Despite tragedy, couples' passion lives on

JOLIET -- Jill Sperling is going to fulfill a dream in Africa.

She will leave Wednesday for a 17-day trip to the southeast African country of Malawi, where tens of thousands die of AIDS every year. More than half of Malawi's 12.6 million people live in poverty.

Sperling, the dean of students at Drauden Point Middle School, will spend a week in a village at the Tiyamike Mulungu Center. She will help missionaries Will and Pam Phillips, who care for 120 children, including 29 babies.

My heart is with the babies," Sperling said. "I just want to go to Africa and rock the babies."

Sperling, a Lombard resident, will be joined by her brothers, Joel and Jon Van Dahm, who live in Tempe, Ariz. They flew to Chicago on Monday.

Sperling also will distribute 3,000 of the 5,126 books that Drauden Point students collected in the last year. To pay for the $3,000 mailing cost, the student council donated money and so did teachers and friends.

Sperling and other teachers mailed the books Thursday. The remaining books will distributed in the area by Catholic Charities.

The trip is a dream that Sperling, 32, and her late husband, Bruce, had for many years. About two years ago, they decided to make the trip this summer.

But on the 2006 Memorial Day weekend, Bruce Sperling and his brother, Mark, tried to rescue a kayaker on the Fox River in Yorkville. The brothers and the kayaker drowned.

Jill Sperling said she and her husband met as children when she grew up in Orland Park and he lived in Palos Heights. They went to Christian schools together and graduated from Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights.

They were friends for 10 years before they began dating and were married in December 2004. He was a youth pastor at a Lombard church.

After Bruce's funeral, talk among members of both families turned to the Africa trip. Soon afterward, her brothers decided to go with her.

"They saw an urgent need there and felt they were blessed to be in a position to help. That desire was reflected in Bruce's life," Joel Van Dahm said of Bruce and Jill Sperling in an e-mail.

The brothers are to spend a week in the country's capital. Joel Van Dahm has a college degree in engineering and he is interested in water systems. Jon wants to share his knowledge of running a small business and help the babies.

"We can be a symbol of hope in a place that appears hopeless," Jon Van Dahm wrote in an e-mail. "That's why this will not be a one-time visit but a life-long connection ... a new family."

The Phillips have lived in the Malawi village of Bangula since 2003 and some of their support is from Generational Hope Christian Centre in Hobart, Wash. The couple operates the center on $4,000 a month. Besides books, Sperling will take supplies, such as blankets and baby bottles.

"For Bruce and I, it is about loving people and showing Christ's love in a very active and tangible way," she said of the trip. "Both of us always felt drawn to children in general, but specifically to orphans and children who have diseases or just to children who have nothing."