To Haiti With Love

Back in January I talked about my One Word for 2011: Trust. It was and has been a rough journey but it's good! Each day is a new challengeopportunity for me to learn to trust God's promises and His faithfulness and, occasionally, trust actually wins over doubt.

One of the specific areas that blazed brighter than the rest was going back to Haiti. It was one of those impossible promises that has been seemed more and more impossible as each day went by. Still my heart longed for Haiti and for my little almost 11 year old hanging out in the mountains there.

God is as faithful as I pretended to believe He was, and, God willing, I am going to be going to Haiti with Compassion Internation in November. I wrote more about the trip here.

"Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!" Psalm 34:8

One of the things I learned in the woods was that it is not enough to know God is good; we have to sense it, like we would sense anything else in the world, taste it and see it. We have to touch Him--to feel the warmth of his body--and see his face. Because, when we see His face, we not only trust Him, but we are changed.

"...but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." 1 John 3:2

I have a theory. I believe that looking into the face of the needy, if you really see them and let their stories touch you, then it  changes you. I think that this is because God appears in His purest form in the lives of the hurting and the broken. So when you look at them, you are looking at God.

I know God is everywhere, I know you don't need to go to the third world to find God or even a hurting person. But for me, in this moment, this is it.

And I'm stoked.

I'm unbelievably excited to see how God is showing his glory in Haiti and to see the work of Compassion in action. I will be blogging updates about the journey to Haiti as well as the trip itself, but I would love to share this trip with you personally. If you'd like to hear more personal updates, send me an email.

If you would like to help support me financially you can send checks or money orders directly to me or online use Paypal.

Sending money with Paypal is actually really easy:

1. Go to Send Money at http://www.paypal.com/ or click here. Select "friends and family" under "My Payment is for" in the Send Money Now section and click next. 
2. Enter thesaraheffect@gmail.com in the "To:" box and your own email address in the "From:" section and 
3. Log in to your paypal account and finish the transaction.

Before you click "send money" make sure you put your name in the "message" section so I can say thank you!

If you do not have a paypal account, it only takes a few minutes to sign up for one and you can pay for items with a direct transfer from a bank account or a credit or debit card. If you use your bank account or paypal balance there is no charge, if you are using a credit or debit card, you can still send money this way just make sure that you specify that the recipient (me) is going to cover the 2.9% fee.

If possible, I prefer this method simply because July 27th is just around the corner! If you'd rather send a check or money order you can mail it to:

Sarah Brewer
305 3rd Ave SW
Ephrata, WA 98823

Compassion Sunday Epilogue

I was so blessed to get interview two wonderful Compassion Sponsors about the experience as sponsors for my Compassion Sunday 2011 presentation. Unfortunately, time constraints made it so I could only show a tine portion of the interview. This broke my heart because I was so blessed by the things they said.

Thankfully I now have the opportunity to share with you the long version of my interview with my good friend, Rachel Dowd, about her experience sponsoring Diego Jean Baptiste.

Rachel blogs at Keep it Simple about being a woman of God, being a godly mother and wife, thrifting, crafting and pretty much anything else you could possibly be interested in!

Thanks again, Rachel!

This is my original Compassion Sunday 2011 video 

(stock video provided by Compassion).

Newton's Third Law of Social Change: Reacting Forces

So over the past two days I've been talking about physics.

Yeah, it was a surprise to me too.

Actually I was talking about how Isaac Newton's First Law: Balanced Forces and Second Law: F=MA bizarrely applied to our approach toward social change, specifically how it is a bad idea to set out to change the world.

Please don't change the channel, I don't mean that change isn't possible, I just mean that oversimplifying complex world problems is one of the major reasons we get so discouraged so easily.

The First Law shows how, in order to combat such problems, we have to match the forces perpetuating them. The Second Law shows impossibly powerful those forces are. Now I want to talk about the Third Law...

Newton's Third Law: Reactive Forces

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

That means that, every time you exert force, that exertion will have a negative reaction somewhere else. You can't push on something unless you have something to push against, does that make sense? This means that if you are fighting to end world hunger, you might be bracing yourself against environmental responsibility. Every action has a cost, and equal opposite reaction.

If we can revisit the idea of apathy (remember apathy isn't neutral, it is a force against change), if you ask an individual to care about something, care enough to do something, then that has an equal, negative reaction somewhere else in that person's life.

You're not just asking them to care more about something, you asking them to care less about something else.

Did you ever do that team building exercise where everyone stands in a single file line forming a tight circle and then simultaneously sits down? The idea is that you are all sitting on the lap of the person behind you and, thus, everyone is supporting everyone else.

It's a picture of humanity perfectly balanced.

Well, if you've ever done that exercise, it requires full participation of every person, absolute trust, and the assumption that you don't think the person behind you is icky. When you start talking about this kind of worldwide cooperation, you move solidly into the world of idealistic impossibility.

Again, I don't say this to discourage taking action against social injustices, I say this to remind you and myself to focus. Remember that saying about how you eat an elephant (one bite at a time)? Well, when you take a bite, you don't think about how much you have to go, you think about chewing.

Focus on the achievable (...but it's okay to dream about the impossible).

If you're looking for an opportunity to do something immediate, achievable, yet incredibly powerful, consider rescuing a child from poverty through Compassion International. Yes, this is a shameless plug for Compassion, but  I wouldn't be talking about any of this if I didn't believe in what they do.

Newton's Second Law of Social Change: F=MA

On Friday, I suggested that we can't set out to solve world problems, that the problems are just too big.

Hopefully, if you read that post or what I posted yesterday, you realized that I don't mean trying to be a force for change. It just means the task is too great for you individually.

For some sick reason this began to make to sense to me through Newton's Laws of Motion.

Yesterday I posted Newton's First Law of Social Change: Balanced Forces, today I'd like to talk about the second law.

Newton's Second Law: F=MA

The Force of an object is the product of its Mass (weight/size) and Acceleration (speed over time)

Yesterday, I talked about the need to overcome the forces perpetuating problems like hunger and genocide, this second post is about the size of those forces.

To get a very simplified idea of strength of this force: if you could take the number of hungry people in the world (mass) and multiply it by all factors contributing to starvation and how quickly they are strengthening (acceleration), that would be the size of the force you needed to "end hunger."

That is an impossible task for you to do.

So what can you do? What can I do? 

First, don't take on an impossible, abstract task like ending poverty, you will only be discouraged and maybe even give up. Find something real that you can do and commit to doing it.

Second, find something real that you already believe in. 

• If you care about women's rights, stand up for the rights of a woman sold into prostitution. 
• If you believe that no one should go hungry, hold a food drive to benefit your food bank or help teach a man in poverty to farm. 
• If you love coffee, drink coffee and do good! 

Find something that speaks to your heart and listen to it.

Third, keep doing it. This ties directly back to the first thing. Find something you can do, not something you wish you could do, and keep doing it.

While sending money to an organization fighting for a cause is great, if you want to really be compassionate for the needy, invite them into your world. That may be reaching out not only to the desperate poor in Sierra Leone but also to the poor in your city or neighborhood. There is nothing more real than breathing the same air as forgotten person you have chosen to love.

Another way to "bring someone into your world" is by sponsoring a child in poverty through and organization like Compassion International. When you sponsor a child you not only send money to save their life, but you commit to being part of their life and letting them be part of yours.

Newton's First Law of Social Change: Balanced Forces

On Friday, I talked about why I believe we can't set out to solve world problems.

As I was thinking about the immeasurable size of these issues, for some sadistic reason, God chose to speak to me through physics. I don't really like physics.

I don't get physics. Or chemistry. Or subtraction. I get nouns and verbs, so it would make sense that God would speak to me through grammar or sentence structure. But no, not today. God spoke to me through Newton's three laws of motion.

Newton's First Law: Balanced Forces

The motion (or lack of motion) on an object will not change so long as the forces on it are balanced.

In other words, something will not move until something moves it and the force that moves it has to overcome the sum of the forces keeping it in place.

These forces include social and cultural norms, political corruption, international and in-country conflict, a lack of human rights, limited natural resources and environmental issues, poor farming and business practices, lack of education, and many others.

These problems are not few and they are not easy to change.

Do you see why I might say that you, individually, cannot set out to solve world problems?

Another force to consider is apathy. We often assume that "not caring" is neutral, but it is not; it is a force against change. I don't think it's fair to rage against all the people in the world who "don't care," and, honestly, it would be hypocritical. The truth is that most people are not so cold as to be unemotional about the death of a child (or many other issues), it is not as simple as "not caring."

So, really, why aren't people part of the force saving that child rather than the part perpetuating his death?

The answer is different for each person. Maybe they are unaware of it, maybe they do not know how to help, maybe they do not trust the organizations in place to combat poverty. It is likely the weight of all the other worries in an individual's life drawing their attention away from the problem of poverty.

Many are simply so discouraged by the size of the problem, that they do nothing.

Do you see why I might say that you, individually, cannot set out to solve world problems?

You will become discouraged before you even begin.

And so you should! The solution to these complex issues, essentially, requires participation every single person on the planet both individually and how they work together.

Don't you see why I might say that you, individually, cannot set out to solve world problems?

The force required is to great for one person. 

It important to recognize the overwhelming size of these issues. When you oversimplify issues like poverty, world hunger, human trafficking, homelessness, war, and the marginalization of women, you don't approach them effectively and you will become discouraged when you do realize how huge they are.

We have to focus on the things that we can do to be part of the force combatting this issues, rather than abstract ideas like "ending hunger," because we cannot end hunger, but we can teach farmers in Rwanda more effective ways of growing coffee. We cannot end human trafficking, but we can rescue this child from prostitution.

We cannot end infant mortality, but we can rescue one child.

By partnering with others to discover the smaller pieces making up impossibly complex issues and by focusing on the immediate, achievable goals in front of you, you can combat the larger issues. 

The important thing is to recognize the hugeness of the problem but to focus on the one thing that you can do and commit to doing it.

We can't save the world but we can do something.

Letters

Just a short note to share a great resource with you if you do sponsor a child through Compassion International or any other organization.

This last Sunday, was Compassion Sunday and I shared with my congregation the testimonies of two sponsors within our congregation. The video I shared with these interviews emphasized the relationship that develops between sponsor and sponsored child. It is wonderful, inspiring thing but only when it exists.

As I spoke to people after the event, most of the concerns I heard were in regard to writing letters to a child. There were a few people who admitted that they were "a bad sponsor" because they never wrote to their child. I even had one brave person say that they chose not to sponsor a child because they knew they would never write letters.

Let me first give you an "it's okay" hug by telling you two things:

1. You are NOT alone. Just as an experiment I googled: "Compassion International I'm a bad sponsor." Scan through a few of the hits and then breathe a sigh of relief, many sponsors feel that way, including me.
2. You probably are not as bad as you think. When I first started sponsoring Fabiola, I only wrote her when I received letters, that was about once a year. While it is difficult to build a relationship on one letter a year, that was one letter she would not have received otherwise.

You must read Lame Sponsors of the World Unite! by the Gypsy Mama. It's funny, short and very encouraging.

Now that you feel a little less scummy, let me encourage you: letter-writing is not as hard as you think and it is SO valuable.

Start with simply writing a letter every time you receive one, everything you need is right in the envelope. It doesn't have to be a long one and it doesn't have to be incredibly deep. In fact, the simpler it is is, the easier it is to translate and to understand. 

Here is my typical outline for a letter:

• Greeting: Hi, how are you, I hope you and your family are well, thank you for your letter
  Questions:
• Respond to their letter: comment on activities, answer questions, encourage them if they are struggling, comment on the verse or picture they shared with you, comment on their photograph (you're getting so big, beautiful, handsome, I like your shoes, hairbows, etc)
• How was your (Christmas, Easter, birthday, & maybe new year's--stick to christian holidays) 
• How did you celebrate? Did you eat special food or listen to music? Did you have a party at school? Did you get presents? What did you get?
• It is cold/hot here, how is the weather where you are? (Seriously, ask them about the weather!)
• How is school? What are you learning? What is your favorite subject? What is hard for you?
• How is your family? This is a great opportunity to ask the names of the people in their family.
• Personal favorite questions: color, subject in school, song, game, sport, food, season...these are all easy questions and give you a way to respond
• Tell about yourself!!! Talk about your family, your job, schoolwork, even your problems (keep it light!); give your child something to pray about because I guarantee that they are praying for you.
• Close it: I'm praying for you and your family, I love you, I thank God that you are in my life

I usually can only fit about half of this in before I run out of space. It may seem shallow at first but this at least gets you writing and I promise that your child will never complain that you send them shallow letters. Baby steps!

Finally, even if you are not the best sponsor now, or you're afraid to commit to writing a child and failing, please please please don't let that keep you from sponsoring them. Even if you (gulp) never write your child, your sponsorship enables your child to live a life that is filled with encouraging people even if you can't be one of them: volunteers at the Child Development Centers, pastors, and teachers.

And even if you aren't the best sponsor now that doesn't mean that you won't grow. Like I said, when I first started sponsoring Fabiola I wrote her once a year. Now I write two three sponsored children every month. I don't say that to puff myself up because I know there there are some who write to 10 or more kids! I say that to encourage you: take on the challenge, fail at it for a while, and let God teach you how to be be an encouraging, supportive, letter writing master.

I'd like you to meet, Michelle, a very encouraging blogger/Compassion Advocate that I just met.

She blogs at Blogging from the Boonies.

Michelle has eight Compassion correspondent sponsor children in addition to her sponsored child, and she writes them all at least once a month. I was blown away, she's a letter writing wizard! But don't be intimidated, remember: baby steps.

Blogging from the Boonies has a Letter Writing 101 article that I find very encouraging as well as some Letter Writing Tips. Check them out, they're very helpful.

Thanks so much, Michelle!

Compassion also has several encouraging letter-writing articles because, again, we all feel like we're bad sponsors!

• Letter Writing Ideas (this article has over 1800 comments, don't you feel better?)
• There's an OurCompassion group that gets "together" to write letters every month
• Compassion has some great tools about connecting with your child as well (did you know you can email your letters?)

Here's the video I shared this Sunday. Thanks again, Rachel and Darla! 

Compassion Sunday: Video

Just a quick update to let you know that Compassion Sunday is this Sunday April 10th. This is just an opportunity for everyone who loves Compassion's ministry to share it with other people, specifically their church family.

I've been putting together a video interview of a few sponsors in our church and I'm super excited to share it with my family and here on this blog.

Check back on Monday, April 11th and I should have it posted. In the meantime, check out this video promo from Compassion.