Blog – 2011 In Review
WordPress.com prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Check it out (link below)!
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
More to come in 2012! Thank you very much for your interest and for staying connected with me! I sincerely appreciate it.
Financial Support: To support financially my work with IJM to help fight child sex-trafficking in the Philippines, please go to IJM’s website by clicking on this link — http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport (or type it into your browser) — then select “Support an Intern/Fellow.” You must choose my name on the dropdown menu, “Select an Intern/Fellow,” or else type it in the “Comments” box. If you do not, the gift will go to IJM’s general fund. Fill out the rest of the donation information on that page and click on “Next.” Review the information on that next page, and if it’s ok select “Donate.” That’s it! NOTE: Please DO NOT feel obliged to give. Freedom is where all giving belongs. Please DO feel welcomed to keep up with what I am doing, to pray for me, and to send an occasional encouragement. Those things are extremely valuable to me. And for any way in which you participate — THANK YOU!
Friends Are Like … Bacon
Friends are like bacon. It’s true. Almost anything is better with bacon. By its magic, salads become meals. In its embrace, steaks become gourmet. Sandwiches get acronyms when it comes with lettuce and tomato. I even say that bacon is better with … more bacon!
Friends are like that, too. Laughter, joking, struggles, arguments, exercise, movies – all are better with friends. Friends are powerful, even if unobtrusive. Years later, their impact can amaze you.
Even poverty cannot stop the power of friends. I saw this myself. With a good friend, I went to share friendship with kids from a very poor community in Metro Manila last Saturday. (Photos of their neighborhood and these friends are above.) We ate burgers. We sang. We laughed. I wrestled, and got wrestled. Kids shared memory verses — don’t tell me you can’t memorize Scripture! — and sang a “zoom, zoom, zoom, around the room, room, room, I’m gonna zoom, around the room, and praise the Lord!” Life seldom gets better than that.
Members of a local church that I attend share Saturday afternoons with these kids. They share friendship. Time. Food. Laughs. Prayers. What a huge difference their friendship makes! The kids cannot wait to come together again. They have fun. They get help. And they will remember.
God knows the power of friends. He created friendship. He wants us as his friends. And he sends us, as his friends, to befriend those around us. Friendship is a way that God appears in the world. The photos above give a glimpse of this — the power of friends. Like bacon, but better.
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Financial Support: To support financially my work with IJM to help fight child sex-trafficking in the Philippines, please go to IJM’s website by clicking on this link — http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport (or type it into your browser) — then select “Support an Intern/Fellow.” You must choose my name on the dropdown menu, “Select an Intern/Fellow,” or else type it in the “Comments” box. If you do not, the gift will go to IJM’s general fund. Fill out the rest of the donation information on that page and click on “Next.” Review the information on that next page, and if it’s ok select “Donate.” That’s it! NOTE: Please DO NOT feel obliged to give. Freedom is where all giving belongs. Please DO feel welcomed to keep up with what I am doing, to pray for me, and to send an occasional encouragement. Those things are extremely valuable to me. And for any way in which you participate — THANK YOU!
IJM – Back, Camera Handy
After trips and work on several cases, I am alive and well – working with International Justice Mission (“IJM”). New photos for the earlier ”Poverty” post are finally on my WhatsyUp2 blog. Please see those photos. The trip to the shanty town (where I took the photos) was memorable. I am glad to have – at long last – a working camera (one prior camera broke, the other was stolen). I will continue with IJM until I secure my next position, so financial support is still welcome. Thank you for your friendship, prayers, and financial support. More news to follow.
Financial Support: To support financially my work this year with IJM to help fight child sex-trafficking in the Philippines, please go to IJM’s website by clicking on this link — http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport (or type it into your browser) — then select “Support an Intern/Fellow.” You must choose my name on the dropdown menu, “Select an Intern/Fellow,” or else type it in the “Comments” box. If you do not, the gift will go to IJM’s general fund. Fill out the rest of the donation information on that page and click on “Next.” Review the information on that next page, and if it’s ok select “Donate.” That’s it! NOTE: Please DO NOT feel obliged to give. Freedom is where all giving belongs. Please DO feel welcomed to keep up with what I am doing, to pray for me, and to send an occasional encouragement. Those things are extremely valuable to me. And for any way in which you participate — THANK YOU!
IJM – Poverty: An Opportunity to Help
Poverty is tough – and evident in the Philippines. Poverty causes pain in the present. It also hinders advancement. Without resources, it is very hard to finish high school, much less college. The family may need kids to work. And it is very hard for someone without a college education to earn much later in life.
Couple that with a slow economy with limited opportunities and employers hiring often only on contract – read, “no benefits.” Couple all of that with a standard practice (whether or not legal) of employers – including retail stores and restaurants – hiring only those 18-to-25 years old. (I still haven’t figured out the logic to that practice – though some reason must exist, however unfortunate.) Given all of this, if you were 29 years old, from a poor family without a college education, where would you turn?
Now assume that you are 16-year-old girl in a poor family. You have to work and cannot easily finish high school. You seriously doubt that you will enter and graduate from college. So you know the difficulties that await you. Where would you turn? You have dreams like the rest of us for a decent life.
Sex-traffickers know those pressures, and the human dreams, of the poor. They use that knowledge to their advantage. They promise reliable wages – while downplaying, or hiding, the great personal cost to the “employee.”
International Justice Mission in Manila responds not only by helping to rescue and counsel victims, but also by providing rescued victims with education and skills training. We also try to find business opportunities – including a greeting card business that an IJM employee and his friends have in the works.
Of course, poverty is not limited to the Philippines. It is in all our “backyards.” The problem is enormous, and we all need to pitch in. Any one person helped represents a terrific success. And en route to such successes, we need more men and women savvy in the ways of business. We need them, and all of us, to go deep into brainstorming and inventing ways to help the poor – in particular, those who need a hand-up, not a hand-out; who seek a better life’s doorway, not a dollar bill. And we all (I’ll put myself first) need to take a good look inward to see if we are doing our best. Not that we should derail our lives to help others. But should we not take care to be on good track – track on a way that engages our lives in helping others?
Photos: Photos will follow. But of my two cameras – one just broke and the other was stolen. So I am working to find a new way to get photos for this blog, and for other purposes. Please bear with me.
Financial Support: To support financially my work this year with IJM to help fight child sex-trafficking in the Philippines, please go to IJM’s website by clicking on this link — http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport (or type it into your browser) — then select “Support an Intern/Fellow.” You must choose my name on the dropdown menu, “Select an Intern/Fellow,” or else type it in the “Comments” box. If you do not, the gift will go to IJM’s general fund. Fill out the rest of the donation information on that page and click on “Next.” Review the information on that next page, and if it’s ok select “Donate.” That’s it! NOTE: Please DO NOT feel obliged to give. Freedom is where all giving belongs. Please DO feel welcomed to keep up with what I am doing, to pray for me, and to send an occasional encouragement. Those things are extremely valuable to me. And for any way in which you participate — THANK YOU!
IJM – Global Prayer Gathering
!! Please go online and check out the Global Prayer Gathering this weekend (April 8-10, U.S.) !!
See http://gpgonline.ijm.org/.
From that webpage, you can get — during the GPG – updates in real time from the various IJM field offices around the world and also live-streaming video of presenters at the GPG conference in Washington, D.C. Decide in advance (i.e., now) the time during the GPG schedule that you’d like to join it online. To to that, go to the webpage at the above address, then click on the appropriately named tab – ”Schedule.” If you do that now, you can plan the events in the schedule that you want to see. Even a half hour of GPG-time would be well spent.
It has been too long since my last blog entry. Most of March I was sick, and also busy. I will blog soon on accomplishments since that last post, and perhaps add a long-overdue photo! Now who loves you, eh?
IJM – An IJM Christmas
Scoring (But Purple Was Best)
What do you get when you mix 30 IJMers with over 100 young clients? A Christmas party! We had a fantastic time celebrating Christmas with our clients. We enjoyed a guest singer from a popular band here (shown with guitar). And I got to help lead Team Purple in games. The photo of the scores shows that we did not win. Alas. Still, we were actually the best team. And had the best cheer: “P-U-R-P-L-E, we will go to victory! P-p-p-purple! P-p-p-purple! Yeah!” If that is not inspiring, I do not know what is. (I wish that I could show photos of our great clients, but we protect their identities – for obvious reasons.)
IJM Social Worker with Rescued Girl
IJM Attorney with Rescued Girl
Thank you very much for your support – your friendship, correspondence, prayers, and financial help. The team here does excellent work, and it is an honor for me to assist. I hope that you enjoy a great new year! (Just in: Three more convictions! That makes five in two months. This is quite an achievement. One conviction relied on a court memorandum that I helped to draft. More on those convictions next time.)
Financial Support: If you would like to support financially my work this year with IJM to help fight child sex-trafficking in the Philippines, please go to IJM’s website by clicking on this link — http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport (or type it into your browser) — then select “Support an Intern/Fellow.” You must choose my name on the dropdown menu, “Select an Intern/Fellow,” or else type it in the “Comments” box. If you do not, the gift will go to IJM’s general fund. Fill out the rest of the donation information on that page and click on “Next.” Review the information on that next page, and if it’s ok select “Donate.” That’s it! NOTE: Please DO NOT feel obliged to give. Freedom is where all giving belongs. Please DO feel welcomed to keep up with what I am doing, to pray for me, and to send an occasional encouragement. Those things are extremely valuable to me. And for any way in which you participate — THANK YOU!
IJM – Christmas Rescue
A client recently thanked me for IJM’s work at an IJM Christmas party. (More on that party in a future post.) He looked me right in the eyes (quite mature for this young man) and said — without you this wouldn’t be possible. He seemed to mean his recovery and his ability to spend Christmas celebrating. He was thankful for his rescue.
Just over 2,000 years ago my own rescue became possible. Because God did not remain aloof. He came down. He became a child, then a man who reached out to everyone, then a sacrifice, and now remains a faithful savior and friend. A rescuer. How amazing and encouraging that rescue is in the heart of God!
Luke records Jesus’ first sermon as quoting Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19, ESV). “Today,” he continued, “this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21, ESV). Words of rescue. About 2,000 years later, the rescue proclaimed by those words would apply to me. Thinking on that this day, Christmas Day 2010, fills me with thanks, too.
I am thankful, as well, that I can rescue — in my own imperfect way — others who need help. Almost certainly, however, if Jesus had not rescued me, I would not be in Manila, doing what I am doing this year with IJM. His rescue of me has inspired me to help. Rescue gets passed on. As does the thanks that welcomes it.
Through your friendship and support, you, too, participate in rescue. The thanks that I got from the young man is yours, too. I thank you, as well, for helping to make my work of rescue this year possible. Thank you! I hope that you enjoy a wonderful Christmas season, and that you have a great new year filled with thanks ahead.
Financial Support: If you would like to support financially my work this year with IJM to help fight child sex-trafficking in the Philippines, please go to IJM’s website by clicking on this link — http://www.ijm.org/getinvolved/internshipsupport (or type it into your browser) — then select “Support an Intern/Fellow.” You must choose my name on the dropdown menu, “Select an Intern/Fellow,” or else type it in the “Comments” box. If you do not, the gift will go to IJM’s general fund. Fill out the rest of the donation information on that page and click on “Next.” Review the information on that next page, and if it’s ok select “Donate.” That’s it! NOTE: Please DO NOT feel obliged to give. Freedom is where all giving belongs. Please DO feel welcomed to keep up with what I am doing, to pray for me, and to send an occasional encouragement. Those things are extremely valuable to me. And for any way in which you participate — THANK YOU!
