Date: Christmas Season, 2009 To: Mr. Right, who may be just a dream, but perhaps is real and in training even now, gaining the skills and insight necessary to Be My Husband. From: Ms. Recently Unemployed and Elated at the Next Possibilities Re: Jewelry and Much Bigger Things   Hello again. I hope that during this stage and season of your life, your arms, he...

Click here to continue reading...

Here come the holidays.  I've already got my Thanksgiving plans made, including where I am going and what I am cooking.  I'm working out what to do at Christmas.  Some people I know already have their trees up and decorated.  Others are ticking off how many gift-buying days remain.  A lady told me the other day that she's already done shopping and wrapping.  Wow.

Click here to continue reading...

Our first day in Swaziland Pastor Gift told us about Maswane and asked if we would be willing to go pray with her. When she was five years old she was raped which is how she contracted HIV. She was raped again when she was seven and has never once consented to sex with a man. One of the men who raped her has died, and the other is free; he escaped to South Africa. Her virginity as well as her life has been brutally ripped away.

Click here to continue reading...

There is something interesting about people living in poverty. Most of the time we don't like to admit that we have nothing, that we are taking each day at a time praying that maybe God will send someone with something to meet our needs.   Living out in Nsoko is heart-breaking. Living in Swaziland is hard enough for most Americans, being away from the comforts that we all love so much...

Click here to continue reading...

Singer/songwriter and Compassion blogger Shaun Groves posted a tongue-in-cheek blog last week about his recent trip to Kolkata, India, criticizing churches in the developing world for "doing it all wrong." He cites churches that he's visited in India, Africa, and Latin America that have made worship centers not just places where the religious parade their spirituality on Sundays.

Click here to continue reading...

I had read bits and pieces of her life through other works - who she was and who she is helping others become through her story.

Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, along with "co-founder/conspirator" Peter Maurin. 

Click here to continue reading...

This time around, it's all together new. A year ago, I wanted to get lost. Today, I just want to understand. Originally, I went to Africa to put shoes on kids' feet. My friend built a company grounded in giving and there I was, on the ground, giving. After the TOMS Shoes drop, I went wandering. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, sometimes safe, sometimes not. I wanted to go into the w...

Click here to continue reading...

Deb Gangemi read Tom Davis' Fields of the Fatherless three years ago. In it, Tom introduces readers to "people God wants us to put at the top of our priority list: the orphans, widows, and aliens (strangers)." He writes of his life-altering experience caring for a group of orphans in Russia, and he makes the biblical case for God's heart and provision for the fatherless. Then he challenges th...

Click here to continue reading...

  The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor 
 and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion- to...

Click here to continue reading...

When you regularly plan activities for youth, it's difficult to find variety, particularly when you're almost 7 years into it. The requisite beach trips, laser-tag, putt-putt mini-golf, go-kart lock-ins, gym lock-ins, youth camps and ski trips are enough to make anyone die of monotony. In the desperate search for something different I decided 2009 would be different.

Click here to continue reading...