We started this organization with ZERO funding, total grassroots effort by so many wonderful people. Some of these people are close friends, while others are new friends that have a heart and passion to end extreme poverty, and they are willing to sacrifice to prove it!

I’m going to do a series of post introducing these folks to you. Let’s start with the first two stories.

Karin is a local Austinite. A young professional in the advertising industry! She supports HELP’s stateside operation, which is vital. But, she also wanted to help rescue orphans in Zimbabwe. So she sent out an email to some friends and asked them to help her raise some funds. She asked them to not get pedicures/manicures for a few months and donate those funds to HELP. And they did it and now we are closer to having the funds we need to build an orphanage in Zimbabwe and rescue homeless kids. How cool is that?

My friends John and Jodi Wahba live in Raleigh. They are close friends that we deeply care for. In March they told me they wanted to get their small group involved in CTEP. Their small group does a monthly missional project so in May they did a garage sale. What a great way to be missional and go global, I’m so grateful for all of them.

We also have multiple people who are already supporting kids through our Help One Now initiative, which is launching soon, real soon! Designers who have given their time to help spread the story, volunteers who have given their time to enter data, people who have prayed for us and donated financially.

Help End Local Poverty is a God thing, we are building a tribe of people who want to help make a difference…It’s not owned by any one person, its led by the Spirit of God to bring glory to Jesus and share the Good News of His Kingdom by being light in darkness and seeking justice for the oppressed, which does in fact glorify God…We call this Gospel Justice!

Next post I will share a story of two ladies who traveled the globe, raised money, took pictures and wrote a book, all within a year’s time. They are making a huge impact!

This picture was taken by Blanca. These kids live in Musha Wevana Children’s Home in Zimbabwe.  It’s a snapshot of what movement of love, hope and story can look like. Happy kids who are  educated, well fed, lived, clothed and supported by the global church-people like you and me!

You can read my review of Tom’s latest book Scared by clicking here and you can also purchase the book via Amazon, what are you waiting for?

I did have some technical difficulties so bear with us as occasionally the video speeds up for 2-3 seconds.
This is not a professional interview, but Tom shares some great insights that are beneficial to the rest of us.

Please do us a favor and link this blog post, add the video to your blog, Facebook and feel free to Twitter the link. We want to spread the news about this book and be a voice for the 140 million orphans in our world.

Also, Tom’s publisher thinks the message in this book is so important that they are giving it away free online. Impressive!

At HELP we have narrowed our focus to orphan rescue and orphan restoration. There are close to 150 million orphans around the world. Each day 26,000 will perish because they lack proper food and water. We want to rescue homeless orphans and journey with them to restore their souls. Then, we will work with the local community to focus on long-term development.

I’m so excited organizations like Charity: Water, One Day Wages, Just One and Lemonade International (among others) all are striving to bring an END to extreme poverty. I have no doubt that this generation can and will eradicate extreme poverty as we seek justice and correct oppression in our world and for our God! (FYI-Extreme poverty and being poor are two different things, so to my Christian friends who tend to make a ton of excuses, please don’t use Matt 26:11 as an excuse to be laze and not act!)

Check out this video.
HT: Eugene Cho

Walking with Water – Twestival Drill Day 2 – charity: water from Ethiopia from charity: water on Vimeo.

The story is gripping, fast paced and heartbreaking. Yet filled with hope in the midst of tragedy, Tom paints a picture of reality, but also pens a pathway of change and hope.

My prayer for this book is simple, that the rest of the world would somehow realize that if we choose to love and care for those who live in extreme poverty, we can make a difference, life can be better, extreme poverty can be eradicated. I feel like this book is vital as it can help us see humanity beyond the issues the global poor face. These are real people who are desperate and deserve a better life. Hopefully, through this story, it will cause a movement of compassion and service.

In the next week or two, I’m going to do a video interview with the author. I also have two free copies of Scared to giveaway, more details to come. In the meantime, you can learn more about Tom’s organization, Children Hopechest, they are doing great work with orphans across the world. You can also visit the books website to find out more info.

1. World Vision: I’m not sure what to say about World Vision. All I know is they were fighting for the global poor long before it became cool. They are doing tremendous work throughout the world.

2. Compassion: 1,000,000 kids sponsored, serious…? How awesome is that! Compassion is focused, connected, creative (blogging tours, music tours, etc) and thriving like never before. Amazing!

3. Charity: water: The new kid on the block. Charity is telling a great story, using technology and social media to create a movement of people who will bring clean water to the one-billion plus who lack access.

4. International Justice Mission: Not sure if there’s anything worse than a starving kid on his/her death bed. But, if there is, I would suspect human trafficking would top that list. Thankfully, we have organizations like IJM who are causing the world to take notice of this issue.

I also wanted to honor all the unknown organizations, and the men, women and children who sacrifice to make those organization possible. The missionary, the donor, the local leader who suffers and sacrifices daily for his/her community, the 9-5′er who takes their vacation to serve the poor, the artist who uses their skill to tell a story through photos, painting, music, web design and more.

There are so many unknown heroes who are giving-up everything to love, serve and help the global poor. These folks are doing God’s work in the darkest parts of the world, places where often we wonder if God even dwells in those evil places. But then we see them, those unknown people, doing God’s work, and because of their story, we see love, find hope and realize that a movement is happening all over-the-world, because the church is living out the gospel. Thank God for both the known and unknown.

But my fear is this: When things don’t change as rapidly as we all want, will we get tired and move on? We can’t get enough shoes to enough kids, we can’t drill water-well’s fast enough, we can’t rescue all the kids who are being trafficked or captured and turned into child-soldiers. Time and resources are not on our side. It’s going to take a lifelong effort to see massive change, but daily we move forward.

In the West we desire to conquer, we love to start and finish. We want solutions to the issues. Yet, when you deal with extreme poverty, you’re fighting a beast that is massive and beyond comprehension. I can’t support enough kids, or build enough orphanages, I can’t raise enough money or create the next “cool” thing. But, I can take the words of Paul to heart in 2nd Thess 3:13. Paul warns us to “not grow weary in doing good.”

Friends, this is the reason why it’s so important to do activism within the framework of the gospel. God calls us to act, endure, and fight for those who suffer. If social justice is just a cool event, where we gather with friends and have a “fun” time, eventually the masses will move forward. But those who are struck by the gospel will understand that this is a lifelong battle against injustice, we have an enemy that is seeking to devour this generation. And we simply refuse to allow this to happen, because if we allow extreme poverty to exist and if we refuse to act, then we are denying the call of Christ and not walking in His footsteps.

This is why I’m an advocate of Gospel Justice. I’m an activist, because deep inside my heart, there lives an activist, one who loves deeply and gave Himself for the whole world. And if I can learn to embrace Gospel Justice, then maybe I won’t tire, because my motivation to love, serve and sacrifice is based on Jesus, Scripture and mission.

I will post part two tomorrow. BTW: I’m not saying the above mentioned organizations are NOT doing gospel justice.

1. The local church takes the tithe and uses it on staff, buildings and programs. Therefore there are little to no resources left for the global poor. Basically, we give our crumbs to the poor while we use our wealth to feed consumer (come to me) Christianity.

2. The local church spends countless hours on planning for programs. Then, they spend countless hours running the programs. Again, the issue is simple, if we are so busy drawing people to us, we won’t have the necessary time to “go” into the world and serve the global poor. (When we serve the global poor, we will reach people with the gospel, the poor and wealthy)

3. The local church sometimes lacks the ability to teach its people that issues of poverty and serving the poor is not a “social” issues but rather a “gospel” issues. I would say most Christians in the West don’t see serving the poor through the lens of gospel and mission, but outreach and “works” based-ministry. We serve the poor for our own sake, rather than to be little Jesus’ to the least of these! We have to embrace that serving the poor is the heart of Jesus and it is the responsibility of His church–You and me!

4. The local church sometimes lacks the same passion that Jesus had. Much of what we do in the name of “reaching people” we do for ourselves. We want big crowds to stoke our egos, we want big budgets so we can enjoy the financial-freedom and not live on faith, we want to speak at conferences, write books and have lots of social media followers…Really, we want to feel important, and sometimes we become hell bent on success for our own personal gain.

5. Intelligent Advocacy: Yes, its cool to wear our social justice gear, we all want to Save Darfur, rescue child-soldiers et al, but few of us want to write a check, take a trip or get our hands dirty with real mission work. Basically, we are wanna-be Christians who seek the social cool, but refuse to act like Christ and sacrifice our time, money and life for those in Darfur, Burma or your local inner-city neighborhood, We talk a lot, listen to the right music, attend cool social justice events, but lack the ability to translate the advocacy into real-life action.

So, there you have it, five key issues that I think we all need to process and understand. Believe me, I see myself in all five of those areas, I’m guilty! But, I also refuse to allow myself to make excuses…Because I believe we will find Jesus when we choose to go the darkest places of the world, and bring light, love and HELP to the worlds poor. If you want to follow the path of Rabbi Jesus, he is going to take you to places that we don’t want to really go, require you to do things we don’t really want to do, and ask you to care about people, that we really don’t want to care about!

• I would have waited to release the vision and website.
• I would have spent more time talking to key non-profit leaders stateside.
• I would have spent more time on the ground, with local indigenous leaders.
• I would have kept the vision simple, effective and focused.
• I would have led my volunteer team better.
• I would have raised more funds before we launched.

You get the hint? I made a lot of mistakes, I continue to second-guess myself, I stay awake at night wondering if I have what it takes to make this thing succeed.

Yet, I have zero regrets. You can’t launch a perfect organization, you can’t help but walk through the dark valley of uncertainty, there is no way everyone is going to believe in you or your vision.

Entrepreneurs have to have thick skin, deal with failure, learn from mistakes and have a can-do mentality. In the world of startups, weakness is sniffed-out quickly.

The key is quite simple, is your passion to succeed stronger than your willingness to fail? For me, I have no doubt that I’m called to do what I do. For instance, my wife would quit her job in a heartbeat and move (any country) tomorrow to serve the poor, this is deep confirmation. (Necole tells me often that I lack faith and I’m a wimp because I no longer like to take risks) I have a deep passion to help those in extreme poverty. So each day I fight, struggle, worry, and work as hard as I can, the best I know how.

And when Its all-said-and-done, I seek God for favor, direction and blessing. Because the dream is way to big for me…Hopefully, it’s not to big for God! So I continue to journey forward, refusing to give in to doubt, fear of complacency.

In a nutshell, there are many needs in our world. Extreme poverty is an ugly issue and its going to take a lot of hard work to create the change that is necessary to end it. So lets get started.

Our hope is 3 fold in 2009 as it relates to serving our friends in Zimbabwe.

1. Build a new home for orphaned kids on the current property.
2. Purchase new mattresses so the kids don’t have to sleep on the ground.
3. Purchase new school uniforms for the kids.

As you can tell this is very practical. We just believe that every kid should have a place to call home, a bed to sleep in, and clean clothes so they can feel good about themselves. If we can help in these areas, we feel like the community would be well served as they already have local leaders who are doing so much to love and support the kids.

Moving on…So we thought to ourselves, what would it look like to ask our friends in the West to help us end local poverty in Zimbabwe? How could we create a movement of love, hope and story?

Are you willing to help? Are you willing to ask others to help?

Tomorrow I will share practical ways that you can help us, help our friends in Zimbabwe.