I love it when small ideas germinate and translate into action!
This morning we had another brunch with 5 or 6 local neighbourhood families who we have become good friends with. I invited my friend Steve McKinnon along to talk about what TEAR do in helping the poorest of the poor in developing countries and to offer TEAR’s ‘Most Useful Gift Catalogue’ as an alternative to the Christmas junk buying frenzy.
It seemed everyone who was there was quite impressed with TEAR’s practical approach to helping those in need to help themselves. There was an appreciation for the simple yet ingenious way TEAR have made ‘giving’ much more tangible than it used to be.
Amongst the suggestions that the group discussed afterwards were:
– rather than buying crap from the $2.oo shop for the ‘secret santa’ stuff at work we ought to look at buying someone a ‘goat’ or a ‘toilet’. Great idea.
– a finance broker who gives ‘finder fee’ gift vouchers to those referring his clients reckons he’ll give half that amount in gift vouchers and the other half in buying something from the catalogue.
– and then Grendel was the catalyst for inspiring us to try and move our local community to participate in providing a school for a community in a developing nation and possibly even establishing an ongoing relationship with another community.
He will be working on setting up a stall at the annual Brighton Celebration Day (Nov 19th) with the goal of raising $2000.00 from our local community to help those in another part of the world. The rest of the crew really liked his idea and have agreed to participate also.
I am excited because I am starting to feel like there is hope for middle-class dom after all. It was great to be with people who are willing to see beyond their own house/car/clothes/travel etc.
Jesus once said something about the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed…
And in case you are feeling poor, this quick test dog tags movie will give you a much needed reality check.
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