Lessons From Day One
I spent around eight hours of yesterday sitting in conference sessions listening to preachers, civil servants, doctors and a whole load of other people talking about HIV/AIDS. I'd love to pass on some quotes or some facts and figures, but to be honest I left my notes in the car and it's a little too early (CA time) to go hunting for them.
I did like the guy who runs the President's faith-based initiatives office. He once worked as a volunteer for Mother Teresa and is a very down-to-earth kind of person. He said he still finds it hard to believe he works in the White House and confided that every times he goes into the Oval Office his main concern is not to wet the carpet!
So without my notes, we're left just to consider what impressed me most. Kay Warren talked about how she became "seriously deranged" when she started to get a grasp of the devastation being caused by the AIDS pandemic. A couple of thousand miles away in Illinois, another mega-church pastor's wife, Kynn Hybels, was having her own epiphany about the issue. Then both of them, quite separately started to share the burden with their preoccupied husbands. After some time, the light went on for them too and now two of the largest and most influential churches in the country are becoming increasingly involved with the plight of millions of people all acoss the world, but especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
What did I learn? Listen to your wife! - Am I glad Gill seldom reads my blog!!!
Several years ago Gill travelled with a group of ladies ministering in different cities in South Africa. One of their stops was in a colored township in the Eastern Cape where a white woman gathered hundreds of impoverished, neglected children every Friday afternoon. She fed them and shared Jesus with them. Gill went back the next year, but didn't do the tour, her heart was aching for the children of Kurland. She spent her time in South Africa with Kathy Von Staden and came home to share her burden.
Kids Explosion has since become part of Grace Church's life - we help support the three safe houses Kathy now operates for at-risk children and AIDS orphans, we send teams to lend assistance and are grateful to God for young lives that are being transformed.
Kathy will be with us in service on Sunday, all because I learned what Rick Warren and Bill Hybels did - listen to your wife!
I did like the guy who runs the President's faith-based initiatives office. He once worked as a volunteer for Mother Teresa and is a very down-to-earth kind of person. He said he still finds it hard to believe he works in the White House and confided that every times he goes into the Oval Office his main concern is not to wet the carpet!
So without my notes, we're left just to consider what impressed me most. Kay Warren talked about how she became "seriously deranged" when she started to get a grasp of the devastation being caused by the AIDS pandemic. A couple of thousand miles away in Illinois, another mega-church pastor's wife, Kynn Hybels, was having her own epiphany about the issue. Then both of them, quite separately started to share the burden with their preoccupied husbands. After some time, the light went on for them too and now two of the largest and most influential churches in the country are becoming increasingly involved with the plight of millions of people all acoss the world, but especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
What did I learn? Listen to your wife! - Am I glad Gill seldom reads my blog!!!
Several years ago Gill travelled with a group of ladies ministering in different cities in South Africa. One of their stops was in a colored township in the Eastern Cape where a white woman gathered hundreds of impoverished, neglected children every Friday afternoon. She fed them and shared Jesus with them. Gill went back the next year, but didn't do the tour, her heart was aching for the children of Kurland. She spent her time in South Africa with Kathy Von Staden and came home to share her burden.
Kids Explosion has since become part of Grace Church's life - we help support the three safe houses Kathy now operates for at-risk children and AIDS orphans, we send teams to lend assistance and are grateful to God for young lives that are being transformed.
Kathy will be with us in service on Sunday, all because I learned what Rick Warren and Bill Hybels did - listen to your wife!
posted by Roger Blackmore | 9:11 AM
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