Archive for August 2009 | Monthly archive page
Jade Sims has been part of the crafters community blogging for a few years now. While she enjoys making and blogging about crafts, she felt there was something more she could be doing, something her and the community of crafters she belongs to could do to help others.
After countless prayers and a little bit of patience, “Craft Hope”:http://www.crafthope.com/ was born.
“I prayed and prayed on it until Craft Hope came to me. Now I’m able to connect crafters from around the world with people who need some handmade love,” Sims said.
Craft hope is a faith based organization that pairs crafters who want to help others by donating their homemade crafts, such as sock monkeys, dolls, beanies, blankets and dresses, with those less fortunate.
Since its inception in January of this year, Craft Hope has delivered more than 4,000 crafts to people all over the world.
The next step for Sims is a “book”:http://chikaustin.com/2009/06/25/a-little-secret/ she is finishing up that will include “How-to” instructions for crafts, with each craft paired with a featured organization for the crafters to send their finished products to.
We are announcing today that GCHope will be one of those featured organizations. Thank you Jade for thinking about us and we look forward to all the wonderful items we will be receiving because of your book.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a local business, “TriMont Real Estate,”:http://www.trimontrea.com/ as they wanted to hear more about the “We’ve Got Your Back”:http://www.wgyb.org/ program serving the homeless kids in Orange County. Now, I don’t mind as much speaking in front of the camera – I don’t necessarily like it – but at least there’s only one or two people looking at me. But giving presentations to groups of people is definitely stretching me! I’m thankful for going to business school and having to give SO many presentations to help get me used to this part of my job.
So I arrived early and at the appropriate time all 24 employees piled into the conference room. They were a super quiet group which probably made me a little bit more nervous. BUT they were a great group and enthusiastic about raising money to feed the homeless. The company is challenging each employee to give us to $100 which they will then match. So if each of the 24 individuals gave $100 and then the company doubled it, they would have raised $4,800 – enough to add 20 children onto our program for the entire year. Imagine that – 20 children in the local community that would have food over the weekend because of ONE company’s efforts to give back.
And while it hasn’t even been 24 hours, they have already raised $540 which will turn into $1,080. And best of all, they sent me these great photos of their ticker bar. They are using backpacks to track their fund raising process.
So I am a little bit more inspired today than yesterday as I watch others get involved and make a difference. __Thanks TriMont Real Estate for inspiring ME!__
On Tuesday Giving Children Hope launched our new mobile medical unit at the Forum in Los Angeles as a part of the Remote Area Medical event. In all, over 1,500 patients were seen Tuesday and subsequently for a total of 8 days. The media swarmed the event.
The GCHope clinic was acting as the pediatric center for all of the cases. Tickets to be treated were generally given away 4 AM. We partnered with Dr. Natalie Nevins from Downey Regional Medical who coordinated her residents to be treating patients.
It was exciting to be a part of the health fair. Normally I’m not around when doctors and nurses are using supplies, equipment and medicines from GCHope. So getting to talk with some of the patients and seeing the doctors treat them was a joy. The patients I was able to talk with either had a job but no health insurance, or had lost their job. One gentleman by the name of Jimmy said he was out of work and there for dental care. He stated, “with my teeth messed up right now it’s hard for me to interview to find work”.
The news cameras flocked to our clinic to interview Dr. Nevins – even Oprah Winfrey’s cameras were in our clinic. Dr. Nevins talked to many reporters about the need for preventative care. **If we don’t care now for patients in a non-emergency situation we’ll continue to clog up the ERs with bigger more expensive problems that could have easily been treated.**
The plan for our clinic is to raise enough money for yearly operating costs so it can be used to treat the un-insured, under-insured, and those that just can’t find a way to cover their health expenses. We also hope to raise money to convert the inside into dental units. With dental units the clinic will be versatile to do both medical and dental on any given day just by switching out supplies.
Why do we do this? Matthew 25:35-36 tells us ”For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” We have a responsibility to look after those who are sick. So we serve others in obedience and we do so with great joy.
If you are a part of the GCHope family by giving of your time, treasures or talents, you are as much a part of this event as our staff. We thank you for helping to serve the sick in Los Angeles.
Canning Hunger and Rose Drive Friends Church members held a food drive to collect items for GCHope’s “We’ve Got Your Back” program. Twelve high school students from their youth group showed up to deliver and sort the food for us.
Thank you so much “Canning Hunger”:http://canninghunger.org/ and “Rose Drive Friends”:http://rdf.org/ for your donation!
A group of high school and middle school students from Church of God San Jose are on their Crazy Love Tour where they are traveling around California for seven days to serve the community.
Thank you for all of your hard work here!
In my work at GCHope, so many times I want to write about cool things happening but don’t have the time. Needless to say, I’m currently penning this in the wee hours of the morning as I know that my next days of meetings will not allow for time.
This week in our office we had the one of the coolest youth groups from a church in San Jose I’d call the “Little Church Who Can”. They were embarking upon what they entitled, a Crazy Love Tour from the Church of God. Now, if you are 23 people traveling around and each day showing up at a new place to serve, you think you must be a big enough church to pull it off. What if I told you this church was around 120 people!
Pastor Ron Hunt, Leas Pastor of the Church, was there alongside of the team working away and we had a chance to chat for about 30 minutes. The team washed our mobile medical clinic to get it ready for its debut next week as part of the RAM event. They cleaned, weeded, sorted and painted. There wasn’t anything this team wasn’t willing to do.
In my conversation with Pastor Ron I learned that the team found us on-line they were drawn to us by our love of Jesus and our desire to serve the healthcare needs of the forgotten. **I also learned that his daughter April is the brains behind taking a large vision and making it bite size to be implemented and they hope that the models of service they develop will not only inspire others, but that they can be easily replicated.**
According to Pastor Ron, April loves encouraging the smallest of groups in the fact they can have a BIG impact. When she talks to other Youth Groups who say their church is small she replies, “So are we”. When they say “But we only had 5 Junior Highers show up this week” she replies, “We only had 2”. She isn’t willing to let the “smallness” of their size not allow them to have a BIG impact. It’s all about taking a step out and starting to DO something.
We wish this mighty youth group well as they continue on their journey to serve others. You can follow them on Twitter at 4others. We hope they will inspire YOU to get out and make a difference.
Oh, one more thing. I mentioned to Pastor Ron that the container we had ready to Thailand to assist kids rescued from slavery had had so much warfare over it. I explained how it still needed to make a safe journey to its intended destination and that maybe they could pray for it before they leave. After all, acts of service are wonderfully important but we know that without prayer its all in vain. And while I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to this team and pray over them for the rest of their journey, I was informed that before they left they laid hands upon it and prayed over the product. And I stopped and realized that while everything they did on their day with us was a HUGE blessing, that was probably the important thing they did for us all day.
So Team from Church of God, thanks for inspiring me! Oh, and if YOU would like to receive our prayer emails you can easily subscribe here.
So, about a month ago I had a hit and run right outside my front door. I was walking the dog so I didn’t see it. Needless to say I was pretty bummed because there was $1,700 worth of damage to my car…and no note. Since I live in the back of my complex, it had to be a neighbor or a friend of a neighbor.
In order to file the claim with my insurance company, I had to go to the police and file a report. Then I was in a rental for 10 days. To try and recoup my deductible, I placed some signs around my complex asking anyone if they happened to see anything. Unfortunately I had no response.
Now, my initial response was to be pretty irritated that someone would not leave a note, damage my car and cost me $500. **But after time I began to pray for the person who hit me. After all, shouldn’t that have been my first response?** Aren’t I supposed to love and pray for those who harm me…it’s pretty easy to pray for those that love you.
Well, a couple days ago I came home to a total surprise. Actually, a shock. Whoever hit me must have been feeling bad and tried to make it right. __I came home to an anonymous envelope of $500 cash in my mailbox.__ Clearly it was someone who talked to me to find out what my out of pocket costs were. And while in this scenario my insurance company is still screwed as they had to pay the difference of the repairs and the rental, I was only out time doing paperwork as I have now recouped my deductible.
Now, some people have said I should try and find out who did this and see if the police can lift fingerprints. But I’m inclined to not try and punish someone for making a step in the right direction by trying to make it right.
So today, I encourage you to pray for those who wrong you. And I encourage you if you’ve done something wrong to make a step towards making it right!
