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David Valentino has hitchhiked and freight-jumped his way around America, bunked in Buddhist monasteries in the Himalayas and slept in family sheds in Nepal.

Along the way, faith saved him from throwing his life away, led him to his Nepali wife and called him to work with Catholic missions abroad.

Today, the 34-year-old parishioner of Our Lady of Hope in Copake Falls is working with his parish to fund education projects in slum mountain villages outside the main cities of Nepal.

A Nepali Catholic priest who built a school in Pokhara, a large city in the center of the country, updates the Valentinos on the needs of his people.

Our Lady of Hope parish, a 2010 merger of St. John Vianney parish in Claverack and St. Bridget's in Copake Falls, is accustomed to working with foreigners. St. Bridget's was linked to a parish in Nicaragua for almost two decades; that relationship continues.

Though Our Lady of Hope has not yet drafted a formal plan to sponsor what Mr. Valentino calls the Asha Outreach Project, many parishioners have sent individual donations and patronized a sale of handmade Nepali wool clothing.

"Asha" means "hope" in Nepali and Hindi.

"I think it's great," said Bill VonAncken, treasurer for human development at the parish. "You have someone from your own parish doing basically missionary work - your very own, doing the Lord's work."

The Valentinos' first project was to pay for the surgery of a low-income Nepali man with a gangrenous leg. Donations from Copake Falls Catholics funded a new prosthetic limb.

The Nepali man had been fired from his carpentry job because of his disability. His wife had just given birth to their first child. Mr. Valentino stepped in to find the family housing.

Other projects have related to building and funding four education outreach centers - including one in Gagangauda, a village 45 minutes east of Pokhara. Less than $400 (U.S.) per year is an average salary for many parents of the new school's 112 students.

Almost 340 students are served by the different centers. Mr. Valentino estimates that maintaining the outreach centers will cost almost $15,000.

Most schools in Nepal are government-funded, but their quality tends to be less than that of private schools. The greatest need lies in the villages, where teachers usually work without pay and students leave at early ages to work in their parents' trades.

Electricity is limited throughout the country. Most villagers easily find water flowing from glaciers, but city residents buy catch basins to collect rainwater on their roofs.

The last time the Valentinos stayed in Nepal, they paid for a truck to pump water into a holding tank after the public water failed to arrive.

Mr. Valentino seeks sponsorship for 40 individual students - some from the villages and some from St. Francis School in Pokhara, which was built by Rev. Anthony Fernandez, a Missionary of St. Francis Xavier.

Sponsors would pay for students' uniforms, school supplies, medical needs and food; some students are orphaned, some disabled, some poor.

Mr. Valentino didn't always know his purpose. He finished high school in Copake, but left art school before graduating. He donated his childhood savings to charity and lived on the streets up and down both U.S. coasts for two and a half years.

After running into trouble several times, developing a drug addiction and feeling responsible for the demise of his friend's marriage, he planned to end his life in the Hudson River in Manhattan. But music wafting through the streets inspired him to visit an outreach center run by an evangelical church. Members there helped him through the rough patch.

Mr. Valentino returned home - and returned to the Catholic Church. He became active in his parish, even considering studying theology. After another stint at art school, he worked 16 hours a day as a manager for a multimedia distribution company.

One of his employees there, a Russian, described an event in India about which Mr. Valentino had had a dream. "I had a feeling inside like, 'Wow, this is really more than a coincidence,'" Mr. Valentino said. "I'm really meant to go to this place."

He made his way to India in 2001, studying interfaith topics. During the Maha Kumbha Mela in Allahabad, a pilgrimage that attracted 60 million people, he witnessed devotional sacrifices and took a ritual dip in the Ganges River.

Mr. Valentino returned to the U.S. and worked for his father's construction company, took trips to Nicaragua with the Copake Falls parish and spent three months staying in Catholic seminaries in Thailand, where he worked on communal farming projects.

In 2005, he returned to India to work for the Missionaries of Charity and others, splitting his time between caring for the elderly and teaching English to children. On breaks, he traveled and worked at orphanages and nursing homes in other parts of India.

Mr. Valentino even sat with the 15-year-old boy known as "Little Buddha," who meditated in the woods for eight months without food.

Then, at age 29, Mr. Valentino decided to move to Nepal, a country he had only briefly visited. His house mother introduced him to his future wife, Sanju, whose full name means "flawless victory."

Sanju, 19 at the time, was a Christian convert from Buddhism. Mr. Valentino initially worried about their age difference, but knew within two meetings that Sanju was right for him.

"I allowed the Holy Spirit to make the decision for me," he said.

The couple's son, Mallu, was born in 2007. Mallu and his mother were baptized in the Catholic Church the following year. The family now has residences in both Copake and Pokhara.

Mr. Valentino is currently sidelined by an illness, but plans to go back into construction when his health returns.

He says his faith has played a large role in his mission work.

"It's been my foundation because there's definitely been plenty of challenges and dark nights," he said. "It's helped me maintain focus."

Without faith, he said, his accomplishments "wouldn't even have been possible."

(01/20/11) [[In-content Ad]]

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