Category: Issues

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” →

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.

The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation

“Syria in Crisis” – sadly, this phrase is very common at the moment. So much so that it just seems to be a part of the fabric of global society now, and just another one of those big problems in a country far away that is too big to fix… so now it doesn’t even get much coverage on prime time TV news, doesn’t make the front page of papers, is shoved in some ‘global news’ category deep within the news websites. And so we, in our busy lives, as we just mange to scrape the surface of current affairs and glean what is interesting and relevant to us from the mass of information going around, forget about what UNICEF have called “The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation”…

UNICEF Syria
This bold red strip is currently at the top of the UNICEF website


Now that’s a big call. But I think if anyone would know, UNICEF would… so I think we all need to dig a little deeper and take notice, or more appropriately… take action.

WFP have helpfully given a short overview for us to better understand the situation:

“Conflict in Syria has forced millions of people to flee their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis in which food is a top priority. WFP aims to bring food assistance to up to 6.5 million Syrians between now and the end of the year. These include 4 million people inside Syria – on both sides of the front lines – and 2.5 million refugees in neighbouring countries.”
Source: http://www.wfp.org/crisis/syria

Continue reading “The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation” →

The best use of God’s stuff

I’ve been reading the latest Compassion mag, and there was one story that I had to share – “The man with 50 kids”. Yep, this guy, David Chalmers, supports 50 children with Compassion! I don’t think this is God’s call on everyone, but his way of thinking is definitely a challenge to us all…

“Since embracing the reality that all I have belongs to God… I have chosen to live simply and am content…”

If you’re already a sponsor then it’s a challenge to take it seriously and be the best sponsor you can; and if you’re not sponsoring a kid… then it’s a challenge to look into child sponsroship, because as Compassion would say, and I totally agree with – ‘it works’.

“I think that as long as people have that mindset – we live for ourselves, we have to have this, we have to have that… then poverty will still exist.”

Continue reading “The best use of God’s stuff” →