Compassion in India

Last week I received an email from Compassion – “Please pray urgently for Compassion and the children of India”.

You may have heard of the situation going on in India – since April 2016, due to government regulations, the flow of funding from Compassion into India, has completely stopped. That’s now over 9 months where no funds have reached the 147,000 children that Compassion support in India. At this point in early 2017, funds are now drying up, and what’s worse, come 15 March 2017, if the situation has not changed, Compassion will be forced to officially stop operations in India.

The reality is that is there is no change Compassion will formally end all program operations in India on Wednesday 15 March.

– Tim Hanna, Compassion Australia CEO.

Compassion have been working in India for almost 50 years and I believe it has the largest number of child sponsors of any country.

The health and well being of 147,000 kids. Not to mention the almost 7500 NGO workers from 580 development centres who are impacted. Plus the spiritual impact of the future generations of kids in India… this is a serious situation which calls for a massive response in prayer – we know God has all this in His mighty hands and will work His purposes whatever the outcome, but I encourage you to pray nonetheless.

So check out the info below to learn more about the situation… then pray.

India Update – Compassion Australia

Due to a lack of funding resulting from the Indian Government’s restrictions, we will likely be forced to shut down our sponsorship program in India in March 2017. It deeply grieves us to think about what it would mean to end all of the relationships between Compassion children in India and their sponsors.

Article from Christianity Today

“Our staff in the India field offices have stretched every last penny beyond what we thought possible to extend the programs for our children, while we in parallel explored alternative delivery methods to provide funds, yet a solution has not been discovered within the needed timeframe,” stated Compassion’s email to donors.

An interesting tweet I found…
https://twitter.com/tnccminority/status/832493519113768960

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Walk In Their Shoes

Outrage and despair – the reaction I get from my kids during a 10 minute car ride when they ask for a drink and we tell them that we forgot to bring their water bottles… A 10 minute car drive without a drink… How ever will they survive? If you are a parent, this may sound familiar.

Last weekend, my family and I joined about 40 other people from the Open Doors team, plus about 70 other teams from around the country, to ‘Walk To Water’.

opendoors-walktowater

On our way to the event, we were explaining to our kids why we were doing this… the concept of not having instant access to clean drinking water to a kid living in Sydney is almost unfathomable (note above!). Of course, kids are not the only ones ignorant or oblivious to this – we all take access to clean water for granted, it’s hard not to. Continue reading “Walk In Their Shoes” →

Unsubscribe

Thinking about the problems and issues in the world can sometimes be overwhelming. The number of organisations, causes, and campaigns seeking our help in order to solve these problems, is almost as overwhelming.

Being overwhelmed can often cause us to stop, to do nothing, to ignore whatever is causing us to feel overwhelmed, pretend it’s not actually there, and move our thoughts and energy to something that doesn’t overwhelm us…

That’s been me for a while now, clearly evidenced by the lack of fresh content right here on LLG. Of course there’s plenty of other excuses I can make about being super busy with family, or running a business, etc, etc… But we make time for what we choose, and to be honest, giving any time or energy to this blog and what it represents, has been frankly overwhelming – and that’s resulted in… Well very little, as you can see.

Unsubscribe

Over the years I’ve joined, subscribed to, donated to, supported… so many things. You may relate – you come across an epic & moving video for a new cause, read a compelling story of hope sown amongst despair, or hear from an advocate about why their cause is changing the world… and of course you immediately feel compelled to support or give. So you do… Great choice! But in that honeymoon phase with your newly joined cause, you’ve kinda forgotten about the 7 other causes you’ve ‘committed to’ at some stage… And so it goes. Before long you’re receiving a constant stream of emails, letters and information about plenty of great things going on to address the plethora of issues in our world, and all wanting something from you. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

It’s time to unsubscribe.

I simply can’t read, digest or support all these organisations, nor could anyone realistically be expected to. So I’m choosing only the organisations that I am really passionate about, maybe 5, and unsubscribing from the rest. I hope to focus on these well – read, pray, give and advocate. 

Inaction

I hope to steer clear from the inaction caused by being overwhelmed. I’m starting by unsubscribing and investing well with those few causes I choose, then I aim to get back into writing more here, and who knows what’s beyond that… I have so many ideas and passions about all this, some of which may or may not happen.

Perhaps you need to do some unsubscribing too, even from this blog (hopefully not!) – be realistic about your current capacity to support a cause. Or maybe you need to subscribe – start learning, supporting, advocating and donating to a cause.

Whatever it is, I encourage you to do something. Be proactive, be planned, be strategic in your support and giving. Choose who or what your support wisely, and choose only a few and support them well. Give generously, time and money, until you feel the pinch.

In some ways it’s a very right response to be overwhelmed – there is a shocking abundance of issues and problems in this world that call for our response. But the wrong response is to do nothing…

The Pinch of Giving

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Displaced

Almost 2 years ago I wrote a post about what was then called ‘The Largest Humanitarian Crisis of Our Generation‘. At the time I wasn’t sure if this title was entirely accurate, but given that it’s still going on, and has only become worse, the situation in Syria has probably lived up to this title.

Refugees have always been, and will always be a part of our broken world – millions upon of millions of people displaced from their homes in generations gone by.

This last week the Western world was shaken, and somewhat stirred into action by the shocking images of Aylan Kurdi, the 3 year old Syrian boy found washed up on the shores of Turkey after attempting to flee the crisis in Syria. This has lit up the Internet with numerous articles, blog posts and commentary on this situation (and here I go with another!).

Injustice screams the loudest when the most innocent are exploited.

It often takes this ‘loud screaming’ for us to take notice. It takes this sort of graphic imagery to open our eyes to see what these refugees are going through. Continue reading “Displaced” →

#OhWhatLove // OhWhatJoy

It would almost be impossible to watch the amazing Watoto kids singing live without experiencing joy. It completely exudes from their smiling faces, passionate singing, and funky dance moves. I recently got a taste of this uplifting joy when we saw the Watoto kids at our church.

If you haven’t yet experienced the Watoto kids choir, then you are missing out on receiving some joy in your life.

       

Apart from spreading some much needed joy throughout the world through their kids choir, Watoto does some amazing work in Uganda by rescuing orphans and abandoned kids and helping abused women. Through health, education and most importantly, a faith in God, Watoto helps to set them up for life… as their tag line reads – rescue, raise, rebuild.

Watoto is positioned to rescue an individual, raise each one as a leader in their chosen sphere of life so that they in turn will rebuild their nation. 

Get Involved

And I’d totally recommend getting along to see one of their concerts if they come to a place near you! You’ll love it and if you have kids, they will love it too! Here’s a taste…

Look up [Perspective]

Things are pretty hectic with kids, a business to run and just the general run of life. It’s very easy to be completely caught up in my own life – head down, focusing on all my own issues and worries. But every now and then I get stirred, I get moved, or even a little shaken by something.  I’m sure it’s God’s way of giving me perspective – keeping my view up and out, rather than my default which is deeply entrenched in my own life.

Last week I got a text message from my wife Beck right in the middle of a super busy day at work:

…check out the blog post “a holy experience” – into Iraq #2. Life Less Greedy post. In tears after reading it. It needs to be told. X.

At that point I really had no time to read the article, but a part of me couldn’t ignore this prompting, nor the response that Beck had to the article. It came at a bad time in terms of my busy little world, but after reading just a few lines, my world suddenly seemed somewhat insignificant… that ‘important’ job I needed to get out to the client really didn’t seem that matter that much.

It was nice gain some healthy perspective. Continue reading “Look up [Perspective]” →

Thankfulness

“If you were to wake up tomorrow, with only the things you thanked God for today, what would you have?”

What an awesome question. Thankfulness in general will transform your perspective indeed. But, thankfulness to God, will completely change your life, like it did for Helen… what an amazing story.

Thanks for a great video Open Doors Australia.