change in the disaster-relief and development community is welcomed by the Chileses. In the past, good-hearted people threw money at a need and then walked away.
"It fell down," Joyce says. "Nobody had a vested interest in it. Nobody knew how to take care of it. Now they're looking at development in a more logical way."
Paul asks what could Samaritan's Purse do for the next phase of development, or what local organization is working well but needs funds.
Samaritan's Purse does hope the influence of the local church, if there is a one, will expand when people see the work they do, Paul says. But the biggest selling point for him is that the aid comes unrestricted and fast.
"That's why I love working for them," Paul says. "They have a resource base that enables them to give immediate relief without waiting for government funding or applying for grants."
The grants from elsewhere often follow, or are used for long-terms projects such as rebuilding schools or hospitals. But in the meantime for the people crushed by war or hurricanes or pandemics, here are three truckloads of food or medicine.
How they live
The Chileses get a good income from their ranch, which produces wheat, alfalfa and cattle. Samaritan's Purse pays their traveling expenses and a small stipend, which the couple often donates back.
When Paul thinks of the rewards, affection-starved orphans in a refugee camp in Rutare, Rwanda, comes to mind. They lined up by the dozens to give him a hug goodbye, one-by-one.
Joyce thinks of what it would be like to take every donor with her and say, "Look. Your $50 helped do this.
"It's like the story of the guy walking down the beach and all the starfish are washed up, and he starts throwing them back one at a time," she says. "You just have to think about: I can help that person or I can help that family. There are other people, you hope, who can also do something."
XFor more information, visit: www.samaritan.org.