One Child....
The second most frequent questions were "What will you be doing there? Who are you working with this time? Is this another independent trip?"
As many of you know, my heart breaks for the vulnerable people of the world, those living in extreme poverty, especially when it brings about increased risk of human trafficking, slavery and abuse. This passion is born from personal experience, and it runs to the depths of my soul through God's redemption of my life.
Another Child...
India has the dubious reputation for being 2nd in the world for children suffering from malnutrition, which stems from a critically high number of children living in abject poverty. Girls have little value in India, often ending up trafficked, sold into marriage, forced begging, or worse. Boys are not spared either. That is, if these boys or girls even reach past the age of 5.
Yet Another Child...
In the time it has taken for you to read this post up to this point, four children under the age of 5 died in India from preventable causes. Lack of clean water. Malnutrition. Malaria. Cholera. Pneumonia. Diarrhea.
2.1 million precious souls a year...
Four children, every minute.
This continues, around the clock, every single day, every week, every month, year round, seemingly unstoppable like the ocean waves that continue to crash on the world's shores... Except for one difference: While we can't hold back the ocean from crashing ashore, we CAN turn back the tide of poverty. One child at a time.
And the tide IS being turned back... extreme poverty is being served an eviction notice like never before. One by one, people are being empowered against poverty, and the chains of injustice are being broken.
His Hands Ministries works in India through the local church to support their outreach programs that serve the most vulnerable children within the local communities. Through the ministry and the local church, children's basic need for food and education are being met, and through education, the stronghold of poverty is loosened and these children's risk of human trafficking, slavery, and other heartbreaking practices is significantly reduced. Children are holistically empowered and are led to the skills and abilities needed in order to gain employment, and as such, the generational poverty cycle breaks.
Four more children...
Every minute we wait equates the lives of four more children.
The harvest is plenty, the workers are needed, the call is on my heart to go... the time is now.
For more information on His Hands Ministries, please visit their website here.
Your financial support would be a blessing, not only to our lives and spiritual growth, but most of all to His people in India. Please consider helping me with the travel costs by using the Paypal button on the upper right hand sidebar. Children from the His Hands program are also available for sponsorship through His Hands Ministries here.
And with your help... this minute... a child will live.
Join us in prayer, let our light rise for Him in unison as we live out Isaiah 58, together.
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to
provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard...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." Isaiah 58: 6-8, 10
