By J.A. Dunn

LAKELAND — As a boy Dan Terry fell in love with the people and land of Afghanistan when he traveled the country with his parents from their home in India.

Today Terry calls Afghanistan home. Terry had his first Afghan assignment in 1971 and has never wanted to leave. Terry and his wife, Seija, married in 1976 and have lived in Afghanistan since 1980. They have three daughters.

They serve as Christian workers of the United Methodist Church who are commissioned and assigned by the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) to an ecumenical development organization in Afghanistan. They are supported by 18 Florida Conference churches, which combined have given more than $16,000 this year, as well as churches in other conferences.

While visiting family and friends in the United States for several months, the Terry’s appeared briefly on stage at the 2003 Florida Annual Conference event May 27-30 and shared a portion of their history.

They live in a remote village 200 kilometers west of Kabul in a mountainous area 9,000 feet above sea level. They occasionally travel to Kabul for supplies.

"I have an obsession, a love affair, a fascination with the people and their situation," Dan Terry said. "I like the huge forces and the minute forces that come together and history that’s being made in the country."

While others may look at world events unfolding in the news and see bad things, Terry sees the beginning of the Kingdom of Heaven unfolding before his eyes.

"It’s wonderful to be able to peek at that," Terry said. "It’s like building a boat in the water while we’re sitting in it."

While Dan Terry works with men in various villages, providing agriculture support and water resource management, Seija Terry works with the women.

"These women are the poorest of the poor," she said. "They don’t even know what’s available or what will benefit them. These are women who have never been out of their village, never seen a foreigner, never sat in a car or chair or seen a table. These are very isolated people. There is a belief that one pill will cure, just cure, all. First, we have to find out what they really need and start from there. There is no pill that will cure everything."

What Seija has been able to do is start a program using her registered nurse and midwife background to train women to care for other women in their individual villages.

Dan is in charge of arranging access and logistics for international and interdenominational aid groups and has facilitated a well being placed in one of the villages.

"We don’t do the work for them," Seija said. "They do the work; it belongs to them. They decide where it goes, how to put it in, everything. So that they own the project."

While the people in the villages are enthused to have the Terry’s help, they are also suspicious about why they would choose to live where and how they do, Seija said. She said in Islam, the predominant religion of the area, people could earn their way to heaven by performing good deeds for their fellow man.

But slowly the couple is winning Christians for Christ.

One villager became a Christian when Dan had to leave the man in a stalled car in the middle of the night during a two-day journey to Kabul while he went in search of assistance.

"I told him I would be back with help and to stay there and to pray," Terry recalled. "When I got back he professed his love of Jesus Christ. It’s something that I don’t really remember, but he does. I just remember being frustrated that the car had stopped, getting tired of fooling with it and using a few choice words before I left. But it’s something that meant all the world to him."