Friday, June 16, 2006 11:01 PM CDT
Local coffee house owners taking business plan to Asian mission fields
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
CHARLESTON -- Mathematics isn’t the only universal language.
At least, that’s what Ryan and Dulcy Dawson think.
“Coffee speaks in every language,” said Dulcy. “Everybody likes coffee.”
That’s why the Jackson Avenue Coffee co-owners are preparing to depart for a two-year missions trip to the Pacific rim. Based out of Hawaii, the Charleston couple will teach other missionaries how to set up and operate coffee shops in countries where mission work by itself is discouraged or forbidden, but private business ownership is encouraged.
The Dawsons will focus on what they call “friendship evangelism.”
“It’s hanging out and getting to know people while running a successful business,” said Dulcy.
“Coffee houses are great, because they’re a neutral ground,” Dulcy said. “It’s the people in a coffee house that give (it) personality ... It can be run by Christians, and hopefully it will be an attractive, loving place to go to.”
The Dawsons are working through Youth With a Mission, an international organization with which Dulcy has been affiliated since 1993, when she attended YWAM “Discipleship Training School” in Honolulu. That was followed by a three-month stint helping in Muslim orphanages in the Philippines.
Dulcy and Ryan — both alumni of Eastern Illinois University — met in 1995 after he left the U.S. Navy. They married in 1996, and opened Jackson Avenue Coffee in Charleston about four years ago.
The couple reunited with YWAM earlier this year, as Dulcy spent January through April at the organization’s “School of Biblical Studies” in Hawaii, while Ryan worked on the maintenance crew at the YWAM “base,” while also teaching five Chinese students English as a second language.
At the YWAM facility, the Dawsons also interacted regularly with missionaries going to and from Asian and Pacific island countries.
Many of the missionaries expressed the same concern: Various “closed” countries, like China, would not allow missionaries to stay long-term unless they were also legitimate business owners.
The Dawsons repeatedly found themselves explaining the process of establishing a coffee house in detail with numerous missionaries.
In August, the Dawsons return to Hawaii to begin teaching coffee shop operation in earnest.
“We are going to train missionaries on how to run a coffee house ... everything from how to make a good espresso (to) having an effective business plan,” said Dulcy.
Already on the schedule, the couple will lead a team to Thailand, where they will help develop a coffee house for the Tamar Center — a YWAM mission that offers Thai women (in Thailand, prostitution is legal) an alternative to life on the street.
Christel Rohrs, a South African missionary who works with the Tamar Center, said in an e-mail to Dulcy that she is “so excited” about the Dawsons’ project because “God is into coffee shops ... people coming to relax and find a ‘safe haven,’ (and) this is where they can find Jesus.”
A fundraiser for the Thailand project will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. July 8 at The Warehouse in Charleston, and will include “music, dancing, all kinds of stuff,” said Dulcy.
Those wishing to donate to the Tamar Center outreach may write checks to the Salisbury Church, P.O. Box 466, Charleston 61920.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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