Mobilizing the Church to meet the needs of the hungry and homeless

Recently, Todd read a book entitled The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. Richard is the CEO of World Vision, and in his book, he explains our obligation as followers of Christ to meet the needs of the hungry, the poor, the dieing throughout our world. He read me pages of excerpts to the point that I had to ask him to stop because I was so overwhelmed by the vastness of the need, and the feeling of being unable to affect change that would really be of any help.

As a family, we are moving forward this year in an effort to "do our part", so to speak, to become more mindful of those who are hurting and less focused on ourselves, our stuff, and obtaining more stuff to fill up our already overstuffed house!

So, to that end, we chose a specific curriculum this year to use with Anna that focuses on the World as a whole and the varying cultures throughout it. The curriculum, published by My Father's World, is called Exploring Countries and Cultures, and will essentially take us all over the World to examine the people groups and their needs both physical and spiritual. The curriculum is written by former missionaries who are involved in Bible translating.

As God's Providence would have it, I stumbled across a non-Christian resource that was reviewed in the most recent issue of Practical Homeschooling magazine. The book, published by "Free Spirit", is called A Kids' Guide to Hunger and Homelessness - How to Take Action! At a short 44 pages in length, it is filled with ideas that children can be a part of in order to help those in need. Included are ideas such as - gardening, holding hunger banquets, clothing banks, emergency kits, building projects, food pantries and more. This particular resource is geared towards children in 6th grade and up.

I am planning to go through each of the different ideas and information and write in with colored marker scripture verses that would go along with the material. It's important for our children to understand that we don't do this because it is the nice thing to do, or because it is a good deed, or even because if is the right thing to do. We do it because we are commanded to.

So, I just thought I would share this with you all, it would be a fantastic resource for anyone with children, whether you homeschool or not, doesn't matter. This could easily be used along with family devotional time, or just assigned to your kiddos as "summer school" to do something profitable with their time off.

If you are a follower of Christ, who desires to make a difference for those in need, in your own community and around the world, you might want to give this resource a look. It's available through http://www.freespirit.com/.

Abiding in His grace,
Lori