Another Way of Doing Life

A few years ago the University invested $80,000 into new playground equipment to help better serve the many family's with children working here in Kona. There are so many amazing families with the cutest kids you could ever imagine. They laugh, cry and play together taking no regard to the fact that they can't speak the same language. They simply embrace each other as little people with different looking eyes & skin. Well I've been here a month now and I rarely see kids using the wooden castles & ships they have purposefully created for their enjoyment. I see them instead during my work duty (Diane & I take care of all the recycling here on campus as a part of contributing to this community) playing in our GIANT pile of cardboard and paper. They say "I pay no mind to those castles & ships, I just want to roll in the trash for a while. You built me an empire, yet all I need is my imagination." Usually I'm left holding my HI-5 cans wondering, "what if we as the Body of Christ looked like this?

{These are my favorite TEACHERS}

Diane & I are getting married June 14th. We haven't expected to have much of a WEDDING itself, which is fine with us as it leaves room to focus on the MARRIAGE, but God is so faithful to his people. His love is so overflowing. The past couples weeks He has provided basically all the things we were totally ok with not having for the day. Isn't it incredible how God LOVES to bless his kids with the things on their hearts? We give up - we let go - God is FAITHFUL and in CONTROL... 

{Thank you all SO much for your love and support in this!!!}

www.HAKANI.org

This coming week The Childers (A Voice for the Voiceless) along with a bunch of our PhotogenX companions will be heading to Washington DC. They will be meeting with Congress to discuss the continued "tradition" of INFANTICIDE in the Amazon. This past January Susie Childer's Photography of these issues culminated in the making of a documentary film, which will be shown in these meetings. The film is about a young girl named Hakani who amazingly survived her families tribal "tradition" of burring unwanted children alive. A Publication called "A Voice for Hope" will also be distributed in Congress, as well as to all the standing members of the United Nations, featuring PhotogenX photography. One of the major problems is that the Brazilian Government continues to deny the indigenous people basic human rights by excluding them from citizenship. This means that the constitution dose not apply to the tribal people, leaving the hundreds of families who want to save their children without a voice. This issue is so deep I cannot do it justice. Please go instead to the website above if you care to know more about this project. I wanted to make you aware because many of us here have been working on, praying into, and giving out hearts to this project since we stepped foot on this Island. So as our team heads to the States this week I just want to ask for prayer that God will soften the hearts of those they cry out to; that our Father's will and love for these beautiful children can infect the lives of men who's pen can bring an end to these brutal acts; that GODS heart for the VOICELESS will become OUR heart for the VOICELESS!!!

So often we look up to heaven and ask God, "Why is this world so broken?"

I honestly think most of the time He looks back down and says,

"I was about to ask you the same question"

"You are my HANDS & my FEET" 

I'll leave you today with a bit of what has been on my heart the last few days. Soren Kieregaard {one of my favorite 19th-century Danish Christian Theologians} said it far better than I ever could... 

" The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand, But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly. Take any word in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New testament."

{LOVE is a REVOLUTION}