Whitney Houston tried to warn me. She belted out a proclamation that should have eliminated any sense of surprise in my tiny little head. And yet, despite her belief that children are the future, I didn’t see just how powerful kids were until mine started dropping nuclear bomb-sized ideas around our house.
Out of nowhere, my daughters will say something that is punch you in the stomach profound and then do a ballet twirl and go play with dolls.
That’s just how they get down on a fairly regular basis, but one particular thing my oldest daughter said more than a year ago is refusing to let me go.
We were looking at a book on storms and came to a page about drought and famine. In the corner was a little boy who was starving. His ribs were sticking out and flies covered his small face. I kept flipping the pages but L.E. made me stop and return to that one. She asked, “What’s that?” I told her, “That’s a little boy who doesn’t have enough food to eat.” She thought for a few seconds and then responded, “That’s not real though. That’s pretend right?”
Those are pretty simple sentences. On the surface, those aren’t deep by any means. But what L.E. was saying, what she was asking wasn’t so obvious. Here’s what I heard:
“Wait, wait, wait, are there other 6 year olds like me somewhere without food?
Is the L.E. in Africa starving?
Is the L.E. in Asia being sold into slavery?
Is the L.E. in Atlanta scared because she’s been home alone all weekend because her family abandoned her?
Are all these things happening right now dad? To little kids like me?
Why aren’t we doing something?
Why is that OK?
Where is the rescue? Where is the hope? Where is the sense of urgency dad?
If only you had a platform with hundreds of thousands of friends from around the world that could easily organize and radically change the world through the power of something like a blog. If only.”
OK, I didn’t hear that last part because L.E. is not that snarky of a 6 year old, but that thought is accurate.
Right now, right here, you and me and the Stuff Christians Like community have the chance to be much bigger than a blog. I am growing overwhelmed but the sense that God has given us all a tremendous gift called, “being alive on Monday” and He’s holding His breath in eager anticipation to see what we’ll do next.
And what’s next for Stuff Christians Like is that we’re going to build a kindergarten in Vietnam. (No segue whatsoever; we just jumped into that, didn’t we?)
L.E. was right, this can’t be real. So after years of supporting Samaritan’s Purse, I decided to contact them with an offer of help. And when I told them where my heart was and where my family was, they let me know about a kindergarten in Vietnam that needed to be built.
There are 240 little kids that need a six room kindergarten built in Hoang Then village in the Phong Tho district.
It costs $30,000. I’d like to raise it by December 31, 2009. (Since initially writing this, we’ve changed the goal to $60,000 and two kindergartens instead of one.)
I’ve never done this before and raising $30,000 feels like $19 million right now.
But after interviewing the staff of Samaritan’s Purse about how the money would be used, discussing Franklin Graham and a host of other subjects I felt like this was the right thing to do. Especially watching how much L.E. loves going to kindergarten right now. So my family is all in and will be starting off this crazy thing with a donation because we believe in this.
And I believe in you.
Whether you help raise money to build a kindergarten in Vietnam or do something else with one of the many other awesome charities out there, I believe in you. I believe you are bigger than a blog. I believe with God, in God, through God, we can all be bigger than ourselves.
(I set up a page with Samaritan’s Purse that will handle all the donations in a quick, easy, secure way.)
p.s. Abraham Piper grilled me about why I’m doing this, where the money goes and why I chose Samaritan’s Purse. Check out the interview here.
This is the type of kindergarten building SCL is going to build in Vietnam.
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