Posts Tagged ‘World Relief’
Suffering and Celebrating Together: MOD 2012
by Meg Lavery, Volunteer Mobilization Coordinator for World Relief DuPage
In 2010, jeggings made their triumphant debut, South Africa hosted the World Cup, and Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake. 2010 was also the year I went to my first Mission on Your Doorstep Conference in West Chicago, IL- most likely wearing jeggings. There I sat in on an indelible talk by Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. He spoke on Theologies of Suffering and Celebration.
Rev. Dr. Rah explained that churches in developed nations, in relative affluence and stable societies, tend towards a Theology of Celebration whereas churches in developing nations, facing abject poverty and violence, tend towards a Theology of Suffering. Curiously, we see these churches grasp for the characteristics of Christ that they do not experience on earth. Often, Theologies of Suffering declare the victory of Christ and promise of eternal life in heaven whereas Theologies of Celebration embrace the solitude and somberness of Jesus’ life on earth. Perhaps that’s why we often worship to soothing slow jams in the west; and in Burundi, worship will get you up out of your seat clapping and dancing around in your ankle-length skirt.
In the end, neither is the complete picture. There is both death and resurrection in the story of Christ. I learned that we need both to gain the fullest understanding of the God of the Bible and this life on earth. And I learned that to do this, we need more than expanded theology books. We need to get to know people who have lived a different story.
At World Relief in Wheaton, IL, I work with volunteers day in and day out. They are the loveliest and most generous people on the block who want to get to know those who are different from them. However, people are quickly met with the startling realties of the refugee and immigrant experience- chronically ill friends without healthcare access, family members separated indefinitely, depression and isolation in a foreign society, bed bugs (modern day locusts?). In these situations, when there are only imperfect solutions and hard choices, I recall my lessons from MOYD2010. I try to encourage volunteers that sometimes the best thing (and maybe the only thing) you can do is be there, be present, be together. And when we take on the burdens of each other, that’s when we share our greatest joys, that’s when real relationships are formed.
Two years later, the conference has done a name change, Mission On Our Doorsteps, further bridging the mythical divide between “us and them”. I’m so pleased to see this year’s theme is “Suffering and Celebrating Together”. The conference has raised awareness of the realities of present suffering in our communities and celebrates how Christ is bringing His own glory through that grief. The lonely isolation within modern society, the fear of immigrants living under a broken system, the anguished prayer for the lost, and the frustration of those trafficked to America against their will are all unique expressions of our present suffering. However, such suffering is not the last word.
This suffering pales in comparison with the glory that God is birthing in and through us as we weave our stories, the pain and the joy, together.
Quotes from The Justice Conference 2012
By Isaac Barnes, Marketing and Communications Manager at World Relief
It’s been two weeks since the Justice Conference, and I am still processing the many moments of clarity and insight that I experience along with 4,000 other people.
The breadth and depth of the speakers and facilitators brought a profound life and expression to the word “justice” that I have never experienced before. In addition to my own individual experience, it encouraged me to share those two days of learning with so many other Christians also captured by Christ’s heart for justice in our broken world.
I was encouraged and challenged by what was said, but also convicted that justice – like love – is to be lived out in my relationship with God and those around me. As we have all returned to our neighborhoods and ministries, I hope to hear your great stories of live-out justice next year in Philadelphia at the Justice Conference 2013!
Here are some quotes and pictures* from this past Justice Conference in Portland, Ore:
Spoken at the Justice Conference 2012:
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“Jesus’ natural companionship is with those folks [the poor].” – Walter Brueggemann
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“I went to Africa. And suddenly, it wasn’t poor people anymore. It was Kenneth, and Rose, and Rachel.” – Francis Chan
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“Women are the greatest untapped resource in the world.” – Lynne Hybels
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“Don’t be afraid to lament.” – Stephan Bauman
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“It doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone has something to offer the movement of justice” – Shane Claiborne
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“If we’re going to address trafficking in our country we have to address poverty, racism & gender based violence.” – Rachel Lloyd
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“Justice goes across racial and economic barriers – like the good Samaritan.” – John M. Perkins
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“That you would no longer see us as the mission field, but as co-equal participants in life.” – Richard Twiss
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“When you’re no longer asking ‘What’s mine?’ you start asking ‘What’s true, what’s right, what’s ours?’” – Rick McKinley
Shared on Social Media at the Justice Conference 2012:
- Bread for the World: “@worldrelief Thanks 4 your work, @kenwytsma, @antiochbend & all. Our hearts full of hope. Reg4 2013 @thejusticeconf ow.ly/9k0cn”
- Katie Høiland: “Appreciating @stephanjbauman : theologian, development practitioner, poet & @WorldRelief pres. Thx for charge to hold long line of justice.”
- Kyle Anderson: “#love is an irreplaceable thread in Justice @kjwytsma inspiring & powerful start to @thejusticeconf thank you! #justice2012 @WorldRelief”
- Restored: “Wish we were @thejusticeconf #justice2012 but so glad…@WorldRelief are there 🙂 Looking forward to the online action later”
- Urbana Missions: “Our team is so excited for @thejusticeconf tomorrow. Thanks to friends @worldrelief for hosting the event!”
- Fred Smith: “I think the relationship between Shane Claiborne and John Perkins is a good example of two generations with great respect for each other. You are doing such good work.”
- Merrilee Parsons Lewis: “Amazing experience!”
- Shandra Johnson: “Hope to go again next year.”
- Debi Luna Marshall: “I won’t let anything keep me from going next year! Can’t wait!”
- Sandra Boedecker: “Bravo Stephan Bauman, Walter Brueggemann, Don Golden, Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang!”
*Pictures by The Justice Conference and Isaac Barnes.
International Women’s Day
By Larissa Peters, Asia Church Engagement Specialist at World Relief
We don’t celebrate International Women’s Day in the United States, but my World Relief co-workers in Cambodia have a day off as the government has declared it a national holiday – a well-deserved one in my opinion.
A little over a week ago, I attended the Justice Conference in Portland – two days of intense conversation with over four thousand people passionate about responding to poverty, slavery, and oppression. When Walter Brueggemann spoke, he talked about the “walkers” and the “talkers” – both necessary for a response to injustice. And just a little over a year ago, I had the privilege to meet some of the “walkers” – amazing Cambodian women who, against all odds (and reason), are making a significant difference in their communities.
In honor of Women’s Day, I want to honor two of the many “walking women” I met in Cambodia:
As Nari shared her story, she stood with her arm protectively around a young woman, who seven years earlier had been rescued from a brothel. This young woman’s own family had sold her in order to pay for their own survival. The woman’s story broke my heart – she was very close to my age, and I just couldn’t imagine spending my formative years in sexual slavery.
No girl should be dispensable like that, and Nari’s words could only give me hope for those still in bondage: “I do what I do because God has given me compassion and love. It’s hard to explain. I know that this work is encouraging other women, so I want to be instrumental in reaching other women. Often there’s a lack of education and knowledge … and I love them very much.”
These communities need preventative education and awareness when it comes to human trafficking. Sara is one who ministers to the youth in the villages. I got to be part of the crowd of children who attended one of the puppet shows in Kandal province. Through these Sesame-street type shows and skits each week, hundreds of children and teenagers not only become educated on prevention messages but learn that they are loved and have a hope for the future.
Sara’s love for the youth she works with is evident, and she is affecting change exponentially – “It’s very important for them to have a good future, but also so that they reach out to the community. Teenagers, especially the poor ones, are at risk – and also in the area of trafficking, so I want to tell them and protect them from that.”
Between Nari, Sara, and the puppets, I saw first hand the full circle response to these issues. These women are not only addressing the immediate needs of their neighbors, but they are responding to systemic issues of injustice, transforming the community both in the present and for the future.
And as a “talker”, I’m humbled.
World Relief Responds: Typhoon Sendong
From midnight on December 17, 2011 to dawn the next day, Typhoon Sendong swept through northern Mindanao in the Philippines. The resulting flash floods claimed more than 1,000 lives and left over 51,000 displaced persons regrouping in temporary evacuation centers. Most of these centers are in the city of Cagayan de Oro where World Relief is joining local partners to bring needed relief.
World Relief responded rapidly after the flooding, collecting used clothes, blankets and other personal items needed by the survivors. Food and non-food items have reached over 1000 families so far. Addressing the most significant needs has meant dividing the work; some of our team members are assigned to purchasing and repacking supplies, some joined the trauma intervention while others are in devastated areas and evacuation centers with the assessment team. With TGCF-BALIKATAN(KEDRN), a group of evangelical partners, World Relief helps to monitor and control the traffic of supply distribution.
New needs have surfaced. Potable water is still unavailable for many residents lining up at water refilling stations. The local government is distributing tents to move families from evacuation centers to relocation sites, but the tents are too few. Sanitation is also a major problem as the lack of clean water is compounded by few toilets. An outbreak of disease borne by contaminated flood waters has started to claim the lives of flood survivors. World Relief has responded with hygiene kits to help contain the disease and it has decreased. All of these are an ongoing invitation for World Relief to stand for the most vulnerable.
In the midst of this crisis, World Relief was able to reach out to three Muslim communities devastated by the flooding. Muslim leaders were deeply appreciative that Christians would extend love and care to them. We are grateful that as we bring food and supplies to flood victims, we are also able to live out God’s desire for mercy and reconciliation.
Recently, team members determined that over 300 families are “undocumented.” Instead of living in evacuation centers, they have constructed shacks out of the scraps they found along the highway. Their only hope is churches and organizations, like World Relief, who are determined to find and help them. Please pray for these “undocumented” victims of Typhoon Sendong, that they would be welcomed into homes and given the safety net of God’s provision.
Haiti Now: This Feels Like Progress
Driving through Port-au-Prince after the earthquake on January 12, meant seeing every version of brokenness imaginable; collapsed buildings, flattened cars, and streams of people ready to tell their stories of loss. World Relief Haiti with its staff of over 40 national employees did not escape the trauma.
Befriending the staff meant entering into their stories. World Relief’s building collapsed during the earthquake and one of the pretty, young program managers, Nerlandé Pierre, had to be dragged out, thankfully suffering no permanent damage.
Fougeré, a driver for World Relief, tried to describe the horror of Jan. 12 and its aftermath. He told me on one long drive that he had vomited every day for a week, that he was unable to think or function several weeks, and that he had to pass a building where his friend, trapped, called out to him until he died. Fougeré could do nothing to help him. Foungeré’s family was left without a place to live, especially difficult as he has a handicapped daughter.
Madame Elima, the employee who has worked the longest for WRH, lost her oldest daughter to the earthquake. This daughter was in her last year at a Haitian university. I heard that Mme Elima and her three small adopted children lived for a time in a tent on the median of a busy road.
Life is split for most people in Haiti into before the earthquake and after the earthquake.
However, there are signs of progress. Though articles abound on the mismanagement of aid money given to help Haiti and the tragically slow progress, many of us who live there day to day see progress everywhere. Fewer streets are impassable due to rubble. Buildings have been repaired or taken down and the materials used to rebuild. Haitians are healing and moving on. Last year, every church had a memorial service on Jan. 12th, and the beauty of standing room only congregations with candles in their hands, praying, brought hope like nothing else.
I look at World Relief Haiti and am so encouraged by the nearly one million coffee trees planted in Thiotte, the houses built in Leogane, the wells giving water to hurting communities. Carrefour Feuille has a school now, built by WRH. Our staff of over 40 continues to strategize on how to reach the most vulnerable through a network of churches. Many are committed on a small or large scale – Haitians and ex-pats – to rebuilding Haiti. Many are thoughtful and compassionate. No one is foolish enough to imagine that Haiti is “out of the woods” or that there are not enormous and complex problems needing years and the gospel to address. We know that partners around the world will not forget the long-term commitment necessary which was so evident just after the earthquake two-years ago.
Nerlandé, the program manager in charge of OVC, Orphans and Vulnerable Children, just married and the staff went to celebrate with her. She will not forget her time trapped in the rubble of the old World Relief office, but she is joyfully starting a new life. Recently, Fougeré built a small house on some land he bought a while ago and has moved his family into it. Mme Elima, a faithful and respected worker for World Relief, has housing now and continues to diligently serve the children at 40 churches giving vaccinations and health advice.
This feels like progress.
-Tina O’Kelley, World Relief Staff Writer (lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti)
World AIDS Day 2011
Kandal Province, Cambodia: A sea of matching white hats filled the tent in Kohtaom District early this morning. More than 200 secondary school students dominated the crowd, and were joined by government officials, religious leaders, police, medical personnel and NGO representatives. They had gathered together to demonstrate the same message printed clearly on their red-ribbon t-shirts: “We are united to protect ourselves from AIDS.”
Similar ceremonies are taking place across the globe this World AIDS Day. And there is much to celebrate. The combined response in the past decade by governments, donors, local organizations, international NGOs, and countless volunteers has resulted in new HIV infections falling, AIDS-related deaths decreasing, and treatment being made accessible to millions more individuals, particularly those in low- and middle-income countries.
Here in Cambodia, participants reflected on the country’s astounding accomplishments in addressing the epidemic. Thanks to prevention efforts over the last nine years, adult HIV prevalence rate has been reduced from 1.2% to 0.5%. Cambodia is also one of the few countries in the world that provides antiretroviral therapy to more than 80 percent of those eligible for it.
The presence at today’s event of more than 100 HIV-positive individuals, however, was a stark reminder that the fight is not over and that resources and responses cannot waver. There are more than 75,000 people living with HIV in Cambodia, and they remain vulnerable. A recent national report found that HIV-affected households experienced lower income and increased medical expenses, which negatively impacted their financial stability, food security and psychosocial wellbeing, as well as the status of women and education of children.
More than 30 million people have died worldwide from AIDS-related causes since the epidemic began. And this does not begin to account for the untold toll on families, communities, and countries as a whole.
Yet despite so much unnecessary loss in the world, or perhaps to honor it, the overarching theme of today’s event was hope.
The students, aged 15-18 years, sat attentively as World Relief staff presented a drama on the pressures of teenage life. The skit’s message was simple—to value life and make healthy choices about sex—but the issues it raised are relevant to these teens and complex to address: poverty, drug use, migration, “sugar daddies,” unplanned pregnancies and suicide.
World Relief meets with more than 7,000 youth throughout Cambodia on a weekly basis to discuss these issues. In Kohtaom District alone, World Relief works in 42 villages. Youth are provided a safe space to ask questions as they build life skills and learn about disease prevention, nutrition, and trafficking prevention. Evaluations have found that the program helps youth to increase their knowledge about AIDS, promote HIV testing, share health messages with friends, improve school attendance, avoid drug and alcohol abuse, and mentor orphans in their community.
At the AIDS Day event students were randomly chosen and asked questions by the district officer to test their AIDS knowledge. Despite giggles from their friends when selected, each would walk confidently to the front and respond correctly to questions like, “What should people living with AIDS do to take care of themselves?”, “Can people who look healthy be infected by HIV?”, and “What should you do if your relative or friend finds out they are HIV positive?”
This is a generation for whom AIDS is a reality. They have never known the world without it. But they are informed, they are supported, and they are capable of making choices that protect their future. AIDS may be the currently reality, but with continued investments in the response, this generation can be the one to lead the charge on making it a thing of the past.
Imagine what an AIDS Day celebration we will then have.
Joanna Mayhew, World Relief Asia HIV/AIDS Programs Advisor
M. Chey – A Story of Transformation
M. Chey has witnessed Cambodia’s many changes over the past few decades, and his own story of transformation is a powerful witness to what the Lord can do with a committed life.
As a young man, Chey says that Buddhist teachings showed him he was a sinner, but even though he prayed to the gods in every season, his life was still filled with worries and emptiness. During the 1970’s, when the Khmer Rouge was in power, Chey survived by being forced into the army. He was treated badly, forced to work hard and only given potatoes to eat twice per day. His wife and children were all separated from him, and forced to work in various camps. Amazingly, they were reunited after the war.
When a World Relief volunteer came to share the Gospel with his family, Chey wasn’t interested in hearing about it. But, he says, they just kept coming back to talk with him, and eventually Chey asked about Jesus. He studied with the volunteers, learning more and more about God.
Finally, Chey realized he could know the real God. He prayed and began following the Lord, asking for blessings in daily life, and desiring to know more about Him. Now, Chey and his whole family follow the Lord.
At age 74, Chey now has nine children, too many grand-children to count, and seven great-grandchildren. He is a leader of his cell church in Andong village, teaches the Bible, prays for the people in his group, and encourages those living with HIV/AIDS. Even though many of his Buddhist friends tell him he is too old to believe something new, he hopes for many opportunities to share the Gospel in this village of 500 people. “I will not be a backslider,” he says. “I am committed to the Lord forever.”
World Relief celebrates with Chey. We thank God for the volunteers who brought the gospel to Chey and his family.
Nomadic Kenyans suffering from drought, famine
By Gabe LaMonica, CNN
(CNN)–World Relief, a Christian evangelical aid organization, is collaborating with Kenyan churches and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to stem the tide of acute malnutrition across the northern region of Kenya called Turkana.
Famine today “is rarely mentioned anymore,” said Don Golden, a senior vice president for World Relief based out of Baltimore. It is a word reserved strictly for Somalia, he said.
Crisis in Turkana, Kenya
Difficult Questions
Yesterday was a difficult day to process for our team. We saw two villages that spoke of their complete lack of resources and livelihoods, and their almost total reliance on scant relief food and assistance from a few non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the distant Kenyan government. This vulnerable and disempowering situation has left many Turkana people wondering what the future holds for their children and their way of life. Will they be able to return to the pastoral life that they have lead for generations now? Is a nomadic, pastoral life sustainable or possible in today’s world of state borders, urban living, land titles, and chronic drought?
These are difficult questions that need to be asked for the long-term food sustainability of this arid region. However, to see and be a part of this future, first, the people of Turkana need food and clean drinking water. This is crucial.
Today, in Lokitaung in north Turkana, we hope to see the food distribution that was supposed to have happened yesterday. Maize and beans, brought over difficult roads and long distances, should help feed families for a few weeks, but as many share food with their extended families and neighbors, this food will be depleted well before the next food distribution.
This morning, Don Golden – World Relief’s SVP of Marketing and Church Engagement – is meeting with local pastors to hear and discuss the challenges that their congregations and communities are struggling through. Pray that as we meet these leaders and community members we can better understand not only the current urgency of their hunger and vulnerability, but also how World Relief and the Church can begin to stand for and serve the immediate and long-term needs of Turkana.