Get this. A 14-year-old Malawian too poor to have electricity reads a library book with photos of windmills and builds his family one out of a tractor fan, a bicycle wheel, lots of sticks, and I’m not sure what else. And it works. And it now powers his whole home and irrigates his fields. I [...]
Archive for category On poverty
What then should we do?
Aug 18
Advice for…
The Super-Spiritual Dude,
The Local Do-Gooder,
The Security Monger,
The Camera-Tricks Skeptic,
The God-Minimizer,
And The Swamped…
Recognize yourself in any of those posts on our many excuses? What’s your excuse not to care? Or do you care plenty, but feel too swamped to know where to begin? Consider these ideas, and add your own…
Get down on your knees and [...]
If you have a broom
Jun 28
I just made it back to Uganda, where I’ll start teaching tomorrow, after a rushed but beautiful visit across the border to Kenya. The trip concluded, as any good movie should, with a good high-speed chase punctuated by gun fire. Ok, it wasn’t actually gunfire, but I was riding helmet-less and bare-armed on the back [...]
Back by popular demand, here’s a blog written back in 2008 while in South Africa, about children soaking up a different perspective on the world’s resources:
Today Phoebe spoke five miraculous words: “I really like this spinach.”
In that moment I believed my husband was the greatest chef who ever lived.
Or just that Phoebe is learning that [...]
Not sure if your interest in orphans around the world is peaked by the last blog, but mine was. Then along came an email from an old friend who does intense front-lines policy-making development work in places like Washington D.C. and London, meeting with people like Obama and Bono. She’s involved in the launching of [...]
Filters off
May 27
Living among the poor is like having all the filters taken off of life. In North America, we can hide our problems, our sins, our addictions, our worries so much more easily. It’s like in North America we can pave over the mud, wipe it off with antibacterial soap, step over it as we climb [...]
Thoughts on Otherness
May 13
“…When you see how the people live, and still more, how easily they die, it is difficult to believe that you’re walking among human beings…”
Not Huddling in the Cold
May 11
On Easter morning my husband asked our daughter Phoebe, age six, to say the prayer. She bowed her head shyly but obediently.
“Thank you God for this nice home and food. Thank you we’re not huddling in the cold. Help poor people and lonely people. Amen.”
I have never before or since heard her use the phrase [...]
It Is Well
Apr 30
Once at a night time prayer meeting, Moses asked for prayers for his wife and two teenage children, who were back in his home country. He had wanted to raise enough money to bring them with to South Africa, but then found out it would be too hard for his high school aged kids to transfer schools anyway…
Writing and Development
Mar 18
A friend just passed along this comment from a dear friend whose story is included in the book, who is now reading her own story in print: “How Chrissy so SMART? You tell a story and she hears so much, it helps to tell the story but how she hears small things?” Shakes her head, “uh uh uh.”
I [...]
