Monday, March 11, 2019

Days 9-11: Mustard Seeds for Us, Trees of Hope for Them

I took a much needed break from blogging over the weekend, so I'm combining the past three days into one catch-up blog post. 

As I'm living on just $1 worth of food each day, it has me doing a lot of thinking about my charitable goal for the challenge. What seems like a mustard seed of a tiny contribution for you could mean the world to an orphan or trafficking survivor facing their trauma or despair all alone without hope-- your mustard seed becomes their giant tree, bearing the fruits of hope. 

And that's the beauty of three elements combined:
  1. You giving what you can afford no matter how small it seems
  2. Committing to give that amount each month
  3. Others coming together to do the same
Each of these choices for love are represented by a red ("filled") heart on our "heart chart."

Over the weekend we picked up two more "hearts" in this current effort to find more support for our orphan care and human trafficking response programs. If I focused just on these two small steps in light of the broader Everest-sized goal of our work, I could easily get discouraged (and often times I do). 

But when I take a step back and look at the overall impact over the 25 years of doing this, it's so encouraging. We see orphans growing up and graduating from high school, going on to college and starting to realize their huge potential to make their own positive impact on this world. We see human trafficking survivors finding hope, healing, and empowerment as they start small businesses to stand on their own two feet. It's really happening! 

It's making a difference for girls like her, a trafficking survivor finding hope in the secure environment of our rehabilitation home where she can gain healing and empowerment, all available because of the ongoing generosity of strangers she'll likely never meet. 

What's also beautiful is we're creating a community in this effort-- you could say it's a community of love-- the hearts on this chart represent people who overcame feeling they were powerless to make a difference in the midst of a statistically overwhelming crisis, to realize they actually hold a real power to change a life. And that overcoming is ultimately motivated by love. Love is stronger than death (1st Corinthians 13). 

This community of "hearts" are composed of like-minded-- like-hearted you could say-- individuals coming together-- this community has faith that their small contributions, when pooled together and made each month, can make a real difference over time. And in this difference-making there is a real power, creating ripples of change that extend far beyond our existence. 

So here's where we are on the chart today! It's starting to fill up!

Once the chart is fully filled, we will have $1,775 in new monthly support! Currently we are at $490/mo in new monthly support for these life-saving programs!

If we can fill the whole chart, such an impact would completely fund 10 spaces at our Kathmandu rehabilitation home for trafficking survivors each and every month, or 24 spaces at our India girls home, for example!

Ready to join in? Here's how:

Just tap on this chart and then on the next page choose the amount of the heart you want to sponsor, choose the day of the month you want your donation to be charged each month, enter your details, and you're done!

Then on my next blog post I will fill in your heart to represent the progress we're making!


A look at my meals from the past 3 days, along with some snacks. We are making this work but it definitely gets a bit on the tedious side working with just these 12 basic ingredients. These challenges always turn my thoughts to the struggles of those millions of our world who face the same limitations of food but do not have a day 31. But I sincerely believe that if we all could gain just a little more consciousness of the realities they face, we would all make the changes needed to share more and bring balance to this great imbalance. 













Take Action!

1) Please consider helping me reach my goal to find 50 new "Sustainers"— donors willing to give a small amount each month toward our work helping vulnerable children and trafficking survivors. Go here and enter the amount you would like to give monthly!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to the work of Peace Gospel's programs helping orphans, at-risk children of the slums, and human trafficking survivors.



3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!



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