Déjà Vu

Ever since Ashlee won the whole series of Little House on the Prairie books in her first month with us, she has been fascinated with Little House. We got the first season of the TV series and have been watching it together.

Last weekend we arrived at an episode called "Plague" about the spread of typhoid in Walnut Grove. As we were watching, I was flipping through the newspaper I hadn't gotten to the day before. And there before me was the plague in our time. No, it wasn't typhoid but cholera, spreading quickly in Haiti. Officials are worried about how the numbers will jump when—not if, they say—the disease hits the tent cities of Port-au-Prince.

Living our insulated lives, it's hard to remember that plagues still ravage the world, plagues that can be prevented, in this case by proper sanitation and clean drinking water. While officials try to find the cause, and some blame the U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal, the goal should be to eradicate this disease and other plagues from the planet. In most cases we have the know-how. We just need the will—and the funding—to do it.

If you want to help with the immediate need in Haiti, you can support Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in English, Doctors without Borders, or Partners in Health. If you want to work toward long-term solutions, consider a donation to The Carter Center's health programs or UNICEF's Achieving Zero Campaign.

If only plagues were relegated to old TV shows about an olden time rather than reality. (I guess I can be thankful that at least it's not yet on reality TV.)

The Potters’ Chin

Jenn Potter and her husband Dan were members of our church in Delaware about 10 years ago. As Jenn puts it, we “share a love of reaching out beyond the church walls to be a light to the nations for the sake of the gospel, a light that Christ has made us and called us to walk in.” We still keep in touch, and I knew about a unique ministry Jenn is passionate about. That’s why I asked her to do a guest blog. I am sure it will encourage you in your search to make a difference.

Since our time in Delaware, God has brought us to the Dallas area and through a series of wonderful events, lead us to a ministry that is the answer to a cry of my heart since I was a teenager and a prayer for my family since we were married. I want to share with you a bit about our story for two main reasons: #1. to encourage you to persevere in prayer, especially if you feel called to serve in a certain area but see no way to do it at present, and #2. to let you know about a possible way to affect and interact with the nations without ever leaving your town.

Let me start in the present and tell you a bit about what #2 looks like in our lives. Dallas/Fort Worth is one of the six officially recognized resettlement sites for refugees in Texas. The resettlement has moved outward toward the suburbs, and today in the area I live (about 30 minutes from downtown Dallas), it is estimated that there are 2,000 refugees from the country of Burma who live, work, and go to school here.

They are a people group called the Chin, a group that has been persecuted for racial, political, and religious reasons in Burma since the early 1990s. They are a rural people, mostly living in villages where they farm, and have no indoor plumbing, little education, and none of the paperwork our country seems built upon.

The Chin have left Burma by the tens of thousands, largely to Malaysia where they have waited for years to be resettled. I met a Chin family yesterday who arrived in the U.S. in early September—they had been in Malaysia for eight years, waiting for a country to take them in. They come with one suitcase, little to no English, and limited government resettlement support, which ends after 8 months. Perhaps you can begin to imagine the culture, language, and way of life shock they live in, literally for years, and the massive need they have to make American friends who can help them navigate this complicate world we live in with all of our systems, paperwork, busy-ness, computers, etc. That is where “we Americans” come in!

There are countless ways you can help a refugee including donating items, assisting with paperwork and, more than anything, just taking the time to care about who they are, to smile and welcome them, to pray for them and their families back in Burma and Malaysia, and to continue to be there as a resource as they come up against more and more things they do not understand.

Sometimes we have volunteers who wonder about the danger of enabling them, or treating them as if they don’t know anything, and so on. I had a good wake-up call to the reality of what they are up against when my sister spent a morning with me visiting some Chin apartments. She had recently returned from teaching English is China for 18 months. She is a college-graduate, who has lived abroad before and speaks three languages (although not Chinese). She was so intrigued by what we were doing because she said, “This is what we had in China—someone to help us ‘figure out’ how to do things there because it is so different than in America.” The university she worked for had provided a “cultural liaison,” if you will, for her while she was there, someone who helped her know when she needed to reapply with the government for various things, how to find her way around, how to cook, how to live in China. So if my bold, educated sister needed help from the Chinese while she lived in their country, how much more do these refugees, who are mostly illiterate even in their own language, have little to no schooling, and are beaten down from years in refugee camps, need our help to navigate life in America?

I could go on and on about the Chin, and refugees in general, but if you are interested in more information about them or the specifics of this type of ministry, you can visit this link: hv.thevillagechurch.net/chin-refugees

If this resonates with you at all, I would encourage you to look for refugees in your area. You could try to find connections through schools or churches near lower-income apartment complexes. You could look up resettlement agencies located in your area. You don’t need a large ministry to get involved with—just find a family (sometimes the hardest part) and begin a friendship with them. Ask to help them with their mail. Or cook a meal together—I’ve found the Chin love spaghetti! Once you develop a friendship and they know you are going to keep coming back, they will open up to you and the ways you can help them will be countless.

And don’t give up. Whether it’s helping refugees or whatever your passion is, hang in there if connecting with it is not coming easily. I knew I wanted to serve the poor and oppressed, and I especially have a heart for those from third-world countries. But I didn’t know how to do that where I was living, short of mission trips.

My husband and I wanted to serve together, and once we had kids, we wanted to serve as a family. So for the 13 years of our marriage, we tried about everything we could find locally in addition to international mission trips: nursing homes, Habitat for Humanity, student mentoring, inner city ministries, ESL for Spanish speakers, soup kitchens, Thanksgiving and Christmas outreaches. But we always found the ministry wasn’t exactly for us, wasn’t where our hearts were, or wasn’t close enough for it to become a lifestyle for us.

But we kept praying and we kept trying. It wasn’t until 18 months ago that we got connected with the Chin Refugee Ministry, and it was actually through contacts made during those years of trying out various ministries. I am overjoyed to be able to use my gifts and passions in a ministry that feels tailor made for me (thank You, God!) but I still remember that frustration of desperately wanting a way to serve and not finding it.

If that is you, hang on—keep praying as the persistent widow of Luke 18, keep trying out things that might be a possibility, and trust that God will guide you to that place He has for you and equip you with everything good for doing His will.

Visit a Christian Bookstore; Help Haiti

I love books. I know you know that if you've read the blog more than once or met me in person. Even when I try to swear off buying books for a season—"I'll use the library!" "I'll not buy a book until I read every book on my to-be-read shelves" (yes, it's way beyond a to-be-read pile)—the resolve only lasts until I enter the next bookstore or see the next book advertised.

So I'm thrilled to announce a compassionate reason to visit your local Christian bookstore on Saturday, October 23.

CBA, the Christian Booksellers Association, is hosting Christian Store Day to celebrate the service Christian stores provide to the community. The day will “include unique in-store product specials and appearance from authors and recording artists at a number of CBA retailers,” according to the website.

But rather than just celebrating themselves, they've teamed up with Compassion International, Operation Christmas Child and World Vision to raise awareness and funds for continued relief in Haiti. A special CD compilation will be sold in stores that day to raise money for Haitian relief. The artists on the CD have donated their royalties for the project, and music companies are foregoing profits to help support ministries in Haiti.

So you don’t even have to love books to help. Go buy some music. Show up and let your local Christian bookstore know you appreciate their business. And I suppose if you’re the type who can actually stay out of a bookstore, you can simply donate cash directly to Compassion, Operation Christmas Child or World Vision. Me? I'm off to buy a book. (Okay, a lot of books.)

A Cast of Thousands

Today is Blog Action Day for water issues. I'm one of thousands of bloggers in 125 countries who will be posting today to help create awareness and action to solve the problems resulting from lack of clean water. Take my little quiz to see how much you know about water and the world. (Answers are at the bottom.)

What do you know about water?

1. How many people in the world lack access to clean water?

a. almost 350 million    b. 625 million    c. nearly 1 billion   d. more than 3 billion

See answer info here

2. How many children under age 5 die every week from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions?

a. 38,000 children a week    b. 2,000 children a week    c. 1 million children a week

See answer info here

3. How many liter(s) of water does it take to produce one hamburger?

a. 0.5 liter      b. 1.4 liter    c. 2.8 liters      d. 24 liters

See answer info here

4. How many liters of water does it take to produce one pair of jeans?

a. 5 liters       b. 61 liters      c. 522 liters     d. 6,813 liters

See answer info here

5. How many liter(s) of water does the average American use per day?

a. 0.8 liter       b. 52 liters      c. 465 liters      d. 1,144 liters

Discover how much you use here

Visit the blog action day website for ideas of ways you can help conserve water and ensure that people the world over have access to clean water. If you or I become one of thousands making a small change, we can make a huge impact.

And now the quiz answers 1. c, 2. a, 3. d, 4. d, and 5. c. Be sure to read the answer info pages to learn more about the correct answers. How did you do? Let me know in the comments which answer surprised you most and why. 

Forgetting the Power

A few weeks ago I blogged about Max Lucado's new book Outlive Your Life. It was a book I received free from Thomas Nelson via booksneeze.com. At the time I ordered Outlive Your Life, I also ordered the companion book for teens, You Were Made to Make a Difference, which was written by Max and his daughter Jenna Lucado Bishop, with help from Natalie Gillespie. I had hoped to review both books together, but You Were Made to Make a Difference was back ordered, and so I only now finished reading it.

It follows the same conversational arc that Outlive Your Life does, with the book of Acts as the basis for how to make a difference in the world. But the design and copy are teen oriented (although I feel it is geared more for young teens), and the stories told of people making a difference are all about teens and preteens. It even shares more of the story of Alex and Brett Harris, whose "rebelution" and book Start Here I blogged about back in March.

The user friendly content and the stories of people their own ages should keep kids interested and hopefully give them confidence that they, too, can change the world. Practical ideas for doing just that decorate the pages, and it also provides ways for teens to raise funds to do God's work. I look forward to sharing You Were Made to Make a Difference with some of the teens in my church. I want to see if it inspires them to do big things for God as they allow him to use them.

As I read the book, it reinforced many of the points that struck me in the adult version of the book, including the idea that we don't have to be anyone more special than we already are (as God's child) to be God's  hands and feet in a hurting world.

This passage really hit me:

Prayer is our foundation for making a difference. Trying to change the world without prayer is like trying to use a new iPod without charging the battery. You have to connect to the power source before you can start rockin'.

How often have I tried to do something without first accessing God's power? Way more than I want to admit. Yet I'm a weakling. I have little strength and even less commitment and motivation. If I am going to impact my world, I need to first spend time in prayer. I need to seek God to change me and to change the world around me. I must have his power to make a difference.

Let's start right here:

Father, you are the all-powerful one. I'm useless without you. Too easily turned aside to other interests. I ask you to show me your heart for the world, for children in need, for people caught in a cycle of despair. Show me the helplessness of my own condition (even when I foolishly think I am self-sufficient) and lead me to you often so we can talk and you can share your plans with me. I want to be used of you; keep me plugged in to you as my source.

Hoping you, too, are seeking God's power to change the world.

And while your at it consider buying You Were Made to Make a Difference for a young teen in your life so they, too, can change the world.