TravelStream™ news feed for member len_20 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/len_20 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:52:00 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/mazatlan_04-07/1192740600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/mazatlan_04-07/1192740600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/mazatlan_04-07/1192740600/tpod.html Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:52:00 -0400 The Mazatlan not seen by most tourists.

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Canterbury, United Kingdom

Technorati Profile Let's hope the spiders find me.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184979900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184979900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184979900/tpod.html Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:23:15 -0400 Burma and the Karen minority: Meeting persecuted Christians for the first time

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Kanchanaburi, Thailand

(...cont.)
"This is our new computer lab," says one of the teachers escorting us. Computer lab? I think to myself. I look in the room skeptically and my jaw drops. I see thirty teenagers sitting behind brand new flat screen computers, learning Microsoft programs.
I just went to the bathroom in a bamboo outhouse with no running water, but there's a computer lab! My thoughts could go one of two directions from here: these people are either incredibly resilient and determined to make the best of a very bad situation, or they're just extravagant.
I believe it is the former. This camp was established in 1997. The 4,000 people that live here are not allowed to leave the camp to enter Thailand. They can either go back to Burma (not a very safe option considering the landmines, burning villages, and Burmese military goons eager to shoot them or worse); or they can take their chances at starting a new life in one of 33 countries around the world that will accept them. They're stuck within the confines of this camp, and they can either curse the lemons or make lemonade. When I look at these kids learning to use computers in a computer lab I see lemonade all over the place.
After hiking up a big hill, we enter another classroom. About 40 kids stand to greet us. This is the group of kids who live in the home for orphaned children that is supported by God's Kids.
At home, our staff spends countless hours in meetings, in our offices, on the phone, on the radio, meeting people for lunch, creating websites and brochures and letters... all for this - to see that these kids, the kids in this room, are doing ok; to see that they're well fed, happy, educated, cared for, and shown the love of Jesus. This is the end of the production line for God's Kids. To see them face to face is indescribable.
We sing songs and pray together and thank each other for the work we're all doing for God. Then we go outside to take a group photo. But one girl stays behind. She's sitting at the front of the room against the wall. She has a bandage on her leg and her crutches lean against the wall. I look down and see that the bandage stops near the middle of her shin bone, and there's nothing below it. She's missing a foot and part of her leg.
After talking with her and her teacher, I find out that she's relatively new to the camp. She's fourteen years old, and just a few months ago she was in Burma with her parents. She went out to pick vegetables from her parent's garden and stepped on a landmine.
It's easy to see when walking around the camp that this is not uncommon. Many people - children and adults - are hobbling on crutches, and several of the teenagers that we come across wear t-shirts that read, "Say no to landmines." Landmines are a part of their lives like flat tires and fender benders are part of mine.
This little girl touches us and we continue talking with her. She's fine talking about the landmine and her missing leg. She's fine talking about anything right up until we ask her about her parents. Then she cries. And she can't stop crying. Her parents are still in Burma. As far as she knows, they're still alive. But as far as she knows, she will never see them again. They wanted her safe and taken care of, so they had her rescued and brought through the jungle across the border and into this camp. What will happen next? Who knows?

We spend some more time at the camp, seeing people and kids. But the rest of our day is spent thinking about that 14-year-old girl who stepped on a landmine in her vegetable garden. I keep thinking, "I'm going to go home; she's going to stay here." For some reason, it's a strange thought for me. As if after seeing her sitting there with her blown up leg, how could I go back to my normal life again.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184954940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184954940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184954940/tpod.html Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:49:57 -0400 Burma and the Karen minority: Meeting persecuted Christians for the first time

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Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Our first day begins at 5:00 am. Chris, an American missionary meets us in the lobby of the hotel with our driver, PC. (I'm sure he has a real name, but this is what we call him.) After loading our luggage into the van, Chris takes us to a line of street vendors for breakfast. I'm nervous about the food because I had so many problems (none of which are appropriate for polite conversation) with the food in Liberia. Each vendor has prepared something different and we hesitate to make a choice, so Chris chooses for us. We sit down on a picnic table under a tarp behind the cooks and eat rice and chicken with something akin to hot sauce - really hot sauce. It's great and my food anxieties disappear.
Chris, a 25-year-old who's been in Thailand for a year, is very excited that this is my first trip to Thailand and even Asia. I can see a thousand things race through his mind as he catalogs all of the experiences that I must have on my first trip here.
Today, we're meeting with Sayan, a Karen man who will be our escort into one of six or seven refugee camps in Thailand established for nearly 150,000 Karen people who have fled the persecution and abuse of the Burmese military.
We arrive at his house, take our shoes off outside the door, and sit down in his office. I'm not great at small talk. In fact, I hate small talk and I usually make no effort to better myself at it. But happily, my boss, Ridge, takes the lead and works through about thirty minutes of conversation in broken English and even more broken Thai (through Chris). Someone brings us a glass of water; we thank him, hold it in our hands during our time in the office, and leave it on the desk when we leave without drinking a drop. Nothing ruins a once-in-a-lifetime trip like uncontrollable diarrhea.
We all pile into Sayan's truck and head for the jungle. At a checkpoint manned by Thai military men dressed in camouflage and boots (noteable because I haven't seen shoes with shoelaces since San Francisco - everyone's wearing flipflops), Sayan presents our papers and they lift the gate. Chris is excited because entering this camp is a great privilege. No more than 500 foreigners have been allowed to enter the camp since its establishment in 1997, that's 50 per year. The Karen are quiet people, as will become increasingly apparent as I talk with them, and the Thai government, while helping them in many ways, does not advertise the existence of these broken people forced to live in the jungles along their border.
Thailand has an immigration problem that is bigger and badder than in the U.S. The illegal immigrants entering the U.S. come to escape poverty and to give their children a leg up in life. The people in the U.S. who speak the loudest against immigrants argue that escape from poverty isn't a good enough reason to allow them to make their way in our economy. But if Karen families were not allowed to cross the border into Thailand, many of them would be slaughtered or enslaved by the Burmese military. They're not trying to give their children a leg up. They're trying to give their children a chance to survive. The Thai government is faced with a much more critical decision.
If they didn't allow the Karen to enter, they would have the blood of the Karen people on their hands in the eyes of the international community. On the other hand, their economy would be hard pressed to absorb nearly 150,000 refugees looking for a job.
We drive through the camp. People on the road stair at us; they step out of their homes to see the strangers. Their houses are made of bamboo and have black plastic tarps for roofs. Children are playing barefoot in the dirt. Some of them are stark naked. It's a World Vision scene right in front of me.
Our first order of business is to meet with the camp committee to learn more about the needs of the camp and how God's Kids can be part of supporting the children - especially orphaned children. We also want to find out exactly who handles the support money that we send each month. There has been some changes at the nursery schools that we support, and accountability is an issue. The entire staff has turned over because most of them have chosen to leave for other countries to gain their freedom.
After speaking with the committee, Sayan and the school teachers took us to see the nursery schools. The schools were so simple, I had to smile. We spend so much money to improve our schools with supplies, and projectors, and tv's, and we still complain. While the kids in most schools in the world have next to nothing. They sit on a mat on the floor, they work by the light of day, and their only resource is the patient instruction of their teacher.
We followed Sayan around the camp meeting small groups of excited children along the way. The camera embarrasses them and they scatter to the back of the group when I point it at them. The adults smile and nod as we pass, happy to catch our eye. It's as if that smile, that small token of recognition, is verification that we know they're there. Remember me when you go back to wherever you came from, their faces say.
We see the elementary classes learning to read and write in several languages. The teachers point at words on a chalkboard while the students recite together. We pass by the library - primitively built with a tarp for a roof, but full of books organized alphabetically by genre. Then we pass by a room that knocks me off my feet.

(...TO BE CONTINUED)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184781240/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184781240/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184781240/tpod.html Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:08:55 -0400 Burma and the Karen minority: Meeting persecuted Christians for the first time

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Mentone, California, United States

Our plane leaves at 10:00 am from the Ontario airport. Jill and I were awake until close to 2:00 am last night. I was packing, she fixed some things on her thesis and tried to clean up the house a little bit because she is flying to MN the next day. Ridge and Robanne picked us up in the morning and we all went to the airport together. In my haste to be ready in time, I didn't have time to find my raincoat. This is ominous. It's rainy season in Thailand.
We fly from Ontario to San Francisco to Tokyo to Bangkok. I'm looking forward to the flights because I love flying. And I can't wait to get to Asia! In San Francisco and Tokyo Ridge gets us into the United Airlines Red Carpet Club with his 1k card. It's great and I rave about the free hot chocolate and internet access.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184868060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184868060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/thailand_2007/1184868060/tpod.html Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:07:39 -0400 Burma and the Karen minority: Meeting persecuted Christians for the first time

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Bangkok, Thailand

We land in Bangkok at about 11:00 PM, wait a long time for my bags to appear from the belly of the airport onto the luggage carousel, and set out to walk to our hotel. On our way out of the airport, we get stuck in the rotating exit doors. It turns out to be a longer, less direct walk than expected. We do, in fact, get stuck in the mud with our luggage carts which we took from the airport. It's kind of comical. We double back once, make our way through the lower half of a parking ramp, and emerge on the streets of Bangkok each pushing a luggage cart with muddy wheels and bags hanging over the sides.
I don't know what to expect when we get to the hotel, but it turns out to be pristine and schwanky. I immediately figure out how many nights we'll be able to enjoy this hotel - the answer is two. We'll stay here tonight and on our last night in Thailand before heading to the airport in the morning.
Tonight, we actually only get about 4 ½ hours in the hotel as we're leaving at 5:00 in the morning. We sleep well to the sound of the British open on the TV.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/mazatlan_04-07/1177823220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/mazatlan_04-07/1177823220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/mazatlan_04-07/1177823220/tpod.html Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:02:25 -0400 The Mazatlan not seen by most tourists.

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Mazatlan, Mexico

It's 6:30 in the morning and sleepy-eyed children are walking in holding the hands of their little brothers and sisters to the sound of Enrique singing and playing his guitar. They sing worship songs, read from the bible, pray, and eat breakfast - possibly the only meal they'll get today.

Most of us think of Mazatlan, Mexico as a paradise with grand hotels, beaches that stretch for miles, and drinks served in hollowed-out pineapples. I've been to that Mazatlan. But today I'm in a Mazatlan where kids go hungry because their parents can't afford to feed them. Drug trafficking has a deadly grip on the city and the affects of the situation are sitting here, sleepy-eyed, singing worship songs, waiting for breakfast.

Mazatlan has a few things going for it when it comes to illegal drug trafficking. First, the surrounding area is perfectly suited for growing marijuana and opium abundantly. Second, Mazatlan is about midway between Columbia and the U.S. And third, the government and police are in on it.

Mexico is the largest supplier of marijuana to the U.S. and is the primary shipping route for 90% of the cocaine trafficked into the States. This didn't surprise me when I got here four days ago. But for some reason I was surprised to discover that Mazatlan, the Mazatlan that I'd traveled to for family vacations, is a major player in all of it.

God's Kids, the organization that I work for, is building a feeding center for children in the heart of Mazatlan because this cycle of drug use, poverty, and crime is catching up to the most vulnerable part of the population in the city. The kids are living in shacks made of whatever materials can be found - sheet metal, tarps, shipping pallets, boards and planks of all shapes and sizes.

Some of them are living with a parent who's still addicted to cocaine or heroine while the other parent serves time in prison for robbing a store or kidnapping someone else's kid for ransom. Others are living on the streets. Either way, at nine or ten years old, with no one looking after them, they become survivors and take care of their younger siblings on their own. They're orphans, not of war like the kids we work with in Liberia, Africa, but of the crime and drug world that has enveloped Mexico.

So we've partnered with a man that's working to change his city, one neighborhood at a time.

"Imagine a big ship sinking in the ocean, and all the people are crying for help. I want to save all of them, but I have only a small boat."

This is the image that Carlos, a native Mexican who turned to a life of Christianity over twenty years ago, uses to describe how he feels about his mission in Mazatlan.

The average family in Mazatlan needs about twenty dollars a day to make ends meet. The majority of employers, including the hotels and restaurants, pay minimum wage - five dollars a day. A full day's work is worth a combo meal! So people get desperate. The illicit drug industry pays much better.

"Everywhere there is drugs." says Carlos. We pass by a group of men two doors down from the feeding center, "They sell drugs." The hotel maids and restaurant waiters, they sell drugs. Carlos points to his neighbors on both sides, "They sell drugs." This is the environment that the children are in.

"Why don't you turn these drug dealers into the police to keep them away from the feeding centers?" I ask Carlos naively.

So he begins to explain in a way that tells me he's explained this before. Each drug dealer has marked off a certain territory of the city for himself. He meets with the highest ranking police officer in that territory and they strike a deal. The drug dealer agrees to pay the officer maybe $800 a month. In exchange, he's allowed to do business without being bothered by the law. It's like paying rent. It's that easy.

The prison, where Carlos preaches three days a week is no different. The guards act as wholesalers to the inmates running a drug business inside the prison walls. "What do you need this week?" says the prison guard to the inmate. "I need three bags of marijuana and some cocaine," is the answer.

Carlos has been ministering to poor families and men in the Mazatlan prison for fourteen years. He's built three feeding centers/churches in different parts of the city, and the fourth is scheduled to be finished in July.

The centers serve a number of purposes beginning with providing a meal to kids in the area before they go to school. They also become the neighborhood church holding worship services and helping broken people - the true purpose of church. After spending four days here, I can see that the feeding centers in many ways become the gravitational center of each community.

Carlos hires a strong family to run each center. In return, they live there for free and eat meals with the kids. Most of the men working for Carlos are former prisoners.

Take Enrique for example. "He was a very dangerous man," says Carlos as we watch Enrique strum his guitar and lead about 40 children in singing. "He and some others robbed a store with guns. They killed a man. And he was the boxing champion of the whole prison."

Now Carlos calls Enrique his left hand in the ministry. Appealing to their spiritual needs, both the children's and the prisoners', is the only way to keep them out of the drug world, says Carlos. Those who accept Jesus' teachings finally see a real reason to live differently. Their passion for children and for serving God and their community fills a hole that any addiction expert will claim is the primary reason for drugs' powerful hold on people.

With only a small boat, Carlos will rescue as many people from this sinking ship as he can. He knows that it may not be many, but maybe some of them will have their own small boat, and they will rescue some more, and those people will have boats too. Either way, Carlos says he will keep paddling until God tells him it's time to stop, and I'll never view Mazatlan the same way again.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1165959180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1165959180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1165959180/tpod.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:38:24 -0400 God's Kids Liberia - December, 2006

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Monrovia, Liberia

I'm in the middle of my second week in Liberia and the excitement of going on an adventure has worn off. It's hot and humid, and there's no reliable running water. I've stood under a running shower only twice in the last eleven days, and for only 3-4 minutes each time. I've been taking sink baths from a bucket of water drawn from a well most mornings.

My personal plumbing has voiced strong objections to Liberian food. I've been eating handfuls of dry cereal, mixed nuts, and an occasional peanutbutter & jelly or tuna sandwich. I'm sticky and smelly and all I can think about is Hawaiian pizza and rootbeer floats.

Now, I know that many of you are rolling your eyes because you've had longer, more rigorous trips outside of the comfort of the Inland Empire. But this is my first trip to Africa and I think I'm entitled to feel some comfort shock.

With that said, this experience has been a powerful lesson in relativity. Comfort is relative, and even as I write home about the hardships that I'm bravely enduring for two weeks here, it's obvious that most Liberians are living with much less.

I've visited several God's Kids orphanages in the past few days. While some have a septic tank and one or more water towers for showers, none of them have running water or a sewer system. They run a generator for an hour in the morning and 1-2 hours in the evening to charge the director's cell phone, use a computer, and have some light while the kids get ready for bed.

But these kids have far more than most of their Liberian peers. They eat 2-3 times a day, get an education, and call the director of the orphanage Papa. They belong to a family.

We've partnered with Hume Lake Christian Camps near Fresno to run a youth camp for orphans this week at a location 45 minutes outside of Monrovia. The local kids that live near the camp have made themselves part of the activities from the beginning. They hang around the perimeter of our meeting place, blend into the crowd when we're playing games, and are never more than a few feet away when we are relaxing outside.

Today, curiosity got the better of me and I followed three of them into the bush to see where they live. We walked down a dirt road for about ten minutes and turned left on a narrow path. Two little girls and a boy were leading the way. One girl wore a dress that was dirty and torn. The other girl was barefoot and had sores on her arms near her shoulders.

I followed them for about fifteen minutes before they brought me to a clearing in the woods. The dirt ground was smooth and clean from years of foot traffic. There was a covered area used for cooking and a one room hut made of dried mud, bamboo, and a tin roof. I counted eleven people, (adults and children, including two babies sleeping on some blankets on the ground), standing or sitting around. They all turned and stared at me as I walked up with the kids and I wondered if I would be welcomed.

As I got near, I smiled and held out my hand. The oldest woman returned my smile, shook my hand, and told me that she was the grandmother.

After a few minutes, I learned that grandmother had three or four daughters here, and at least one son. The kids that I had walked with were her grandchildren. Two boys were playing a board game with dice. The gameboard was broken and they were using rocks for the pieces that were missing.

I asked Grandma as many questions as I dared and learned that she once had a house where the cooking area stood now. It had been burned to the ground during the war. Now, fourteen of her family members lived in this mud hut that was built a couple of years ago.

Her husband is still alive, but he doesn't come around very often because he is unemployed and ashamed to face his starving family. They eat crawfish caught in a river nearby with traps that they weave from palm leaves. They produce palm oil every week and sell it in town along with extra crawfish to buy rice for themselves.

As primitive as these conditions are, I know that some children in Liberia live with even less. At least this family has each other. Comfort is relative.

We have set a goal to partner with 43 orphanages in Liberia by the end of 2007. We're not going to save the world. But we're going to do what our faith calls us to do believing that a power greater than us will bless our efforts. And maybe, if things come together, we'll help a few fallen robins back into their nest again. For that, Emily Dickinson would agree that we have not lived in vain.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1165352820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1165352820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1165352820/tpod.html Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:27:57 -0400 God's Kids Liberia - December, 2006

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Monrovia, Liberia

"Praise God, thank you Jesus," he said when got into the car. "Praise God, thank you Jesus," he said again when he stopped the car and got out.

John Kpewoan has good reason to thank God over and over again when he gets in and out of his pickup here in Liberia. Monrovia is far and away the scene of the most chaotic auto dance that I've been privileged to take part in. Swarms of houseflies act in more predictable patterns than the traffic in Monrovia.

"You see all of deese poles?" John leans across me and points out my window as I sit in the passenger seat with a white-knuckle grip on the door handle. "We used to have power all over da country." I tentatively peek out and see the poles at odd angles with strings of power lines dangling into the grass beneath them. He's talking about his country sixteen years ago, before two civil wars and one of the twentieth century's most notorious political thugs ripped it apart.

300,000 people died and a full third of Liberia's population fled to neighboring West African countries during the wars that began in the early 1980's, and ended with Charles Taylor's exile in 2003. The stories of mutilations, executions, and torture captivated the media in 2003, and are now being retold in the movie, "Blood Diamond," which takes place in neighboring Sierra Leone where Taylor's brutality spilled over.

"But tings are getting better," said John. And he's right, albeit in degrees. Even though 85% of the population is unemployed and illiterate (wandering about in traffic during much of the day it seems), no one is shooting anyone any more. And Liberia is now governed by a democratically elected president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

"Sirleaf has a zero-tolerance policy on corruption," John said calmly after slamming on the breaks and veering to the left to avoid a casual pedestrian woman with what looked like a laundry basket full of fish balanced on her head. "Der is still many bad people out der from da war dat have to be brought to justice. She'll find dem eventually."

I'm in Liberia for two weeks working for God's Kids with some of the thousands of orphans that are the product of war. Some of these kids watched their parents die in front of them. Some, it is said, were forced to kill their parents themselves before joining the war as a child soldier.

Violence and corruption have brought hundreds of countries and empires to their knees over the course of history. But what has impressed me most in the week that I've been here is the strength of this nation's legs. The people are tired of corruption; they are overwhelmingly unified, more so than any other point in their history as I understand it; and each person that I talk with is extraordinarily optimistic.

When I asked a man what he loved most about his country, he said, "I love Liberia because we are free. If we work hard, have faith in God, we will make it alright."

There are thousands of people living in mud-brick shacks with a dirt floor, and nothing but a metal tub in a fire pit for cooking, bathing, and washing clothes. But nobody is complaining. When I say hello and ask, "How are you?" they always begin with "Oh, I am blessed."

Anyone under the age of 25 is fixated on getting an education. They want to be a nurse, a lawyer, a pastor, or anything else that will help their country (I might suggest that someone establish a Cal Trans. equivalent). I'm eager to see the new Liberia that will emerge from the ashes of war. "You come back in two years, and dis will be a different place," said John Kpewoan.

With his right hand honking the car horn intermittently to warn pedestrians that he's approaching, John weaves me through the streets of Monrovia. Thousands of people are selling anything they think people might buy so they can feed themselves and their family. Based on the people I've talked with this week, things won't be like this forever. The children that I'm working with today will be the leaders of Liberia in a very short time. They are the legs that the country is standing up on.

Until then, I'll buckle my seat belt, get a good grip on the car handle, and do my best to engage in casual conversation.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1163623260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1163623260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/len_20/liberia-2006/1163623260/tpod.html Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:02:50 -0400 God's Kids Liberia - December, 2006

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Redlands, California, United States

I grew up seeing images of starving children in Africa on t.v. I'm bombarded with them all the time by the media. The images of a world so different than mine have always been interesting, but never engaging. This weekend, I get to go to that far away world where children have been living on rice and chicken feed and don't own a pair of shoes. I get to meet kids who, until three years ago, were commonly given the honor of seeing their parents shot or tortured in front of them by soldiers under the control of a corrupt and violent government. I get to go to Liberia.
I'm excited. I'm not so sure that I should be excited. Part of me thinks that I should be downcast, that I should face this experience with sadness knowing that tragedy will be all around me in the lives of the children that I'll meet in the next two weeks. But I'm not sad. I'm excited.
There are more than 130 million orphans in the world. That's roughly the size of Canada and Mexico combined. And the number is steadily increasing. Some say that every 14 seconds another child becomes an orphan.
I have the privilege of working for a Christian organization, God's Kids, the purpose of which is to focus on the orphan problem. We do not fool ourselves into thinking that we can solve the problem. We're simply determined to engage it.
When the time comes, everyone chooses to engage the problems of this world in different ways. Our organization is engaging by building a network of orphanages around the world that hold to a set of standards for orphan care and financial responsibility. And I'm excited to be a part of it.
On December 10, while I'm in Liberia, 200 Liberian orphans are coming to a youth camp organized just for them. For six days, these kids will play games, eat meals together, sing, and dance. Hume Lake Christian Camps out of Hume, CA is sending eleven of their staff members to Liberia to partner with God's Kids and give these children a week that they'll never forget.
Thousands of kids in the United States go to summer camps, family camps, and youth camps all the time. But for these 200 Liberian kids, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Many of them have had childhoods that I can't imagine. But for six days, they will get the chance to be entertained, catered to, and even spoiled a little.
In addition to the Orphan Youth Conference, I get to be part of a huge Christmas party on December 16. For the sixth year in a row, John Kpewoan, the God's Kids Liberian National Director has invited close to 3,000 kids to his orphanage to celebrate Christmas in an all-day birthday bash. All of them are going to get a backpack stuffed with Christmas toys, school supplies, and hygiene items. Six of these kids will get a pack that was filled by students at Redlands Christian School.
Beyond the youth conference and the Christmas celebration, I'm going to Liberia to see some of our orphanages for the first time. I'm bringing 11 framed certificates that I will post on each orphanage wall as a sign of belonging to the God's Kids Network of Orphanages. It's a promise to feed, educate, and care for children. It's a promise to engage the problem.
The orphan issue, like many other issues in our world, is too big for us. We'll never beat it. But we don't have to be resigned to it either. I'm leaving this weekend to experience Africa and one of the world's great humanitarian crises. I would love to have the influence and resources to affect change like Bill Gates or Bono. But I never will. That's ok with me, though. I'm going to play soccer with a kid in Liberia whose parents were killed a short time ago. I'm going to hang a certificate in her orphanage that says that I promise to engage the problem. I'm going to read Emily Dickinson's poem over and over again.

Not in Vain

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
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