Matt is also safely home, which has improved all circumstances :) We're all just better when we're together.
While Matt is gone, I always try to catch up on my reading and girl-movies.
So a few nights ago after the girls were in bed, I was sifting through the most recent issue of Christianity Today, and was particularly interested in their focus on giving this Christmas...how helping helps, when helping hurts, how to help, how to give, encouraging me as all their issues do to think.
I wasn't just interested from the perspective of how I should and could be giving, but also from the perspective of a fund-raiser..from the perspective of a woman who has lived for years and years in a place so DEPENDENT upon giving and aid, a place where helping has hurt so much, where so much help is still needed, working at a school that very much so needs partnership, working with men and women who desperately need help every day.
I haven't seen shoeboxes loaded up at your churches...but I have seen them being distributed in Haiti. I haven't picked out a Christmas animal in a catalog, but I have wrestled the ropes of many smelly goats for all kinds of families. I haven't sent boxes of stuff to the ends of the earth to bless someone, but I have received those boxes, and tried to figure out how to use them as a blessing. I do not sponsor a child-in-need every month, but I do give them all snacks and learn about their families when they come in from riding Lily and Sofie's bikes. In eleven years, we have paid for more land, more livestock, more schoolbooks, more motorcycles, more block, more water, more medical bills, more surgeries, more medication, more groceries, more cement than we EVER EVER would have believed. You would have, too, if you were here.
And while it's all hand-to-hand instead of check-to-envelope, that's still giving, and it's still complicated, and we still ask ourselves continually what is right, what we should do, what we must do, what we must not, what's going to really matter, what's not, what we CAN do. And when more is needed, we can't choose to just throw the catalog away or delete the email, because it has a face, and she's at our door and chatting with our children. We gotta figure that out, because he's waiting for an answer.
I'll tell you what we always tell ourselves: think, think now, think long term, thing good, think best, think healthy and then stop all your thinking and pray...and DO that. And when we mess up, and we do, we make sure NOT to do that again, and to explain why.
This flow chart CT shared alone breaks it down SO simply...run your Christmas/year-end giving plans honestly through this real fast and determine if how we're giving is actually HARMful or ineffective.
CT noted that raising funds for little girls is by far the most successful, and that the least successful fund-raising attempts were for young-adult men. It noted that raising funds for humanitarian needs was easiest, while raising funds for education or spiritual formation is much more challenging.
Well. Talk about discouraging.
Because that's a big part of what I do here: try to raise funds for the spiritual growth and transformation of young adult men and women.
And I get it. I have an intimately huge heart precious little girls. Buying chicks for little girls is always going to have more appeal than buying rice for young men who are studying God's Word. We have lots of friends here in all the ministry realms...physical and spiritual, and those dear ones who work with malnourished babies always have way less issues with funding than those who work with 20-year-old men.
But it's all connected, isn't it. And we all want real and lasting and healthy change, past Christmas morning, don't we.
And that's what CT was really trying to get me to think about...the way none of it is isolated...that little girl isn't actually being handed fluffy chicks. Her parents are. And if we want to help transform her true situation, we need to help her parents truly transform THEIR situations, and I have SAID it before and I will SAY it again...I have seen it over and over and over and over...true and lasting transformation only comes through the giving and receiving and growing of CHRIST...not boxes, not chickies, not money.
The other day at lunch, I was asking Gertha about a few of the kids on her mountain who always seem to be hanging around her house. She told me more about each situation, and then she told me that they're all in this special club now, on Saturdays, and laughed about how jealous her Thaliya is because it's for young people 13-18, and so she can't go yet. She started describing it to me, this gathering where 50-60 young people from the mountain get together on Saturday afternoon in a yard and hang out, have cookies and a drink, get to know each other better, and then study the Bible together, talk about how they can be praying for each other and growing in their walks with Christ, and spend the last hour in prayer and worship.
"Nobody's ever done anything like that before up there," Gertha told me, "And you know most of those kids are not in school and have nothing going for them. So it's a big deal."
"Huh!" I said, really thinking about the level of commitment and patience this kind of ongoing ministry would TAKE to such a hard age-range. "Does a church do it?" I asked her.
"No, it's not a church thing" she said, "It's just this one young man. I don't know, maybe you know him. I see him coming to school here sometimes."
I'm going to call him Alex, and he's a third year student. He's exactly that "difficult to fund-raise for" category. He's 30. He's married, he has two little girls, he's pastoring a little church, and at the start of this semester, he came to close his dossier. He and his wife were in a desperate place, he explained, and either he could come to Emmaus, or his girls could go to school. The choice was simple, because Alex is a GOOD dad, a present dad, a DIFFERENT Haiti, and so he would finish his studies "some other day."
He went to the dorm to pack up, and Matt and I pulled his account. He needed $80.60. We didn't need to pray about it this time...we paid it and he got back to class.
That was back in August. Then Gertha and I are just chatting over lunch last week and I realize that it's HIM doing that ministry. It's HIS money, it's HIS time, it's HIS initiative bringing these forgotten 13-18 year olds together to be remembered, to be loved, to be pursed by the Father. Nothing to do with Emmaus, nothing to do with recognition or prestige, he doesn't even know we know it's a ministry he's doing...on top of pastoring, on top of parenting, on top of being a full-time theology student.
What in the world am I saying?
I'm saying that praise the Lord we were able to support a 30-year-old man. And by that were unknowingly supporting a youth club and the going forth of the GOSPEL in that impoverished zone, supporting a set of godly parents who are BOTH in the home, which is rare and far between indeed, we are supporting two precious little girls who unlike MANY are IN SCHOOL.
There will be no shoeboxes for those youth. But I am PRAYING there will be transformation, and that their story of being INVESTED in will blossom far brighter than any trinkets. I am PRAYING that God gives us more chances STILL, and I'm telling you that there are 20-40 year old men and women God is sending who are called and active and being used by a mighty God in a mighty way.
We cannot give up on young adults because they're not as cute or because many of them seem to actually be the problem. They are where the WHOLE cycle changes, and pouring into them is to pour into EVERYONE.
He is at WORK through the students at EBS, ministering in life-transforming, sustainable, relational ways through Haitian young men and women to Haitian babies and little girls and difficult teenage boys and men and women who have been entrenched in voodoo their whole lives, to broken broken people--not in ways we've told them to minister, not in places we're sending them, not to people we have identified--but where God's calling them, doing what God's gifted and leading them to do, to people we don't even know exist.
THAT'S life-on-life incarnational ministry, THAT is the story of Jesus come to earth, THAT is the Christmas story, THAT is the story at Emmaus today.
I don't care what the statistics say is hard. If I can't get anyone excited about the men and women no one is excited about and to SEE that THEY are where TRUE. CHANGE. lies, if I can't get you to see the importance of this not-exactly-but-totally-humanitarian daily ministry of forming and feeding and filling these young men and women to daily GO...without pay, without promises, without any personal gain, without support...
Then I stink at this job.
And maybe I do. But I never really share because it's my job...I share because it's my story. And so I'm just gonna keep on sharing it. Because whatever ugly you're seeing today, it's true and real and there. We see it here, too, lots and lots. But there is an awful lot of beautiful. It might not look like Target beautiful, and it might not come in flimsy paper, and money just may not be able to MAKE it beautiful.
But when one of our students is a present father and husband, when SEVENTY percent grew up without one, that's beautiful. And when one of our students is taking his two pennies and giving them away to people I'll never know in great need, that's beautiful too. It's beautiful each Saturday when 50 teenagers get together to hear Alex preach the word, it's beautiful when orphans and unloved children are fed and loved in the homes of our students, it's beautiful when the Gospel is preached today in chapel and the same message preached again and again throughout Haiti this afternoon and evening and weekend. It's beautiful when we go to a church to support one student and find three students there instead, working together. It's beautiful to hear students sharing programs that are working in their communities with each other, to see our men and women go out to support those who are hurting, to see Belony dancing with 50 small children in Difour...and to be calling out to them by name.
I wasn't just interested from the perspective of how I should and could be giving, but also from the perspective of a fund-raiser..from the perspective of a woman who has lived for years and years in a place so DEPENDENT upon giving and aid, a place where helping has hurt so much, where so much help is still needed, working at a school that very much so needs partnership, working with men and women who desperately need help every day.
I haven't seen shoeboxes loaded up at your churches...but I have seen them being distributed in Haiti. I haven't picked out a Christmas animal in a catalog, but I have wrestled the ropes of many smelly goats for all kinds of families. I haven't sent boxes of stuff to the ends of the earth to bless someone, but I have received those boxes, and tried to figure out how to use them as a blessing. I do not sponsor a child-in-need every month, but I do give them all snacks and learn about their families when they come in from riding Lily and Sofie's bikes. In eleven years, we have paid for more land, more livestock, more schoolbooks, more motorcycles, more block, more water, more medical bills, more surgeries, more medication, more groceries, more cement than we EVER EVER would have believed. You would have, too, if you were here.
And while it's all hand-to-hand instead of check-to-envelope, that's still giving, and it's still complicated, and we still ask ourselves continually what is right, what we should do, what we must do, what we must not, what's going to really matter, what's not, what we CAN do. And when more is needed, we can't choose to just throw the catalog away or delete the email, because it has a face, and she's at our door and chatting with our children. We gotta figure that out, because he's waiting for an answer.
I'll tell you what we always tell ourselves: think, think now, think long term, thing good, think best, think healthy and then stop all your thinking and pray...and DO that. And when we mess up, and we do, we make sure NOT to do that again, and to explain why.
This flow chart CT shared alone breaks it down SO simply...run your Christmas/year-end giving plans honestly through this real fast and determine if how we're giving is actually HARMful or ineffective.
Well. Talk about discouraging.
Because that's a big part of what I do here: try to raise funds for the spiritual growth and transformation of young adult men and women.
And I get it. I have an intimately huge heart precious little girls. Buying chicks for little girls is always going to have more appeal than buying rice for young men who are studying God's Word. We have lots of friends here in all the ministry realms...physical and spiritual, and those dear ones who work with malnourished babies always have way less issues with funding than those who work with 20-year-old men.
But it's all connected, isn't it. And we all want real and lasting and healthy change, past Christmas morning, don't we.
And that's what CT was really trying to get me to think about...the way none of it is isolated...that little girl isn't actually being handed fluffy chicks. Her parents are. And if we want to help transform her true situation, we need to help her parents truly transform THEIR situations, and I have SAID it before and I will SAY it again...I have seen it over and over and over and over...true and lasting transformation only comes through the giving and receiving and growing of CHRIST...not boxes, not chickies, not money.
The other day at lunch, I was asking Gertha about a few of the kids on her mountain who always seem to be hanging around her house. She told me more about each situation, and then she told me that they're all in this special club now, on Saturdays, and laughed about how jealous her Thaliya is because it's for young people 13-18, and so she can't go yet. She started describing it to me, this gathering where 50-60 young people from the mountain get together on Saturday afternoon in a yard and hang out, have cookies and a drink, get to know each other better, and then study the Bible together, talk about how they can be praying for each other and growing in their walks with Christ, and spend the last hour in prayer and worship.
"Nobody's ever done anything like that before up there," Gertha told me, "And you know most of those kids are not in school and have nothing going for them. So it's a big deal.""Huh!" I said, really thinking about the level of commitment and patience this kind of ongoing ministry would TAKE to such a hard age-range. "Does a church do it?" I asked her.
"No, it's not a church thing" she said, "It's just this one young man. I don't know, maybe you know him. I see him coming to school here sometimes."
I'm going to call him Alex, and he's a third year student. He's exactly that "difficult to fund-raise for" category. He's 30. He's married, he has two little girls, he's pastoring a little church, and at the start of this semester, he came to close his dossier. He and his wife were in a desperate place, he explained, and either he could come to Emmaus, or his girls could go to school. The choice was simple, because Alex is a GOOD dad, a present dad, a DIFFERENT Haiti, and so he would finish his studies "some other day."
He went to the dorm to pack up, and Matt and I pulled his account. He needed $80.60. We didn't need to pray about it this time...we paid it and he got back to class.
That was back in August. Then Gertha and I are just chatting over lunch last week and I realize that it's HIM doing that ministry. It's HIS money, it's HIS time, it's HIS initiative bringing these forgotten 13-18 year olds together to be remembered, to be loved, to be pursed by the Father. Nothing to do with Emmaus, nothing to do with recognition or prestige, he doesn't even know we know it's a ministry he's doing...on top of pastoring, on top of parenting, on top of being a full-time theology student.
What in the world am I saying?
I'm saying that praise the Lord we were able to support a 30-year-old man. And by that were unknowingly supporting a youth club and the going forth of the GOSPEL in that impoverished zone, supporting a set of godly parents who are BOTH in the home, which is rare and far between indeed, we are supporting two precious little girls who unlike MANY are IN SCHOOL.
There will be no shoeboxes for those youth. But I am PRAYING there will be transformation, and that their story of being INVESTED in will blossom far brighter than any trinkets. I am PRAYING that God gives us more chances STILL, and I'm telling you that there are 20-40 year old men and women God is sending who are called and active and being used by a mighty God in a mighty way.
We cannot give up on young adults because they're not as cute or because many of them seem to actually be the problem. They are where the WHOLE cycle changes, and pouring into them is to pour into EVERYONE.
He is at WORK through the students at EBS, ministering in life-transforming, sustainable, relational ways through Haitian young men and women to Haitian babies and little girls and difficult teenage boys and men and women who have been entrenched in voodoo their whole lives, to broken broken people--not in ways we've told them to minister, not in places we're sending them, not to people we have identified--but where God's calling them, doing what God's gifted and leading them to do, to people we don't even know exist.
THAT'S life-on-life incarnational ministry, THAT is the story of Jesus come to earth, THAT is the Christmas story, THAT is the story at Emmaus today.
I don't care what the statistics say is hard. If I can't get anyone excited about the men and women no one is excited about and to SEE that THEY are where TRUE. CHANGE. lies, if I can't get you to see the importance of this not-exactly-but-totally-humanitarian daily ministry of forming and feeding and filling these young men and women to daily GO...without pay, without promises, without any personal gain, without support...
Then I stink at this job.
But when one of our students is a present father and husband, when SEVENTY percent grew up without one, that's beautiful. And when one of our students is taking his two pennies and giving them away to people I'll never know in great need, that's beautiful too. It's beautiful each Saturday when 50 teenagers get together to hear Alex preach the word, it's beautiful when orphans and unloved children are fed and loved in the homes of our students, it's beautiful when the Gospel is preached today in chapel and the same message preached again and again throughout Haiti this afternoon and evening and weekend. It's beautiful when we go to a church to support one student and find three students there instead, working together. It's beautiful to hear students sharing programs that are working in their communities with each other, to see our men and women go out to support those who are hurting, to see Belony dancing with 50 small children in Difour...and to be calling out to them by name.
When He's at work...it's beautiful.
And He is.
And He is.
Praise the Lord
.
Wow.....
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