Did You Know? You Can Help.

If you’ve read very much of my blog then you know already how near and dear to my heart Make Way Partners is.  They work so very hard to help the widows and orphans in the world and they could use your help too.  Visit the link below and find out some of what they’ve done already and find out how you can be involved in helping to share Christ’s love.

Click to access MWPYearEndNewsletter2012forweb.pdf

Also, please visit the link below to change dot org and sign the petition to request that

UNSC, AU and US: Provide Civilian Protection in Sudan.

http://www.change.org/petitions/unsc-au-and-us-provide-civilian-protection-in-sudan-2?utm_campaign=action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition

It’s amazing to read all that they have accomplished and I know you wouldn’t want to miss out on doing what you can to help them accomplish even greater things in the future!

Make Way Partners Mission Statement:

Make Way Partners is a Christian mission agency committed to prevent and combat human trafficking and all forms of modern-day slavery by educating and mobilizing the Body of Christ.

 “…he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.” Luke 4:18

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Win a FREE Book! Super Simple and Yes – YOU Can WIN!

Please visit this blog post and find out how YOU (Yes, you!) CAN WIN a really amazing book.  It’s truly a page turner and one you won’t soon forget reading.  Hurry!  Contest ends in November!

God bless you and yours!

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Yes One Can

Numbers.  I’ve never been particularly good with them.  Even as a child in school, dealing with numbers wasn’t a favored task.  However, using numbers is a huge part of every person’s life.  They’re a source for many various types of information.  Some of which is good, some bad, often indifferent.  Statistics are used every single day to give people all over the world all sorts of information about all sorts of issues.

Numbers can be great when they tell us our favorite sports team just won a game or give us some other information that’s considered positive in our minds.  However, they can also make us feel bad, such as when we’re dieting and the numbers we see on the scale aren’t what we wish they were.  They can also fool us and deceive us.  They can even hurt people in need.

How can numbers hurt people in need? Quite simply, by making us feel that our efforts are worthless, and by making us feel that one person surely can’t be of that much help when the number of people in need is so very great.

Studies have shown that people will care, and therefore do, more for the plight of one child, than they will if the need is for a large group of people.  In our minds we can grasp the needs of a single family much easier than the needs of an entire country.   It seems that the larger the number in need is, the more numb our minds and hearts get.  It’s easier to depersonalize larger groups.  We can more easily  justify doing nothing when we feel that the need is so great we can’t personally fix it.  We often say that there is strength in numbers, but when it comes to poverty, larger numbers don’t give us strength at all and instead actually give only a sense of hopelessness.  .

However, in the Bible, God plainly tells us that even only one can accomplish much.  One can indeed save many.  One has saved all who care to take His offer of salvation as their own.

When the disciples brought it to Jesus’ attention that there were large numbers of people that were hungry and in need of food, Jesus told them simply, “You feed them.”   With faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, one can truly make a difference in the lives of many.  With Him helping us, we are capable of doing so much more than we could ever imagine.

You are one and yes you can make a difference.  All you have to do is choose to follow Him.

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Sharing – Battle Cry by guest blogger Matt McGowen

I’m going to share a blog post from Matt McGowen, the Senior Field Coordinator for Make Way Partners.  Please read and then share his blog post with everyone you know and let’s help them get this high school built for these kids!  Thank you in advance for reading it, sharing it, for donating, your prayers, anything  and everything you feel led by God to do for these children.

Battle Cry by guest blogger Matt McGowen 

If you’d like to learn even more about how God is using Kimberly L. Smith and Make Way Partners to bring Hope to many who would otherwise not have much, if any, please see my blog post for the contest to win a FREE copy of Kimberly’s book, “Passport Through Darkness!”  Thank you!  God Bless!

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WIN a FREE Book! ~ ♥

If you’ve read any on my blog, or even more so if you’re a friend of mine on Facebook or Twitter, then you know how touched I’ve been by Kimberly L. Smith’s book, “Passport Through Darkness.”   Her book has started to literally change my life.  It’s changing the way I look at everything in life, including the simple things like having running clean water. I’ve always taken running clean water for granted.  It’s been there since birth and I can’t imagine not having something so seemingly simple. But there are those that do not have running water, that do not have clean water, that have to walk miles to get even dirty water.

Because of it’s impact to those who read this book, I want to see as many as possible read it.  God is using Kimberly L. Smith to open eyes to see needs that are there.  Jesus very clearly tells us in Matthew 22: 37-40 that we are to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind and that equally important is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We read that in our Bibles, most people know those verses well, but what does it look like in a practical way? Kimberly gives us perfect examples in “Passport Through Darkness” of exactly what that can look like.

So here’s the deal –  Kimberly and her organization Make Way Partners will give away a copy of her incredible book to the person that shares this blog post, and/ or my blog in general,  the most (the particulars of how this will work will be at the end of this post).  You can keep the book you win or you can give it to someone else and change their life, either way you will be helping to make a difference for the Lord.  Listen… The more we share this information, this incredible story of love, the more people will be made aware of the great need that’s out there and the more people will be changed and thereby helped.    I am going to run this contest from the second it’s published until Thanksgiving Day (November 22, 2012).

Contest Rules:  To win you simply need to share, share, and share this post and my blog in general,  everywhere – via email, Facebook, Twitter, word of mouth, and so on… JUST SHARE and when you share, ask each and every person to comment below or to email me at LetsSpeakGently @ gmail . com,  and let me know that you’ve shared it with them.

The person who shares it the most will be the winner and the winner will be announced on my blog on November 22, 2012.  Please come back here to look to see if you’ve won around the time frame of 7:00 pm EST. 

Please, above all else remember – Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. James 1:27   This contest is about sharing a story about what it means to do exactly what this Scripture tells us to do and how doing so not only changes the people being helped, but also how it changes the lives of the helpers.  It’s important – God says so, let’s help others “hear” this story.

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No – Not A Book Review

  I read a book recently.  Normally that’s not anything worth writing about since I adore reading (always have) and read lots and lots of books.  However, over the last couple of years it’s turned into more  like a “I love to buy books and read some of most, but seldom finishing one” thing.  I will literally have anywhere from three to six books that I’m reading at any given time.

I have books all over my house.  I have hardback, paperback, novels, fiction, non-fiction, all sorts of school books for my children (we home-school), Bibles, books about the Bible, a modest collection of books to help me study the Bible, books on my Kindle Fire, books on my iPhone, books on my computer, even books I can listen to while I drive.  I take a book with me absolutely everywhere I go, often even listening to them while in the shower.  No shortage of books to read, just a shortage of time and ability to stay focused on one book long enough to completely read the whole thing.

So, for me to have bought and actually read the whole book in only a matter of days is a really really big deal.

This isn’t an ordinary book though.  It’s a book based on real people, places, and suffering unlike most of us here in America can even begin to imagine and it’s one that, I believe, will totally change the way you look at life.

God tells us in James 1:27 –  Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. (NLT)

In Isaiah 1:17 he says – Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.  (NLT)

We can easily see from these and other verses in the Bible that God obviously wants us to help the orphans and widows and the author of “Passport Through Darkness”, Kimberly L. Smith, along with her husband Milton Smith, are doing just that.  Kimberly has spent years in some of the most dangerous places in the world working to help those in the most need.  She has worked tirelessly in places that other people said were too hard to get to or would be too expensive to do any good.  There is no difficulty or danger too great for this amazing woman, and those that work by her side, to stop them from helping these children that the Lord God remembers and loves.

My intention in writing this isn’t to review her book or to even admire Kimberly Smith, but instead it’s to help, in however small a way, to get the message out to as many as I possibly can that we, especially here in America, need to do more to help the lost and suffering.  I want my little post on my little blog to help inspire those that do read it to get this eye opening, heart wrenching book, “Passport Through Darkness” and not only read it, but also be as changed by it as I have been. Truly, this book will completely wreck you and open your eyes and hearts to the children and the widows, in Africa, but also all over our world.

Do you hear His call?  His call to break out of your comfort zone and break into a life that makes a real difference for those the Bible calls our brothers and sisters.  God doesn’t call heroes to help carry His love, His help, and His Word to those in the most need of it.  No, He calls us – the housewives, the school teachers, the bus drivers, the grocery store managers, the bankers, the executives, the students, the moms, daughters, wives, sons, and husbands and creates, in those that are willing to make that first tiny step, the heroes He needs to change lives.

For more information on Kimberly Smith, Make Way Partners, and how you can help  please visit http://www.makewaypartners.org/director.html . 

You can also visit http://orphansunday.org  and learn about Orphan Sunday (November 4, 2012) and how you and your church, or small group, can help orphans around the world.

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