Believing and Doing
Someone once said, “True happiness is when what you believe is the same as what you say and do.” The more one thinks about this the more it rings true, especially among Christians in the 21st century. So many books have been written on how to be happy and constantly new books reach the book shelves to again attempt solving this topic. Whenever I met with young adults, be it in North America or more recently in Australia I find them caught in pursuit of this very challenge. The difference between them and the previous generation is that they somehow understand it will not happen by accumulating as much as they can. They understand that competing with the Jones’s is chasing after the wind. A portrait of this is drawn so well by the Christian band “Casting Crowns” in a song about the American Dream… a dream that destroyed so many families and relationships between parents and their children.
Watching these young volunteers from the North as they work in the dust of Africa is something to behold. There is a common phrase Hands staff hear from them: “At last I am doing something that actually makes a difference and not just a profit!” What, I wonder to myself, could be more important for a parent for his child or for a pastor for his youth than for this newest generation to feel wanted and to realize they were created to be a blessing! Recently I sat in a meeting with a group of young people, among them a couple from US Peace Corps. We discussed the training of volunteers in our Footprints program and I expounded on the need to explain, through biblical teaching, to these volunteers the lost art of servant hood. The couple was so excited about this, saying they had been taught so many good things, but that they now recognized this was the missing piece: the call to serve!
The call of Hands— to mobilize the local Church in Africa to care and to be a prophetic voice to the Church outside Africa—is burning in the hearts of the Hands team more than ever. It brings happiness to us as we believe it, we speak it and we do it!Loving and Giving
As usual, the summer holiday time of our Northern Partners brought a full house of visitors to many Hands at Work projects. It is incredible to see old friends return year after year and new teams arrive from entirely new places for the first time. The orphan camps in Zambia have become an annual highlight and destination for many; other teams worked with our construction crew putting up roofs for our community schools; some trained our teachers; and still others continued the amazing work of visiting our patients in their homes.
The dream of true servants traveling to Africa is actually happening! More and more people join us for longer periods, and Footprints (our Year-of-Your-Life program) is becoming a key vehicle of capacity building work for our projects. Mozambique, Zambia and the DRC have already been impacted greatly by Footprinters.
Speaking of Footprints, our building team continues to sweat out ten-hour days in the exciting task of preparing the Footprints Village for the February intake! We are so grateful to you friends and partners who continue to support us—some with dirty hands stacking bricks, and some financially—in completing this vision of a village.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who so generously supported the feeding programs for our orphans in Masoyi over the past months as we faced financial challenges. Schools, businesses and Churches came together in support. Now, with the end of a difficult time in sight, it is amazing to look back and see how much people stretched out of their usual routines to become part of a new solution. Thank you. When our volunteers in the field see such sacrificial giving from all over the world they become incredibly encouraged to continue.
For me, this is preaching Jesus! As Mother Theresa once said, “one can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving.”
Pilgrims
Growing up in the 21st century doesn’t allow many of us to experience rough new beginnings. Today things are instant, customized and completed by the time they reach us. I firmly believe we are poorer because of this, robbed of many opportunities to experience life and build character. Who among us doesn’t love listening to stories of the older generation, stories about the way they struggled and overcame the incredible challenges they faced, stories of courage and faith? The joy in their eyes as they stare in the distance, remembering how they have come through is something we all long for.
We are only pilgrims in this world. My prayer for Hands at Work is that the leaders will NEVER become settlers but always nurture a pioneering spirit. So I trust that Hands at Work can go through situations where the new generation of leaders can have their own stories to share one day… stories that shaped their character and faith forever.
As you'll read about here, the new adventure of moving onto our own Hands at Work property has all the ingredients and potential to fulfill the above requirements. The Hands at Work family needs your prayers in this regard – not that it should become easier for us but that we would display the character and grace needed for this situation, and that the fruit of the process will be a rich harvest of strong new leaders working side by side with wiser and stronger older leaders!
George
Dreaming & Working Together
The most powerful experience one can have is being part of a group of people dreaming and working together towards a common goal that seems impossible. Nothing grips the imagination of people more than to hear stories of others daring to dream big. None of us are too old or too young to want to be part of something making a difference… At Hands at Work we call that: becoming a blessing because I am blessed!
Reflecting on 2006
Friends,
I look back at the past twelve months, and memories flood my mind. I certainly experienced a range of homes, met a variety of people and covered nearly every continent.
In some of the dwellings, my back aching on what barely passed as a bed, I thought the night would never end. Other nights, sprawled in mansions, I stayed awake till the late hours, living in luxury but flooded with guilt, remembering my bothers and sisters suffering.
I sat in African huts, encouraging dying, young people, wondering, myself, how it must feel to die so young. I sat with old grannies, wishing I could answer their questions about how an old lady is going to survive with her house full of orphans. On other occasions I found myself sitting on a spot-lit bar chair while very smart college kids from North America hung on my every word as I told stories of Africa. I spoke to churches in Europe and North America, with people waiting forty minutes in a line to speak to me, only to stop when it was their turn, shake my hand and just weep.
But among it all I noticed a common thing: people wish for justice. Hard to believe in a time when millions of orphans roam hungry in southern Africa, when $12 billion is spent annually on perfume while 30 000 children die daily from poverty. So where do we go wrong? When all the dust in Africa settles, will it really be possible for justice-loving Christians to say: “we just didn’t know what was happening?” How, in this age of information-explosion can we be so ignorant?
Maybe it’s here that the verse “hearing without hearing and seeing without seeing” makes sense. Perhaps the real price to pay for justice is just too high. But, my friends, preaching evangelism without social involvement is half the good news, and half of the truth is simply not the truth.
If my observation is right, if, inside, we really do want justice, we must wake up. When I meet dying young mothers or eight-year-olds heading households, I feel deeply sad, but also heavily challenged: I know I could make a difference. I know individuals can change the world, not corporations or institutions. Just look at Jesus. His sacrifice changed millions of lives forever. His followers should do the same today, sacrifice comfort and safety and follow Him among the poor and broken.
What prevents you from doing it?
The place to start is to draw a line, to say I cannot live a life ignoring this any longer. I often say to people that “the house is on fire.” And in drastic situations drastic action is required.
Hands at Work in Africa has embraced the goal of reaching “100 000 by 2010” (pg 10). We unashamedly not just call but challenge Churches, individuals and organizations to kick in the doors of “burning houses”. Looking back and seeing so many that joined us just a year after we made this commitment both humbles and encourages us. God’s call to go beyond what we dreamed possible is becoming reality as we step out in faith together. But never forgetting it is about caring — one by one.
George