By: Jerry Burke
This year's Town of Hempstead Pathfinder Awards, honors created to recognize the growing role of women in all aspects of the community, were presented to nine recipients from throughout the town in categories including education, business and health services.
When it came time for the town to acknowledge the contributions of a high school student, Choi was a natural choice. According to Supervisor Kate Murray, a good candidate for the Pathfinder award in the category is defined as "a young women who has shown outstanding leadership qualities and serves as an inspiration to others."
"Ms. Deborah Choi meets these criteria," said Murray at the awards ceremony last week. "In fact, she far exceeds them."
The 18-year-old Franklin Square resident has had the desire to do missionary work since she was 12. So, when her church, the Korean American Presbyterian Church of Queens, gave her the opportunity to travel to the impoverished east African country of Eritrea last year, she took it.
"First we had to raise money for our trip through church functions," said Choi. "We had car washes, sold food at our Memorial Day picnic and got local businesses to sponsor us and donate supplies."
Once the $20,000 was raised, the next step was preparing the materials she and her team of 13 missionaries would need. They gathered school supplies, textbooks, musical instruments and lesson plans for a three-week summer school session. In addition, the team managed to provide the playground equipment and food the principal of the mission school had requested.
Choi's project consisted of teaching young children, ages 5 to 13, in an international summer school, a job she loved. "A lot of the children were not able to speak English," said Choi. "They were so innocent and in many ways sheltered from what was happening in the world around them."
Eritrea, a county about the size of Pennsylvania, only recently won its independence from its southern neighbor, Ethiopia, after a 30-year war. Only five years after a referendum in 1993, a border war erupted with Ethiopia, forcing United Nations peacekeepers to patrol the new country.
"That's what was a little scary about being there," said Choi. "There were U.N. soldiers with guns everywhere." That wasn't the only startling factor Choi and her team faced. "Because it is a Muslim country with strict rules on public worship," said Choi, "we had to practice our faith with the blinds over the windows."
The experience, however, was positive enough for Choi to want to return this summer. "I have a choice to either go back or to work in another missionary in China," she said, adding that the China option would allow her to work with prisoners. "I haven't decided yet."
While her college acceptances are due to arrive later this month, Choi is pulling for either Tufts University in Massachusetts or the University of Michigan.
At the award ceremony, Murray recalled a quote from her mentor: "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." For the young missionary from Franklin Square, it looks like many new trails are waiting to be blazed.
