Today, we celebrate International Women’s Day.
As I think about the women we serve in Ethiopia, I can only be completely humbled. Too easily, we look at them from a middle-class American view and label these women as tainted, as if they chose their ‘profession’ because they wanted to be there.
Her story hit me forcefully as I gazed at her half smile as she posed for the picture. The room was barely big enough to hold the small bed where her tiny son laid amidst the bright colored fabrics. Here was the place she worked – the same place where she gave birth to her son, the same place where her pain and tears mingled every day. With tender hands, she wrapped her child in the cleanest fabric she had and gently lay him on the bed, as if wishing to shelter him from the pain she’s been forced to endure. She named her son Fickar. Love.
She was barely 18 years old when interviewed on a research trip to Addis Ababa, and was working in the Red Light District of Ethiopia. She came from the countryside looking for work to support her family. They had no idea what she’d been forced to do. Desperate poverty in a city where over 80% of the population is unemployed led this young girl to the depths of despair.
But in the year that she’d been working the streets, this young girl held onto something deeper. She held on to the tenderness in her heart, and chose to give her son a name of meaning – Love. Not bitterness. Not hatred. Not defeat. Love.
I think about this girl and her little boy Love, this Valentine’s Day. I think about the life she, a young woman, has been forced into, and it makes me wonder how love can still exists in the middle of a world so wrapped up in sin. I’m humbled at the courage of this young girl, who in the middle of her nightmare remembered that love hadn’t died.
This, I believe, is the greatest thing we can cling to on this day where we celebrate love – love that fosters hope. You see, God’s love is the kind that showers us in grace and courage in the moments where we think all has died. His grace and mercy cover us in the name of Love.
“God pursued, forgave, wooed them back, as a Lover. But of course, with God, that’s not the end of the story… Grace always triumphs over judgment.” –S. Claiborne and C.Haw
“This is Jesus. Not that He apologizes for the hard and the hurt, but that He enters in, He comes with us to the hard places. And so I continue to enter.” –Katie Davis
Katie Davis said that in response to her work in Uganda among some of the poorest and most desperate people she’s known, but long before I heard this quote, I had my own encounter with Jesus in the hard stuff…
I closed my eyes tightly for a brief moment to hold back the tears that threatened to surface. It was dark, and the glow of faint lights along the streets casting eerie shadows in the dark corners of the alleys. The van was quiet as we drove through what had been a bustling market just hours earlier. Now… it was ‘prostitute alley,’ an area in the city that transformed after dark to sell not fruits and vegetables, but humans. Woman after woman stood along the crumbling walls, stone faced, waiting. They say roughly 40,000 women work in a 3-4 mile radius here.
These women were desperate. Desperate enough that they would do anything for mere pennies to support themselves and their children. And even though I knew what to expect, nothing had prepared me to see face after face of young women with faces of stone, like they’d died long ago.
In the hour we drove around the red light district of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that night, I don’t think I’ve ever been more aware of the sinfulness of humans, or of the strongholds that Satan has on this world. But even in the long, heartbreaking ride that night – and in the days and months and years that have followed – I have hope. Hope because of Jesus. He’s aware. And Jesus travels not only with us in those trenches of sin and desperation, but beckons us toward them to help. That night, I saw a fierce need for justice. I saw desperate women needing someone to stand up and be a voice for them…
So this is Jesus. Not that he apologizes for the hard and the hurt in this world that our sinful nature has brought, but that He enters in, He comes with us to the hard places. He shows us WHO HE IS in these places and asks us to be his hands and feet in bringing hope and life and death to evil. And so we continue to enter.
Take Action:
To see more of what we’re doing to Combat Exploitation in Ethiopia, check out this page on our site.
To give to our work in Combating Exploitation, click here.
This is the third post in a series from the book “When Helping Hurts” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. With each of these posts, the goal is to look at poverty through different lenses and gain better understanding as walk forward, both as an organization and as individuals. To see the first and second posts, click on these links.
Participation is not just the means to an end but rather a legitimate end in its own right.
Why? It all goes back to the definition of poverty alleviation… The goal is to restore people to experiencing humanness in the way that God intended. The crucial thing is to help people understand their identity as image bearers, to love their neighbors as themselves, to be stewards over God’s creation, and to bring glory to God in all things.
It is impossible to accomplish such reconciliation of relationships in a blueprint approach in which the outsiders are the ones deciding what to do, how to do it, and how well it worked. Such an approach undermines the action – reflection cycle for poor people, denying them the opportunity to be what God created them to be: image bearers, who, through trial and error, unpack and unfold the wonders of God’s creation.
I am encouraged as I see Haitian couples raising up out of the local church to care for 12 children for a lifetime. I love hearing of the pastors who have taken detailed training and now advocate in their congregations for the end of the restavek (child slavery) system in Haiti. I see so much hope for families as men are given jobs at the Ranch project in Fondfrede. And I’m overjoyed to see the global body of Christ rising up together to change poverty around in many, many ways.
Take Action:
Check out Our Approach online, and see how we’re striving to enable people to lift themselves out of poverty.
We’ve entered into a New Year, and if you’re finding it anything like around here, you’ve probably hit the ground running. We’ve got a lot planned for 2012 at LSM, and we’re so excited that you’re following and participating with us in this journey.
Here’s just a bit of what we’re anticipating:
This is far from all we have hopes to do in the next year, and we look forward to what God brings our way in 2012. Will you join us in praying for God’s direction and vision as we go? We want to be constantly committed to following His leading as an organization (which we constantly find exceeds our wildest dreams!) God’s moving, and we see every day the power of God’s people moving together to care for the orphan.
So here’s to a busy New Year! Let’s move forward with God’s leading, and let Him find us working hard to follow His calling to care for the ‘least of these’.
Remember this post last month from the book “When Helping Hurts”? Well here’s the second of the series. I hope this too, serves as a good reminder and vision for our outlook on ministry to the poor…
If you ask a middle-to-upper class American what poverty is, you’ll most likely get a technical answer about money, food, and basic necessities. However, ask someone in a developing country this question, and you’ll likely get a different answer. It’s not that there aren’t real needs that press against them. Those are realities, but listen to this from someone from Cameroon: “[The poor have] a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard.”
Or how about this response from Moldova: “For a poor person everything is terrible – illness, humiliation, shame. We are cripples; we are afraid of everything; we depend on everyone. No one needs us. We are like garbage that everyone wants to get rid of.”
See the difference? There’s a sense of helplessness that roots deep into the poor’s self image. It lends itself easily then to this reality. We need to be thoughtful in how we ‘help’ lest the following happen:
When a sick person goes to a doctor, the doctor could make two crucial mistakes:
Either of these mistakes will result in the patient not getting better and possibly getting worse. It’s the same concept with working with the poor. If we treat only the symptoms or misdiagnose the underlying problem, we will not improve their situation, and we might actually make their lives worse. It might hurt ourselves too.
I’m encouraged as I see organizations like ours trying to bridge those gaps that were long ago made in missions. We’re learning, slowly. At LSM, we talk a lot about enabling people to help themselves, instead of giving handouts. We believe that by doing this, we’re helping to create a better sense of self-worth, and in return, a gateway into conversations about our examples of Jesus. It’s a process that we’re learning. And we’re so thankful for word pictures like this that are growing all around us.
Take Action:
Learn more about what LSM is doing to enable people in Haiti and Ethiopia to help themselves.
November 6 is a big day for those involved in orphan care ministry. If you’ve been keeping in touch with us via facebook and this blog, you’ll have seen the promotional videos encouraging you to create an event within your church or small group for Orphan Sunday.
For those of you near the LSM home office in Bluffton, IN, we’d love for you to join us as we learn more about the Global Orphan Crisis. We have large walk through exhibits talking about some of the root causes in poverty and talk about what LSM is doing to place children in loving, Godly families. To see details for the evening in Indiana, see the invitation below. We’d love to see you there!
Take Action:
We’d love to hear what you’re doing to care for the orphan on this nationally recognized day, or let us know you’re coming to share the evening with us! If you’ve got a creative idea or thought, comment below about it!
Jena Lee writes in the book HOPE IN THE DARK this message:
I straddle two worlds. One foot in America. One foot in Africa. My heart is split. It’s an awkward place to be, as it stretches the legs upon which I stand. I would prefer to be in one place instead of straddled awkwardly across an ocean. Contrary to American doctrine, however, I think we’re supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable as we live within the tensions of this complicated world.
Lately, I’ve come to realize that it’s not just an ocean that separates us from Africa. Greater barriers have caused a distance between the two continents. Misunderstanding has turned goodwill into a greater injustice. The media portrays Africans as victims, as children with flies on the their faces, as statistics, as those we pity, and as those we judge with Western standards. Even with the best of intentions to help, I don’t think we truly understand Africans because we haven’t take the time to listen and share their stories in an honest and humanizing way.
It is true: the greatest humanitarian crisis of HIV/AIDS is attacking Africa with more power and momentum than we can believe. It is important to hear the stories of those whose battle for survival is every day, every minute, every waking breath. I hope that you will slip your feet into the shoes of another as you try and imagine what it must be like to live on a continent that has felt silent to and ignored by the rest of the world.
“How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!” – Brennan Manning
“There is no event so common place but that God is present within it, always hidden, always leaving you room to recognize Him or not to recognize Him.” – Fredrick Buechner
“Thou has beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.” –Psalm 139.5
(pictures above from LSM families in Haiti and Ethiopia)
The very first labor day was celebrated in 1882… a day the labor movement dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. And every year since that first Sept 5, we’ve taken a break as a country and celebrated the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
As Christians, we can take this holiday a step further and rejoice in the freedom we have in Jesus, and the ultimate treasures he’s given us beyond this life. And we can be thankful. We are blessed.
What we sometimes fail to think about on this holiday is the millions of people around the world who don’t have access to the same things that have made America a place where people can prosper. This weekend, join us in remembering and praying for those who don’t have these freedoms.
Pray for the children who do not have the right to fair and honest work and live in modern day slavery.
Pray for the young mothers and broken girls who desperately do the unthinkable to survive, having no hope of finding honest work in their suffering economy.
LSM is fighting for restaveks in Haiti, women in Ethiopia, and orphaned and vulnerable children around the world. We’d love for you to join us.
Take Action: www.loving-shepherd.org
