Kelli’s (she’s my sister) First Post

I realize that most readers of this blog are close friends and supporters of Tim and Ruth. You are more than likely familiar with their story and call to Haiti. They have shared their vision and hearts with you. I look forward to getting to know all of you when we return; but for now would like to share how I, too, have landed in Haiti.

During the past few years of my life, the Lord has revealed to me His abiding faithfulness. Through difficult circumstances He has been my Provider, Healer, Comforter, and Friend. Through a time in my life that it seemed I should have felt the most unloved; He lavished on me His unfailing love! He has blessed me with friends who have become my family, opening their hearts and homes to me and with family who have supported me, unconditionally, holding my arms high when I could not.

God has used this time in my life to grow me in relationship with Him; to seek Him with my whole heart and to serve Him. As I’ve started my career as a teacher and settled into the routine of “life”, I expected to feel satisfaction and fulfillment; however, I have consequently learned that the Holy Spirit does not rest. He has stirred in me a discontentment that I had for so long contributed to my desire for companionship and family. Now the Lord is opening my eyes and revealing that this discontentment is from the Holy Spirit causing me to examine my heart and faithfulness to Him.  I began praying for direction and opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ as I realized it is a picture much larger than me and my own desires.

In the midst of those prayers, I inserted one genuine request: “Lord, please send someone to lead me in this journey”. It should be no surprise that the Holy Spirit had already been moving. As Tim and Ruth were preparing for their first trip to Haiti, the Lord began rising in their hearts a love for the Haitian people before they had ever met them. Tim called a few weeks before they left asking if the Lord called them to move to Haiti, would I consider going with them to teach the girls. My heart cried, “Yes!” but not in response to Tim but to God.

As I was contemplating the idea of coming to Haiti for the summer and what exactly that would mean, I often mentioned to a dear friend of mine back home, “Oh how much God must love me that if He called me to a place like Haiti He would allow me to go with my family!” I say this because, as I have mentioned before, my heart has longed to be with family for so long.

So here we are on this endeavor together. I’m so excited to be here and thankful for the opportunity. We have already met so many wonderful people with whom we will minister. I look forward to sharing much more with you as our trip progresses. I believe this will truly be an amazing summer!

Kelli

Handel Jim, Friend of a Friend

Pushparaj Selvaraj is one of my dearest friends.  I had the opportunity to meet “Raj” about three (3) years ago when my company began outsourcing certain business functions to India.  Raj is from Chennai, a fairly populated city in the Southeastern part of the country.  We spent about three (3) weeks together in 2009 when I traveled to India on a training assignment.  Later, Raj spent roughly three (3) months in Utah learning from our office.

Though I’ve taught Raj and his colleagues much about mortgage loans and underwriting, I feel that I’ve benefited more from our relationship.  You see, the people of Chennai are a wonderful bunch, with many positive attributes.  From a business perspective, we appreciate their education, intelligence and hard work.  Personally though, what I appreciate most is their genuine kindness.  This type of kindness is almost completely absent from most of our places of work and, sadly, many of our churches and families.  When it comes to exhibiting kindness, Raj is no exception.  In fact, he is one of the kindest folks that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

It saddens me to report that Raj lost one of his close friends and co-workers yesterday to a tragic motorcycle accident.  His name is Handel Jim.  I don’t know Jim.  We hadn’t yet had the pleasure of working together, though he had just been assigned to our team.  However, a friend of Raj’s, had we been given the opportunity to meet, most certainly would have been a friend of mine.  Raj posted this on his Facebook Wall last night.

“One of the darkest days of life. Have lost a very good hearted immensely talented friend of myn by name Handel Jim. Still can’t believe he has passed away. How could I forget all the beautiful moments we spent together. You had always been an awesome guy. I will miss you so very badly buddy. With tears & unbearable pain in my heart, I pray for your soul to rest in peace:-(“

Pushparaj,  keep your head up and trust in God.  I am blessed by your friendship and truly saddened by your lost.  I am not great with words, but I want to share with you some lyrics from a song that we sang at church on Sunday.  It goes like this:

“There is a light

It burns brighter than the sun

He steals the night

And cast no shadow

There is hope

Should oceans rise and mountains fall

He never fails

So take heart

Let His love lead us through the night

Hold on to hope

And take courage again”

Overwhelmed

Today I am overwhelmed.  My wife is overwhelmed. And though I haven’t spoken with her, I’ve heard that my sister (AKA our Haitian school teacher) is overwhelmed.  I don’t think the kids are overwhelmed, but they have no idea.  Our dog is smart.  He probably gets it, and will be subsequently overwhelmed.

I was thinking in the car on my way to work this morning how much “easier” life would be if we could just move on with our comfortable and very American way of life.  The thing is, at least for the Webers, I’m pretty certain that isn’t the right decision for us to make.  Why?  Take a moment and read this excerpt from Pastor Bryan Hurlbutt’s journal.  He wrote this after an afternoon spent at Saint Michels hospital in Jacmel.

“Friday March 11^th, 2011 – Jacmel, Haiti

Visited a hospital.  It is difficult to mentally process what I saw. I prayed over several for healing, asking them about themselves through a translator. Why they were here, what their names were and such.  Being rather “pastoral.”  However, it became very personal upon seeing a small malnourished child.  The mother, two older children and baby were at the hospital.  They live two hours away and found out after coming to the hospital that they would be there for three months.  Some white doctors had paid for medication for the baby, but now they have no more for medication and they need food and transportation for two of them to go home.  They are stranded, hungry, sick and impotent.  People wept and had to leave the pediatrics bay.  I worked with Georgette, and she communicated with them, and we decided to give one hundred dollars toward transportation, medicine and food, but it feels like drops of water in a desert.  The brokenness is so real, so rabid, so engulfing.  But today was my anecdote.  That baby isolated the pain and strain of a battered people for me.  I touched him.  I talked to them.  They were real.  No sea of people, no ocean of humanity.  It was a bloated, beautiful, spindly-legged baby crafted in God’s image.  What am I to do with all of this?”

These people are real.  They exist, every bit as much as you and I, and God values them every bit as much as he values you and I.  Their lives are just as meaningful.  And they have emotions, hopes, dreams and souls.  Yet, they are starving and suffering, and very few individuals from our privileged society are there to help.  Walking through the hospital grounds I found myself wondering “Who is going to help these people?”  At that moment, is when I began feeling overwhelmed.  Why?  Because I knew the answer.

Typically, I try and write in a way that is funny and sarcastic.  This is supposed to be entertaining, right?  I’m not a very emotional guy, and I never envisioned myself choking back tears putting together a post.  Enough said, I guess.  Time to get back to mortgages…

Meet Suzanne

This is Suzanne.  She lives in the Congo.  Her community – Kasaji Adp – has been deeply affected by AIDS.  She is the same age as my oldest daughter Madelynn.  In fact, they were both born on the very same day.  Our family decided to “sponsor” Suzanne – and her community – in December.  Our money will help provide safe water, food, clothing, medicine & education.  Hopefully – through our prayers – our God will provide her with much more.  And hopefully – through Suzanne – our God will teach my family a little bit about serving others.

MATTHEW 25 VS 31-46

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least

What’s next?  My family wants to share child sponsorship with our friends.  We’re having a sponsorship party at our house Friday, February 26, 2010.  Madelynn is super excited.  She can’t wait to tell everybody about Suzanne and the “poor people”!  Just in case you are wondering, you can sponsor a child in Haiti.  Let me know if you would like to attend.  My email address is dsmc2189@yahoo.com.  If you don’t live in Utah and can’t attend but would like to learn more, click on the following link:

http://donate.worldvision.org/OA_HTML/xxwv2ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=10322

If you have a minute or two, check out this great song by Hillsong United.  If you attend Lifeline Community,  tell Darren you want the worship team to learn this one!

09_Hillsong_United_-_You_Hold_Me_Now_(A_Cross____The_Earth-_Tear_Down_The_Walls)

Realized today (8/11/2011) this post didn’t have a title!

My blog isn’t exactly an internet sensation.  But that didn’t hit me by surprise.  Here’s what is exciting:  the Wannabe Humanitarian blog has been visited on 30 occasions.  Did 30 different people read my thoughts, or did my wife and mom visit a bunch of times in order to boost my self-esteem?  The world may never know…

I haven’t put pen to paper – or fingers to keys – for a while.  I’m suffering from writer’s cramp, or writer’s block – whichever it is.  Hey Mashburn, don’t laugh.  You just keep “tweeting.”  Hopefully, I’ll get better at this and learn how to offer up meaningful posts a little more often.  Right now, I’m getting some assistance from a book written by Richard Stearns.  It’s called “The Hole in Our Gospel: What does God expect of Us? The Answer that Changed my Life and Might Just Change the World.”  Every Christian needs to read this book.  Here is an excerpt:

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place as spiritually dark as Gulu, in northern Uganda.  Gulu is the epicenter of more than twenty years of violent atrocities committed by the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony, a monster who has declared himself to be the son of God.  If Satan is alive and manifesting himself in our world, he is surely present in this cultish and brutal group whose trademark is the kidnapping of children who are subsequently forced at gunpoint to commit murder, rape, and even acts of cannibalism.  During his reign of terror, it is believed that Kony has kidnapped more than thirty-eight thousand children, killing some and forcing the rest to become killers themselves by conscripting them into the LRA as child soldiers.  As a part of their brutal indoctrination, the children are often forced to hack their own brothers or sisters to death with a machete – because bullets are too precious to waste – and then to drink the blood of those they have killed.  The girls, often just twelve or thirteen, are gang-raped and forced to become sex slaves and ‘wives’ to the rebel commanders.  As a result of the LRA’s gristly raids over two decades, some 1.5 million people have been driven from their loan and forced to live in camps for internally displaced persons in and around Gulu.  It was in this unlikely backdrop that I witnessed the awesome power of the gospel that has become so tame to us in America.”

Christians are called to love and care for our neighbors.  Are the people of Uganda our neighbors?  In this age of international travel and instant communication – think email, TV, internet, etc. – the answer to this question is an undeniable “yes.”  Are the children of Uganda worth less than our own?  Most certainly not, but we act as if these children are less important than our own.  I mean, who could watch their own child hack his or her sibling to death with a machete, or witness their next door neighbor’s daughter fall victim to a gang rape, and take no action?  But since these children are a world away, we are going to close Internet Explorer and move on with our lives (i.e. take no action), right?  Here are some other rattling statistics I learned from Rich:

• 26,500 children die daily of preventable causes related to their poverty
• 1 billion people – or 15 percent – of the world’s population lives on less than $1 per day
• 2.6 billion people – or 40 percent – of the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day
• Americans live on $105 per day
• Today’s 1,125 billionaires hold more wealth than the wealth of half of the world’s adult population
• The wealthiest 7 people on earth control more wealth than the combined GDP of the 41 poorest nations
• The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for just 5 percent of global income.  The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of the world’s income
• The top 20 percent of the world’s population consumes 86 percent of the world’s goods

We have got to do something about this!  If we don’t, who is?  Here is a quote from a guy who “gets it:”

“Fifteen thousand Africans are dying each day of preventable, treatable diseases – AIDS, malaria, TB – for lack of drugs that we take for granted.

This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly:  the idea of equality.  What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern and questions our commitment to the whole concept.  Because if we’re honest, there’s no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.  Certainly not North America or Europe, or Japan.  An entire continent bursting into flames?  Deep down, if we really accept that their lives – African Lives – are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out.  It’s an uncomfortable truth.”

Pretty deep, huh?  Are you wondering who said this?  You might be surprised.  These words were not spoken by a prominent Christian figure.  In fact, these words were uttered by a celebrity.  Yes, the same kind of celebrity that Christians are so quick to judge.  We should tip our hats to Bono.  As one of the greatest humanitarians of our day, he is doing the work that Christians were called to do – the work that many of us overlook and view as optional.  Check out 1 John 3:11-24:

¹¹This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹²Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. ¹³Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. ¹⁴We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

 ¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. ¹⁷If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? ¹⁸Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. ¹⁹This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence ²⁰whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

 ²¹Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²²and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. ²³And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

I mentioned last time that I don’t know where to start.  Really, that’s a lie and an excuse for inaction.  While they might not be public, profound, significant or great,  there are plenty of easy, convenient ways to begin my journey.  My family is going to start by sponsoring a child through World Vision.  Only God knows what’s next.  Right now I’m enjoying a root beer and “Hosanna” performed by Hillsong United.  What a great song.  “Break my heart for what breaks Yours” – that is going to be my prayer.     

I’m a “Wannabe” humanitarian.

I’m not a writer or a blogger.  Well, I guess the latter is no longer true.  In any event, I’m not a good blogger.  You’re looking at all I’ve got to show for an evening’s worth of work and 15 bucks.  Don’t laugh!  I thought I purchased a domain name and web hosting, but somehow I ended up with a free wordpress.com account.

This is my first attempt at writing down my thoughts.  Yes, I’m 29 years old and have never tried that before.  Here’s the thing:  I’ve got a lot rattling around in my head right now.  My wife and I traveled to Anaheim earlier this summer to attend a Hillsong United conference.  I walked away with a desire to do something better with my life.  Did I mention that I’m not a writer?  I am a Christian.  In fact, I have a personal relationship with God, go to church every week, play the drums in the worship band, and act as the church’s Treasurer.  Once in a while my wife and I lead a Small Group at our house and teach Sunday school to 9-11 year olds.  For some reason, all of that seems too much like “playing church.”  It’s all way too easy.  Where is the sacrifice?  It almost seems fake, and it has felt that way since Anaheim.

Check out Isaiah 58:10.  Too often, Christians overlook this verse right along with the poor and oppressed.  I’ve never had a piece of scripture jump out at me like this before and, somehow, I need it to change my family’s life.  I think we can bring glory to God by serving the poor.  In a way, I believe we can worship God by serving the poor. I think the bible tells us we should bring glory to God by serving the poor.  The problem is I have no idea where to start.  Hence, the birth of this web log.  Really, I’m fishing for ideas, insights, encouragement, projects, referrals, contacts, etc.  We all need to get started somewhere.  Why not the internet, right?

So, thanks for visiting.  If you have a thought and some time, please leave some feedback or drop me a note.

Isaiah 58:10

¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.