The Underdog Wins

Check out my latest blog found at the Orphan Justice Center blog page by clicking on the link.

Peter’s Story

Peter’s Story

Fathering the Fatherless

This is a great group of young guys that I get the opportunity to share life with in Kansas City. The are all young, lively and a blast to be around. And they all are fatherless.

All I want for Christmas

“Wow, a new lego Captain Jack Sparrow. It’s what I always wanted,” said Jackson as he opened a gift sent to him from a local toy drive. Another boy sitting next to him whines about his package, “I already have a spider man pencil box at school. This is so lame.” Wrapping paper lines the hallways and dining hall area as young boys ravage the boxes which are given to them while “Jingle Bell Rock” blares through an old PA sound system. Many staff and volunteers have put several hours and hours of effort into filling up boxes for these children, as the boys from the therapeutic facility finish the school work they have before the end of the semester.

Thousands of dollars of merchandise and donations going to shopping center pour into the in box of administration building of the children’s center. The reality for most of these boys is not making a mad dash from school on the 23^rd to celebrate Christmas with their families and friends.

The best message I have heard yet about God's passion for the orphan...

Check out this message I heard from a pastor named David Platt from The Church in Brook Hills, Birmingham; Alabama.  All you have to do is follow this link to The Church in Brook Hills.   The message is titled Father to the Fatherless which was given on April 25.

If the Poor Can be Generous, So Can I.

I really enjoy the taste of coffee.  Often, I will frequent the local barista and sit down to enjoy a piping hot cup of joe.  I will open my laptop and check out the Facebook status of my friends scattered across the globe.  "John has just become friends will Michelle and five others.  Oh, how splendid."  Even as I drink from my cup, millions across the world who don't even access to a computer daily sit in abject poverty, while I sit  and collect more coffee cup sleeves for my collection.  Every day, my life goes on while another impoverished child will die in between sips of my coffee— coffee which could have been the result of a young Tanzanian boy harvesting the beans.  What might that boy's "status" update be?  I imagine it wouldn't be, "life is beautiful" or "... going to the mall tonight with friends, I'm so excited!"

The Forgotten

These are the forgotten ones. The Badi people of Nepal are a people of rejection, pain & sorrow.  Their girls are bred for the entertainment for evil men.  They don’t get the rights that are granted to those higher on the caste system.  There is no one to fight for their agendas.  They are of the bottom of the barrel.  They are the broken, the untouchables.  They are the forgotten.

There are the children of the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda; children born and are named by hell.  Because their villages are burned, they live in ghettos with no buildings- only tarp-covered shanties.  They are abducted by people of their own tongue who come to them and cut out their tongues or recruit them to fight wars that are not their own.  They are the forgotten. 

They are the family across the street.  They are the new Jones’.  You don’t see them much besides when they step into their rusted-out brown station wagon which heralds bungee cords across the trunk to keep it from popping open on the speed bumps.  The mom is doing it all alone now.  She is always yelling at her hyperactive half dozen.  They leave with a few bags of groceries bought by Uncle Sam.  People stop by their house once in a while.  Usually it’s a man by himself who parks his car for a visit on your side of the street and even on the edge of your grass.   Words like daggers slice through your walls…words of ugliness.  Crying ensues.  These are the forgotten.