How Poverty May Have Saved My Life!

Meet Samuel. He's a college student in Haiti studying architecture. Well, I guess I should say he WAS a college student studying architecture.

You see, Samuel was kicked out of class because he couldn't afford the tuition. He was supposed to be in class at 4:45pm last Tuesday when the earthquake hit. But because he had no money, he wasn't there.

Poverty just may have saved Samuel's life.

Because, this is what's left of the college. A pile of rubble. Flattened by the quake. His classmates perished. Many of their bodies are still trapped inside.

Samuel is living in a squatter's tent city right now. When we met him, he was playing a guitar, singing a song he wrote, titled "Lord, Do What You Want With Me." It might be a very appropriate song. Samuel was studying architecture. And architects are just what Haiti is going to need in the very near future, if this country is going to rebuild itself.

Samuel, God saved you for a reason. And yes, He's going to do what He wants with you. It could be that you're part of the solution for Haiti's future. An architect in the making. A life saved. A dream stalled, but not forgotten.

Of course, it's difficult to ever say that poverty is a good thing. In Samuel's case, it may have saved his life, but he still has to deal with the fact that his family has no food, no home. Hope for an education is non-existent. That's why your prayers and support are so desperately needed. Find a way to give to Haiti. Help give kids like Samuel hope for a future.

The Disaster BEFORE the Disaster

From Port Au Prince, Haiti Long before an earthquake hit Haiti, disaster had already made its place here--poverty. The effects of this quake are magnified tremendously because of the poverty factor. Poverty forced people to live on decaying hillsides. Poverty left buildings poorly constructed. Poverty left no infrastructure to respond to such a disaster. The images you see on your television or computer don't do the devastation in Haiti justice. Building after building has collapsed. I’ve seen dozens of multistory buildings that have collapsed into a stack of pancaked floors. Looking at the sheer tonnage of cement, I’m amazed anyone survived. Hospitals, schools, churches and businesses all flattened. As if this country didn’t already struggle to provide those services to those who need it. That is the great irony right now. The number of people who need medical attention has increased dramatically as the result of this disaster, but the number of medical clinics and hospitals decreased. It seems so unjust. Communication and transportation are terrible. I’d love to be able to show you some of the videos that I’ve shot, but I can’t get a strong enough Internet connection to last long enough to upload. At this point, my best connection provides 8kb per second. Terribly slow. And it lasts only a few minutes at a time. This morning, I witnessed a relief truck get overtaken by a crowd of people in the streets. The people climbed the big rig by the dozens, forcing open the back doors and tossing out bags of rice … all while the truck was driving. People are desperate for food. All over town, there are makeshift signs (mostly sheets with painted words on them) saying, “We Need Help” or “Please — We Need Food and Water.” At the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I saw a couple of relief supply trucks that had been turned into makeshift storefronts. People were trying to sell the food, water and clothing inside. Another example of how important it is for you to make sure you partner with an organization that has established distribution channels. Many organizations can get stuff here, but don’t know how to distribute it. Parking a truck on the side of the road can cause mayhem. We don’t know exactly how many of our kids are affected. Getting to them all is terribly difficult. Many families fled when the quake hit. Many are sleeping on the streets. Rounding them up is tough. Perhaps one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen is our Haiti staff here. Keep in mind, many of them lost everything in the quake. They lost homes, possessions and sadly, some of them lost loved ones. Yet here they are, working at our makeshift camp every day, trying to help others. Serving in the midst of their pain. Amazing! Please continue to pray for them. They are heroes of the faith. Compassion partners with established local churches in Haiti. We have for mre than 40 years. They know us. We know them. And shouldn’t the church be the distribution channel for relief in times of hurt anyway? You are providing for tons of supplies to make it into Haiti. Our first planeload is expected to arrive Friday in the Dominican Republic. It will be transported into Haiti on Saturday. We’ll be able to provide two weeks’ worth of basic necessities to more than 77,000 people. Two weeks later, we’ll be able to give them another two-week kit. It’s a start. But it’s a drop in the bucket of need. We need more. Help our relief efforts by making a donation to our Disaster Relief Fund. Thankfully, Compassion has a long-term solution to poverty, too. It’s our program. Child Survival, Child Sponsorship, Leadership Development. Holistic Child Development. That’s how you change a country like Haiti, from the inside out. You start with its children. You start by teaching them to believe in themselves and in a Creator who loves them. You give them skills to succeed. And when they are older, they fight the corruption that plagues their country. They make the changes. Haitians had little to begin with. This quake took that little away. It’s time to start over. And starting over begins with hope. And thankfully, that’s something Compassion specializes in.

Thank You!

I'm so excited! Compassion International has won the Myspace Impact Award for Poverty Relief. Thank you so much for those of you who voted on Myspace to make this happen. The prize includes ad placement on the myspace homepage for one full week (so it will be seen my millions of users)...and $10,000. The money will go to support one of Compassion's many programs to help children break the cycle of poverty. Myspace also created a section on their Impact Award page, where you can learn more about Compassion and how you can get involved. Thank you to those of you who voted! This is a great opportunity for Compassion to spread its message about the biblical mandate to care for children in poverty. God bless!

MySpace Award

The organization I work for, Compassion International, has been nominated for a MySpace Impact Award, for poverty relief. Anyone who has a myspace account can vote. And you can vote once per day! So please go to the Impact Award page on MySpace and vote for Compassion International. Please tell your friends to vote too. This would be a huge opportunity for us to tell more people about the good work Compassion does. And...if you want to know more about Compassion before you vote, please email me at tim@timglennmusic.com any questions you have. I'll be happy to answer them for you. Or you can check it out for yourself, on Compassion's website. Thanks!

Living Amongst the Dead

“How long have you lived here?” I asked the young Filipino girl standing before me with a baby on her hip.
She smiled, exposing her decaying teeth. “All my life.”

All her life. Here, in one of the most despicable, degrading places for a family to raise a child. A cemetery. But not the type you and I are used to. There’s no neatly mowed lawn, lined with perfectly symmetrical rows of headstones.

There are no flowers gently placed at the head of each gravesite. In fact, it’s hard to tell where one grave ends and the other begins. To say this cemetery is in disrepair is a gross understatement. Garbage lines the muddy streets. Broken headstones and cracked open tombs slant along the moldy, muddy slopes that have been beaten down by far more rain than they can handle. Small stone statuettes are scattered throughout—cement angels kneeling—not out of reverence, but rather a sort of submission to the macabre of it all.

A 20-foot tall wall lines the cemetery. Upon closer inspection, you find that the wall is made up entirely of tombs…stacked one on top of the other. The wall of the dead.

Amidst the crow of a rooster and the bark of a stray dog, you hear the giggle of a child. Little boys and girls skip along the gravesites, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the entire site is covered in death. This is their home.

Hidden along the massive wall are openings the size of small doorways…perfect for a Filipino. An average American might have to duck to enter. Beyond these doorways, are homes—more like shacks made of scraps of wood and tin. It’s not unusual for a family of six or seven to call one of these shacks home. It’s where the young Filipino girl was raised…and where she will raise her baby. It’s beyond heartbreaking. No child should be raised here. No baby should have to breathe this moldy air…walk barefoot through this garbage. No child’s bed should be just on the other side of a wall from a corpse.

Compassion International is here to bring life to the cemetery. By teaching these children about their Heavenly Father, Compassion is giving Filipino boys and girls a chance at new life. It’s the very heart of the Great Commission. Because of Compassion’s ministry, some of these children will not spend their entire lives hidden within the wall of the dead. Nor will their children. This is truly light in the darkest of places.

We all live in cemeteries, I suppose. We are all skipping among the dead through this world of broken homes and hearts. The question is: what are we doing to bring life to the cemetery?

The Privilege

I have had the privilege of traveling to some of the poorest places in the world. I say privilege because I consider it just that. Walking with the poor is what Jesus did. Holding their hands is what He would do today. Ministering to them, He said, is ministering to Him. That’s a privilege. But all privileges come with a cost. In many cases, that cost is a broken heart. Sometimes, we need broken hearts.
I have been in a jungle in Thailand, where families live in shacks made of rotting wood, each built 3 feet above ground because every rainy season the entire village floods —taking lives and possessions away in the frantic current. I have seen how the families there endure the stifling heat, with little food to eat. Children, lethargic from lack of energy, don’t run or climb the massive trees that would provide perfect perches. Many of them work in the rice paddies to provide for their families.


I have been to Kenya, and sat with a family of five in their tiny 12x 14 home made of mud. I watched as the mother doled out one piece of bread to each family member for dinner. I saw her hungry children playing beneath the clothes-line with the only toys they had — clothespins. I saw where they sleep…mom, dad and three children, on one moldy mattress on the dirt floor.

In Bolivia, I met a four-year-old named Lalady. For some reason, I was drawn to her. I saw her across the playground at a Compassion project. I smiled. Within seconds, she was in my lap, touching my face with her sticky fingers…marveling at the color of my hair. We played together for nearly an hour. There was no language barrier. We just enjoyed each other's company. Then, her father came to pick her up at the project.

“She likes you.” He said in Spanish. (I know this only because there was an interpreter.)

“And I like her very much too!” I said.

“Maybe you could take her home with you.”

“Ha! Yeah! I wish I could!” I joked. Only daddy wasn’t joking. His face was serious.

“I have four other children. You could give her a much better life than I can.”

Whoa. What desperation leads a man to be willing to let his child go away with a stranger? How much love does he have for his daughter, that he’s willing to give her up, just so she can have a chance at a better life? I sat there, with little Lalady on my knee, my lip and chin quivering and my eyes filling with tears. My forehead sweating in the brutal Peruvian heat. My heart breaking.
And Lalady was one of the lucky ones. She has both parents who love her very much. She also has a sponsor that pays $32 a month to make sure she’s taken care of at the Compassion project. There, she gets a hot meal, a safe place to play. She learns about health and hygiene. More importantly, she hears about Jesus.

There are literally millions of children who need just those basic things: a hot meal, clothing, a safe haven, after-school mentoring…to hear the Gospel. You could do that for one of them. For a price that’s less than taking a family to the movies for two hours of entertainment, you can provide all of those basic life-giving necessities for a child in poverty for an entire month.

I urge you to go to Compassion's website and sponsor a child. It really is the least you can do. And I’ll be more than happy to share with you just how strategic it is. How much it changes a life. But you won’t have to take my word for it. You’ll get letters from your sponsored child, thanking you…little hand-drawn pictures telling you about his/her life. And you’ll be able to write too…and share your life with that little boy or girl on the other side of the world.

It’s a relationship.

It’s a privilege. And yes…this privilege will break your heart. Isn't it time your heart was broken?

Mayonnaise Sandwiches

When I was a kid I used to love mayonnaise sandwiches. That's right, just two pieces of bread, with a thick helping of Miracle Whip (which technically, isn't mayonnaise--it's salad dressing) in the middle. No meat, no cheese...no veggies. Just Miracle Whip and bread. I'm not sure how that started. Perhaps it's because we were so poor and often didn't have anything else to put between our two slices of Wonder Bread. It's not very nourishing. But at the time, it was a wonderful snack. And now, having grown up and had all sorts of meat-filled hoagies, clubs and Reubens, mayonnaise sandwiches don't sound very appealing.

As I look back on my spiritual journey, I realize how much of my life has been like that mayonnaise sandwich. I had the bread, but not much to put in the middle. My early walk with Christ was encapsulated in the only two things I really knew about Jesus:

1. He was born of a virgin, in a manger, under a bright star. Wise men came to see Him and brought Him gifts.

2. He was crucified for my sins. Died on the cross and after three days rose from the dead.

But I knew very little about the middle of the sandwich. What happened between birth and death? What did Jesus do with His time here on earth?

We can grow so complacent in our spiritual journeys that we forget about the middle of the story. And frankly, part of that may be the fault of the Church. Pastors--not all of them, but many--find it easy to talk about the bread. Sermons about how Jesus was born...and how He died for our sins are abundant. It's an easy topic to give the body. But what about the middle?

A recent Barna poll found that more than 50% of church-goers in the US said they had not heard a single sermon about ministering to the poor over the past year. Over 50%! But so much of what Jesus did was ministering to those who were hungry, thirsty, hurting, sick, lame, blind...poor. Jesus spent the better part of His ministry addressing those needs. And He told us to do likewise. Why isn't the Church teaching about the middle?

Seems to me that ministering to the poor ought to be the MOST preached topic in the Church today...not one of the least. If we truly want to be Christ-like, and we should, then let's start teaching Christ's message to the Church. Let's start doing what Jesus told us to do...and start serving the poor.

There are so many ways to get involved:

• Volunteer in a homeless shelter.


• Serve food to the poor at a soup kitchen.


• Sponsor a child living in poverty.


• 
  
  Give to your church's food pantry.

There's something every person can do. Jesus told us to do it. Anything less...is just a mayonnaise sandwich.