We Did Something!

Our Saturday in the Park outreach's fruits are beginning to ripen. We are cutting the checks as we finish the accounting on what monies we raised for the ministries New Hope and the Child2Child girls support. The first check we sent out was to Africa Bags $715 dollars was over-nighted to their HQ in Colorado so the check could clear before they departed this weekend for Malawi. This is the second time we've sent money on after selling the bags made by women in Malawi. So we're now well over a thousand dollars in our support for what God is doing there.

When I was a little boy, my grandmother lived with an aunt who kept my brother and me after school while my parents worked. Her Singer treadle sewing machine was a fascination to me. To see the pictures of those women lifting their families out of poverty and building a future for their families at those machines moves me every time. Picking up a bag and seeing inside of it the village it was made in, written inside, just makes me happy to know that our smaller church is making a difference in places we may never actually visit in person.

We cannot fix the world. Neither can you. But we can DO SOMETHING! As Mother Teresa said "If you cannot feed 100, then feed 1." That's what we are doing, and our New Hope family is excited for what God is doing in, around, and through us.

Join us on the journey! Bring your dreams of what God could do if His people ran to the needs of people - wherever they may be. Help us tell the story of how Jesus knew us in our sins, and raised us to new life through His grace and gave us new hearts. You can make a difference too!

What In the World Are You Doing?

 

Tomorrow we will be another vendor at the 34th Saturday in the Park festival here in Valparaiso. But we will be there for a higher purpose - to help people DO SOMETHING about problems around the world that take people's lives. So over our booth will be emblazoned - "BUY AN ITEM - SAVE A LIFE"


Here below are the organizations whose items we will be selling and a little bit about each. Click on the link to learn more.

From HIV To Home, , , 

We seek to pave a road home for the world’s HIV+ orphans through partnerships with in-country, community-based programs that care for HIV+ orphans and by connecting HIV+ orphans with adoptive families.

Africa Bags

Africa Bags is a non-profit organization doing charitable work over in Malawi, Africa.  We sell reusable cloth shopping bags that are hand-crafted in five small villages in northern Malawi. Africa Bags has entered into ultra poor villages in northern Malawi with foot-powered treadle sewing machines, cloth, and all the materials/resources necessary for the Malawians to produce reusable cloth shopping bags.  These bags are sold back in the United States and 100% of all profits are returned to the villages.

Love 146

LOVE 146 VISION: The abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation. Nothing less.

LOVE 146 MISSION: Abolition and Restoration! We combat child sex slavery & exploitation with the unexpected and restore survivors with excellence.

The Water Project

Nearly 1 billion people still don't have access to clean drinking water. Find out what you can do to change that.
The Problem:
For too many...dirty, diseased water leads to a cycle of sickness, lack of education, poverty and lost hope. It is needless suffering.
The Solution:
You can get involved and help fund new fresh-water wells, put up water tanks and provide clean, safe water for thousands.

We Are Overlooked

"Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old. (charitywater.org)"

That's what we are doing this weekend. Selling products and saving lives. Some of the items will have been made by the kids and adults at New Hope - Child2Child. Most will come from the organizations above.

But every single penny that comes in through their sales will pass through us and go directly to help others - to save lives. 100%

Yeah, we are a smaller church located thousands of miles away from some of the places that the help needs to go. But listen - 6,000 people will die tomorrow due to preventable illnesses tied back to a lack of clean water.

Are you okay with that?

Read the stories behind Love146 -how they got their name. Read about how poverty - not no new iPad poverty, but crushing poverty that takes lives affects places like Malawi. Read how orphans born with HIV die in the thousands when they could be adopted and saved.

Are you okay with that?

Friends, we are doing this because Jesus' love compels us. We want to be able to explain just what following Him means. We want to share who we were outside the Kingdom and who Jesus recreated us into. And we want to save the lives of others so that they might hear the story of Jesus and His love.


Come and see.