TheBanyanTree: Weight Loss Schemes

[Indiglow]

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Both stories touch me deeply, because I can so relate!  Kenya holds a special place in our heart because for a number of years our church sponsored missions in Kenya.  Our pastor, having already retired, came back to pull a dwindling church together, and worked without salary (living on his retirement income) in order to sponsor church missions - and Kenya was a big part of that.  Each year, he would lead work crews there, supported by members and friends, working to build/repair schools, hospitals etc.  This was a very special pastor.  He left when the Unite Methodist group in Kenya asked him to serve there to be the point person to coordinate the missions there.  (I'm writing this badly and the words are wrong - but hopefully you get the gist of it.)  In his final year at our church, the part-time co-pastor (again, wrong word) had read about a church that had sacrificed an entire week's worth of offering to give to a particular cause.  When she
 read the article, she thought we could do this.  She brought it up to the head pastor, and considering the aging population of our small church, and the challenges it faced with him leaving at the end of the fiscal year, he said no.  It wouldn't rest with our deacon.  The thought persisted in her mind.  After many attempts at suggesting it, and many denials, she couldn't let go.  Finally she approached the senior pastor and said it felt like a calling.  Some time after it was all done, our senior pastor admitted "I would argue with Joyce, but I won't argue with God."  We wanted it to be a community event.  Somehow, I ended up on the committee responsible for making that happen. During the initial vote, I was one of only 2 who dissented.  Pastor Joyce, somehow sensed the reason for my reticence.  I wanted to know where our money was going before agreeing to giving it all away.  It was decided that the money (unless otherwise designated) would
 be split 50/50 between the local food bank and the mission of providing water wells in Kenya so children could go to school instead of walking to muddy rivers to collect water in order to survive.  This was an "impossible" task.   Duh, Lord, not me!  I am clueless.  Still, that's where I found myself.  We had zero budget for publicity, for making things happen.  We are a semi-rural farming community of about 20,000 people at that time.  Prayerfully, I submitted a plan of action.  I knew we needed an Internet presence, a FB page, a way of getting our message to the larger community.  This was an "impossible" task.  We put coffee cans, covered with our message, in local businesses; we scheduled interviews with local newspapers, we finally got a direct connection on  FB to the plight in Kenya...  We said prayers, crossed fingers & toes, and waited until the end of the month to see how it had all come out.  Some of our coffee cans has a
 little as $0.23; one left at a storage rental place had something like #20.00, mostly in pennies and nickels.  It was clear that even the very poor wanted to help those in a worse place than themselves.  How many had an opportunity to participate, even if with only their pennies/  Our entire Easter offering went to "Hunger Bites" - the name we'd given to the project.  When all was said and done, we'd collected more than $20,000.00.  It was sufficient to build 2 water wells in Kenya, and to provide thousands of meals here in Oregon.  Hallelujah!  And then, (drum roll, please) at the end of April, when the church went to look at how badly it had suffered by giving up it's entire Easter offering, it turned out to be the highest giving month of the year.  People had found a way to dig deeper and help out.  

  All of that brings me to story #2.  I can't tell this one without tears welling up.  My husband had a friend who was a missionary (as a part of a group called "Christians in Action) to Brazil.  He took his family there, none of them knowing the language.  After a month or two, making little progress getting to know people, the funds from the supporting organization didn't come.  They had no food.  The wife asked Bill what to do.  He considered it, then instructed her to have the children set the table.  The family sat down at an empty table - there was no food.  Bill (Bob's friend, the missionary) said grace over the empty table.  
At that moment, the doorbell rang.  Bill answered to find neighbors bringing in food to share, welcoming the new family to the community.  Despite language challenges, they bonded.  
  Granted, at any time neighbors might have chosen to welcome a new family.  Why at that particular time?  It was not a "nose-twitching" sort of miracle... but what a powerful testimony to see a family sitting at a table saying grace over nothing.  It was the beginning of a powerful ministry.
  Thank you for sharing your thoughts - what a huge reminder of my own blessedness,

J




From: Theta Brentnall <tybrent at gmail.com>
To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own *original* writings. <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> 
Sent: Thursday, February 6, 2014 7:50 PM
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Weight Loss Schemes
  

Our church sponsors a school in Kenya called Children First. We provide tuition, uniforms, food and supplies for the children who go there. Usually the meal they get in the middle of the day is the only food they have. The son of the amazing woman who founded Children First so her children could go to school came to thank us for our support and tell us about the success stories of the children who have benefited by the school. He told us when he was a little boy his mother scraped together enough money to send him to school but there was no money for anything else. He and his older brothers would try to find work, but it was scarce. He would come home from school and his mother would have a big pot of water boiling on the fire and he'd be happy because maybe that meant there would be something to put in the pot. She would tell him to do his homework and later maybe his brothers would bring something. And when it was dark and there was still nothing in
 the pot but water, she would tell them to close their eyes and sleep a little and she'd wake them up for dinner later.  Often they would wake up in the morning and there was still nothing but water in the pot. So they would drink the water and go to school, with the hope that today there would be something in the pot besides water when they got home. 

The young man has a college degrees in finance and education and works in the Kenyan equivalent of the Dept of Education and he said that because of his mother's unfailing lesson of hope, he's determined to make sure as many children as possible have something besides water in the pot. 

I think about my children and wonder if I could constantly encourage them to believe in the full pot if time and again there was nothing to feed them. We are so, so lucky. 

Theta

Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 6, 2014, at 1:20 PM, "Teague,  Julie Anna" <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> You have spoken directly to me with this one, Monique.  I say this quite often, "I'm starving!"  And when I hear that phrase come out of my mouth in a moment of being ever so slightly uncomfortable because I haven't eaten IN A FEW HOURS, then I remember that I have never experienced starvation a day in my life. Not one single day.  I've felt hungry, but not hunger.  It makes me think deeply on this situation.  It makes me want to do something, anything, to fix the broken world in which I always have plenty and someone else never has enough, and we are both human beings deserving of food and water and warmth and safety.  I have no answers here.  I just echo your thoughts.  Thanks for sharing them.
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>:
> 
>> At a time when I'm concerned about the bigger picture, which is access to
>> good food for people everywhere, since a lot of people, a lot of Americans
>> too, don't have access, I'm also finding myself focusing on what I eat, or
>> don't eat, and this is with a fridge full of food.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> We've got everything in there.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> My most hungry moment has been when I've forgotten to eat, and I say
>> something like, "I'm starving!" to my long suffering husband, when the
>> truth is, I wouldn't have a clue what that's like. And I know it, but we
>> all use terms hyperbolically, at least most of us, if you'd like to be left
>> out of that statement.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." That's just wrong, unless you're into
>> that. I try to be inclusive.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "I'm starving." Are you really? Probably not. If you were, I'd be happy to
>> get you something, so just let me know.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> But many people are starving, or are eating a diet without nutrients,
>> because that's what they have available. I am not one of those people. I
>> never have been. I doubt I will ever be because I have a level of luck that
>> follows me around like a bright shiny cloud.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> And many of us who are not in those situations want to lose just a few
>> pounds, or many pounds. It's like the work thing, except worse. The work
>> thing is that so many people are unemployed, and yet many people I know
>> work all the time, they work constantly, they do the work of several people
>> because of cuts in staffing, they do the work of several because they're
>> trying to provide a living for their families and feed them.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I don't know what to do with these disparities.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> In the past few months I lost close to ten pounds, mostly because I was
>> eating less.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Actually, all because I was eating less. It certainly wasn't my increased
>> level of exercise, because there wasn't any. But eating could be
>> problematic, so I cut down, and weight went away.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Last week I had an organ removed. A small insignificant organ, but still,
>> it was a whole one. Yesterday I got on the scale for the first time since
>> then and found another five pounds had gone away since Friday.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> FIVE POUNDS! And all I've been doing is laying around being useless.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I'm thinking my little gall bladder was bigger than I had suspected.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Of course, I haven't been eating much, because I don't want to upset the
>> delicate balance my digestive system is striving to attain. Sometimes when
>> I eat I have discomfort.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> And still, my fridge is full of food. Today I received a gift of fruit,
>> which was awesome, even with all the food in the fridge, because fresh
>> fruit is not something we currently have on hand.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> So 15 pounds down, no signs of starvation in my future, a fridge full of
>> food, and I'll eat because I get hungry, and I'll mostly eat well, and if I
>> don't, it's my own fault. It's not because I don't have access to good
>> food, it's because I don't make good decisions.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I have access to great food and I don't want it because I might have
>> discomfort.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> And that's my first world problem. I don't know what it's like to be hungry
>> with no chance of food, so this is all I have to talk about. An ache in my
>> stomach that will likely go away any time now.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Needed weight loss, because let's face it, I was too fat anyway.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> A life of privilege.
> 
> 
>