The Syrian Stories: Vignettes

Our time with Syrian families began to run together more with each home visit. We went to two or three homes a day, always with a long-term volunteer and always long enough to drink a tiny cup of the world's blackest coffee or a little glass of the world's sweetest tea.

There were children in every home, and pregnant mothers too. One mother was eight months pregnant and desperate to find payment for a C-section as she had been told that this would be necessary due to having her previous child delivered by C-section back in Syria. She was told it would cost around $1100. The church does not pay for medical expenses for the refugees, as the need is very great and the requests are constant. Apparently some registered refugees had been able to receive subsidized medical treatment at the local hospital through the UN, but this too had stopped.

During our week, we heard and witnessed stories of miraculous healings through prayer in Jesus' name.  We praised God that He is meeting medical needs directly in some cases, rather than through the hands of doctors or the work of medications, as these are all difficult for refugees to access and afford.

One afternoon we took a cab to the outskirts of town. The pregnant mom there requested prayers for her high blood pressure to go down. She was several months along and had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a one-year old. All were girls. Could we pray for them to have a boy so they could be done, she asked? They served us sweet tea and candy; the girls ate up the candy and the couple described how difficult it was to make ends meet on the ~$15 a month they received from the UN for each family member. It's hard to imagine how that would last, given that the diapers we brought them cost $11 and it would take them a $2 cab ride into town just to by $.75 of bread.

But some families seemed to have some money, although I never could figure out how. I know that we sat in some large living rooms, and some had shelves or decorations in addition to the ever-present floor mattresses and TV.

We met one family who had been approved to resettle in America. They were awaiting their marching orders. The young wife showed me how she was learning English on her DuoLingo app and the boys were running around like crazy while their father smoked in the corner and chatted with the men on our visit. The church volunteers had encouraged them to continue with the resettlement process to go to America when, several months before, she had resisted the opportunity in fear that they would be forced to learn a different religion in schools. It seemed to me unfair that so many were desperate to be resettled (in America or elsewhere) but had not been given the opportunity, and yet this young family had to be talked into it.

In one home, the patriarch lamented the good years he used to have and the success he once enjoyed. All his prosperity had vanished with the war. The church volunteer told him the story of Job and then quoted God's promise in Joel 2:25: "I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten."

May it be so.

May it be so for Syrians, for Syria, and for all who have lost so much in this terrible war. 

This is the last in a short series on my time in the Middle East visiting Syrian refugee families. Read the rest here:
Part 1: Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl
Part 2: Small House, Big Hope
Part 3: The Second Household

The Syrian Stories: The Second Household

My group has moved on to the second visit of our day, another family with several young children living a few doors down in another apartment carved out of this converted store space.

The woman here, "H," is shorter, darker, and softer. She looks less like a Kardashian than the first mom we met, but her household looks about the same. We settle cross-legged on the thin mattresses lining the room, and H bends over a baby carrier near the TV. I see that there is a small baby, maybe one month old, cocooned in a tightly wrapped blanket. She hands the baby to me! I'm excited to hold such a tiny child, and puzzle over the dark lines drawn around his eyes. Is this month-old infant really wearing eye liner? I don't want to interrupt the conversation to ask, so I just look at him and rock a little while I sit.

H. sits down to visit with us, and our visit leader chats easily with her as I stare at my sweaty little bundle. Soon my visit leader (a middle aged local lady) takes the baby from my hands and begins unwrapping the blanket as she scolds the young mom for keeping her baby too hot.

I can't understand this Arabic small talk, and with the baby out of my hands I turn my attention to the children I can hear playing outside in the parking lot. A couple of the boys in the family keep coming in and out of the house, interrupting their play to ask their mom something or to complain about a sibling, I assume. Prior to coming here I had read articles about Syrian refugee families keeping their children inside due to fear. I'm glad these kids are playing outside. They're laughing and seem healthy.

Our visit leader asks us if we have any questions for H. before we go. I'm unsure whether it's a blessing or a burden to talk about their experiences, but still I'm curious, so I ask: "Why did you leave Syria? How did you end up here?"

She briefly tells her story.

The family decided to flee Syria about three years ago. They came by vans in the night, with headlights off to avoid detection. When the driver told them to, they got out and walked the rest of the way to the border.  However, once they got there, they were denied entry.  There was a pregnant woman in their group, and they thought that if they told the guards she was pregnant, they would be allowed in. However, the guards admitted only the pregnant woman, along with H. and her youngest child, leaving the rest of the group Syria-side.

Now H. was separated from her husband and her other children. She was brought to the large refugee camp just across the border and began desperately trying to contact her husband. Two days later, she learned that the whole group had eventually been given access to the country, and her husband and children were waiting for her at another camp.

They were somehow reunited and are now living here. He works undercover at night for a candy shop. Working here is illegal for refugees, and her husband will be returned to Syria if he is found out.

As we ended our visit with another flurry of cheek kisses and goodbyes, I reflect that H's story is a little tamer than the last family we visited. There was no violent arrest, no internal bleeding, and no very sick child. But there was still a frightening night-time flight from a homeland they will likely never see again, two days of frantic separation, and now an indefinite number of impoverished and uncertain years.

Is there any such thing as a benign refugee story?


This is the third in a short series on my time in the Middle East visiting Syrian refugee families. Read the rest here:
Part 1: Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl
Part 2: Small House, Big Hope
Part 4: Vignettes

The Syrian Stories: Small House, Big Hope

It's my group's first day of home visits to the Syrian refugees in this town just near the Syrian border. We've already been through orientation, learning how the refugee population has exploded from forty families in the first year of the Syrian war to now more than a hundred thousand refugees living in the town and in the refugee camp nearby. There are an approximately equal number of refugees and locals in this town now.

The church has been busy. When the war began in neighboring Syria, they had no organized plan for how to respond to the first few refugees, but they knew that outreach was "in the DNA" of their church. Now they carry out a wide range of spiritual, emotional, and material outreaches to the refugees in their city, partnering with international NGOs to maximize their impact.

I've been placed in a visiting group with a local church member and a couple other short-term foreign visitors like me. As she drives us through narrow city to our destination, the local lady explains that both families we will visit are living in converted store space. The influx of refugees has overwhelmed the infrastructure of the city, sending rent prices up and availability of good housing down.

I inquire about how the refugees can pay rent anyway, since they are gone from their country and aren't able to work here. The local lady doesn't know.

We arrive at the first home and heft a heavy bundle of food and diapers out of the trunk. But apparently that is not the main purpose of our visit. I had envisioned us delivering goods all day long, but the main thing we were delivering turned out to be friendship.

An elementary age daughter lets us into the home. It's small; just a room in a converted store. Thin mattresses line the walls and a few clothes hung on hooks near a door at the back of the room. The local lady indicates that we should sit on the mattresses, and as we wait, a little boy toddles out. Soon the mother of the house emerges from the door into the front room.

"This is a Syrian refugee?" I think. She's the first one that I have met, and nothing like I expect. Her hair is bleached and she wears a tight shirt and big, gold earrings. She's tall and young. I assume the head scarf and long garment hanging on the wall are hers, to be worn when unrelated men are in the house or when she goes out.

More children shyly emerge; there are six altogether. The two oldest are girls and they help their mother serve us tea on a platter which they set in the middle of the floor. I hardly know what to make of the tea; the surface is covered in half an inch of nuts (almond?) and coconut. I both drink and chew the sweet concoction while I listen to the local lady and the Syrian mom catch up with each other. They pause to translate for our benefit.

First the Syrian mom talks about how delighted she is to be in this home; they had previously lived in a place where they had trouble with their neighbors, but now she likes the place and she has both a window and a lock on her door. The local lady translates her comments: "She feels like it's a mansion."

There was an update on the children. They are in good health, and the older girls were finally allowed to register for school today. Not just an evening school, like many Syrian children are relegated to (as there is no space in the normal day school), but a regular school. They tested into third grade, and their mother says she is proud because they've only had one year of formal schooling and the rest is what she taught them on her own whenever she could find paper and pens.

At the end of the visit, we are asked if we have any questions for her, and I ask if she could tell us how she arrived in this town. She graciously launches into a story I'm sure she's told to many others before.

They were in a large Syrian city when the fighting there began to get bad about three years ago. Men arrived at her house to arrest her husband and her. They screamed and cried; Who would take care of the babies? One of the arresting men received a cell phone call that they just needed the man, not her, so they took her husband away and kicked her back into the house.

Because of being kicked, she began to experience internal problems and was not well enough to care for her children. A Christian lady from across town braved the fighting to come stay with her for a little while.

Somehow she and her husband were reunited and found their way across the border into safety. (She doesn't tell this part of the story, and she's so engaged in the next chapter that none of us ask.)

Their toddler son had a problem with his heart (possibly a hole). He wasn't walking and was very weak. Then members from the church came and prayed for his healing. And now he is walking! Indeed, through most of her storytelling she has been trying to guide his wiggly arms and legs into his clothes for the day, and now he's toddling across the room.

The local lady explains how God had been watching out for this family, holding them up at each important moment. She uses her hands to show how He has supported and propped them up. The Syrian lady agrees.

An hour or so has elapsed and it's time for our next home visit. We leave the home in a flurry of hand-shaking, cheek kissing, and kind words.

So ends my first visit to a Syrian refugee home.

This is the last in a short series on my time in the Middle East visiting Syrian refugee families. Read the rest here:
Part 1: Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl
Part 3: The Second Household
Part 4: Vignettes

The Syrian Stories: Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl

I went to a city near the Syrian border in September. We spent a week learning and partnering with a local church that has been faithfully reaching out to Syrian refugees since they first started coming to their city about six years ago.

More than 250,000 Syrians have died in the civil war and another 11 million have been displaced. You may find the BBC's "Story of the Conflict" helpful as a quick summary of the war, although please note that almost a year has passed since that was published and the situation has arguably worsened since then.

Several months ago I read Nicholas Kristof's April 2016 New York Times article titled "Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl." (Photo and caption below are from the article).

As is Syria today, Germany of the 1940's was a place of great peril and brutality for many ordinary citizens. Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, wrote to an American friend to seek refuge for his family in America. He wrote, “U.S.A. is the only country we could go to. It is for the sake of the children mainly.”

The article notes that this was not his only request for assistance in emigrating:

Along with the letter were many others by Otto Frank, frantically seeking help to flee Nazi persecution and obtain a visa to America, Britain or Cuba — but getting nowhere because of global indifference to Jewish refugees. 

We all know that the Frank children were murdered by the Nazis, but what is less known is the way Anne’s fate was sealed by a callous fear of refugees, among the world’s most desperate people.

What prevented the Frank family from finding safety in America instead of finding murder in a concentration camp? One factor was American self-protectionism. To again quote the Kristof article at length:

There were widespread fears that Germany would infiltrate the U.S. with spies and saboteurs under the cover that they were Jewish refugees.

“When the safety of the country is imperiled, it seems fully justifiable to resolve any possible doubts in favor of the country, rather than in favor of the aliens,” the State Department instructed in 1941. The New York Times in 1938 quoted the granddaughter of President Ulysses S. Grant warning about “so-called Jewish refugees” and hinting that they were Communists “coming to this country to join the ranks of those who hate our institutions and want to overthrow them.”

News organizations didn’t do enough to humanize refugees and instead, tragically, helped spread xenophobia. The Times published a front-page article about the risks of Jews becoming Nazi spies, and The Washington Post published an editorial thanking the State Department for keeping out Nazis posing as refugees.

In this political environment, officials and politicians lost all humanity.

It all sounds sickeningly familiar.

I've been to a border town near Syria. I've sat with the Anne Franks of today, and their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and infant siblings. I've watched in awe as the Lord demonstrated his faithfulness by meeting their needs in miraculous ways.

And I want you to have a chance to hear some of their stories. In the next week, I'll be posting a series called "The Syrian Stories," in which I share a few stories from our visits to the homes of refugees.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in May, “Syria is the biggest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time, a continuing cause of suffering for millions which should be garnering a groundswell of support around the world." (source).

As I see it, the rest of us have an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of our Holocaust era heroes.

If today's Anne Frank is a Syrian girl, I want to be today's Miep Gies, who helped the Frank family into hiding and helped tell their story by saving Anne's diary.

I want to be today's Corrie Ten Boom, whose family sheltered Jews in their home until they themselves were sent concentration camps for the crime of giving refuge to desperate citizens.

I want to be today's Dietrich Bonheffer, who was imprisoned and later executed for his opposition to Hitler's cruelties.

And I want us to do it together. Stay tuned.


This is the first in a short series on my time in the Middle East visiting Syrian refugee families. Read the rest here:
Part 2: Small House, Big Hope
Part 3: The Second Household
Part 4: Vignettes

An Open Letter to Donald Trump

Dear Mr. Trump,

This week you won the United States Presidential election and are now poised to be my President for the next four years.

Romans 13:1 says, "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established." I did not support your candidacy, but I am now under your authority, and I intend to follow you in all that is right and good. Many who formerly opposed you have publicly offered you their prayers and support as you now take on one of the hardest jobs in the world. That is also right and good.

However, I don't think our obligation to be subject to you in all that is right and good removes your own accountability for everything that you have said and done over the last year. You have wronged millions of people, sometimes by picking public fights with individuals and sometimes by insulting whole groups and sometimes by hurting the country as a whole by not taking seriously the importance of this office.

As you prepare to assume the title of President, you could do a lot of good by first trying to right these wrongs. You are in position of incredible influence; using your influence at this important moment could help set our country on a kinder, more rational, more stable course. I'm asking for an apology.

Please apologize to your personal opponents. Here are some of the things you said to other Republican politicians (gathered from The NY Times' Complete List of the 282 People, Places, and Things you insulted on Twitter):

Everybody is laughing at Jeb Bush-spent $100 million and is at bottom of pack. A pathetic figure!

Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.

@MittRomney was a disaster candidate who had no guts and choked! Romney is a total joke, and everyone knows it!

These are members of your own party that you called "pathetic," "weak," "ineffective," "disloyal," "disaster," "gutless," and "a total joke." You also insulted and mistreated your Democrat opponents, going so far as to jokingly suggest someone should shoot Hillary Clinton (“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks, Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”) (source)

Your callous, reckless meanness toward your opponents set the tone for your supporters. The New York Times recorded supporters at your rallies shouting things like, "Trump that B****," "Kill Hillary," and "Hillary is a whore!" You may watch the video to see and hear more. The Times noted:

But what struck us was the frequency with which some Trump supporters use coarse, vitriolic, even violent language — in the epithets they shout and chant, the signs they carry, the T-shirts they wear — a pattern not seen in connection with any other recent political candidate, in any party.

Surely you knew that your supporters have been behaving this way, and many feel like they are just following your example. An apology from you would send a clear message that the way to do politics is not to publicly insult and bully people, and certainly not to suggest that your opponents be shot. Please issue an apology, something like this: "I'm sorry for the way I treated my personal opponents. What I said and what I did wasn't right. And I call on my supporters to join me in engaging our opponents with kindness and respect."

Please apologize to women, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, refugees, and veterans, and other groups you repeatedly wronged or misrepresented.

Your wrongs against these groups are so well documented that I won't explain them in detail, but here are a few examples.

Multiple women have accused you of sexual assault. The Atlantic summarized them: (source)

Even before the release of a 2005 video in which he boasted about sexually assaulting women—“Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything,” he said, as well as “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything”—there’s a long line of allegations against Trump. Jill Harth says Trump assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump once suggested he had raped her, though she has since recanted her story. Former Miss Utah Temple Taggart said he kissed her on the lips inappropriately. But since the release, more women have come forward. Two told The New York Times that Trump had assaulted them, one saying he tried to put his hand up her skirt on a flight in the 1970s and another saying he forcibly kissed her. A Florida woman says Trump groped her. A former People reporter recounted an alleged assault at his Mar-a-Lago debate, and says he told her, “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?” Several former teen pageant contestants said Trump walked in on them while they were naked or partially dressed.

You owe each of these women a personal apology if any of those accusations were true, and you owe every woman on earth an apology for stating that "no one respects women more than you do" in the face of multiple accusations of sexual assault, your own boasts about extramarital conquests, and your frequent comments (either lecherous or insulting) about women's appearances. You are responsible for the fact that you now have supporters yelling "grab her by the p****" in multiple accounts since your election. (Here's one.)

An apology from you would go a long way toward re-establishing the expectation that women should be respected in this country; that they should neither be assaulted nor insulted, and that you as a leader will not tolerate such behavior in your supporters.  You could say something like, "I am sorry for bragging about groping women and pursuing extramarital affairs. [If true], I am extremely sorry that I touched women sexually without their consent, which is not only wrong but also illegal. I am sorry that I excused myself rather than humbly apologizing when I wronged women and girls, but at this point I do repent and by God's grace will be a one-woman man from now on, one who treats all women with respectful words and actions. I expect no less from my countrymen."

Please apologize to Mexican and Muslim immigrants. You began your campaign by saying, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” (source) The fear and hatred you have stirred up against immigrants, and especially Mexican and Muslim immigrants, is the reason some children today walked into schools where their classmates were chanting "build that wall". It's the reason some Muslim women are now expressing fear about wearing hijabs in America (source).

We are a country founded on principles of religious freedom and made great by immigrants.  Mr. Trump, please don't lead us to be afraid of outsiders, and please don't lead us to be afraid of openly practicing our religions. An apology from you on this count would go a long way toward helping unite Americans of all backgrounds under your leadership, such that they can feel that you are their leader too, equally ready to support and defend a Mexican American or a Muslim American as you are an Anglo-Saxon American.

Please also condemn every instance of violence or racial intimidation carried out in your name. Your supporters need to know that President Trump will not tolerate his people scrawling racial slurs on black Americans' cars or telling people of color that it's time to go home. You can start by condemning each instance of hateful speech or actions collected in the Twitter account Day 1 in Trump's America. (Warning: vulgar language and disturbing images).

Finally, please apologize to us all for failing to take the Presidency seriously, and please give us your pledge that you will do your best to make honest statements and informed decisions.

You have just taken a position of extreme power and influence, and this comes with great responsibility. You now have the most powerful military in the world under your command. You can imagine that it gives Americans no great sense of confidence when you make statements such as, "I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things…my primary consultant is myself.” (source)

You claimed to know more than the generals about ISIS. You admit no personal weakness, and yet your statements on both domestic and foreign policy have frequently revealed ignorance, inconsistency, and recklessness. (For example, you called for our military to use torture or war crimes, such as killing the families of suspected terrorists). (source)

When you don't know the facts, you have often invented them. Toronto Star's Daniel Dale has been fact-checking your public statements and found many of them can be verified as untrue (20-37 times a day). As an example, on October 25, 2016, he caught you in 35 lies:

Please, for the sake of our country and our world, stop making things up and start learning the information and skills you will need for your new job. If you don't know something, admit it and find out from someone who does. If you make a mistake, admit it and do better next time. These are basic expectations for any job, and in the case of the Presidency, many lives depend on you making an honest effort to do your very best.

Please apologize for your flippancy up until now, and give us your word that you intend to do right by America and the world.

This letter is not intended to be a mud-slinging session, but instead a reminder that all of your actions and words still hang in the air now that the election is over. They have already started to affect our national climate and our reputation abroad, but some of that damage is reversible if you take responsibility and sincerely apologize.

You will have many challenges in the upcoming years, and I pray that you will have grace and wisdom to meet them well. Knowing that "God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6), I ask you to humbly apologize and try to right the wrongs that stand to do so much damage to our great nation. 

I personally would be very glad to follow a man who leads not by shows of power but by wisdom, knowledge, humility, and love. I believe that you can become a leader like that, and I pray that by God's grace you will.

This election season felt like a civil war, so Lincoln's words from the Second Inaugural Address seem somehow fitting here:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations

I am ready to stand with you in all that is right, and I look forward to doing all that we can together to achieve a just and lasting peace, here in America and with all nations.

Sincerely,

Alison Lentz

On Thailand, Trump, and Defending the Underdogs

Last week, the king of Thailand died. CNN called him "a revered figure who helped unify the nation in his 70-year reign."

When I lived in Asia, I traveled to Chiang Mai, Thailand, every year for a conference. It's a beautiful country. The beaches are some of the best in the world, the sun is warm, and the people are warmer. However, it's well known that sex crime is common in Thailand. Wikipedia details the practice of trafficking Thai women and children into sex slavery and notes that Thailand is rated by the U.S. State Department as a "tier 3" country, one of a couple dozen countries that isn't doing nearly enough to combat trafficking. The sex market is driven both by local men seeking prostitutes and by Thailand's reputation as a sex tourism destination. And when I say "sex tourism destination," let me remind you that this means (among other things) that men from other countries are traveling to Thailand so that they can pay money to rape Thai women and children.

Once, while I was at my conference in Thailand, a colleague made an offhand comment about the king: "They love that guy. If he would speak out against this stuff, it might get better. But he doesn't."

I don't actually know if the king of Thailand ever tried to do the hard work of cleaning up the sleaze in his country. But I was struck by that comment because it reminded me that a single leader can have amazing influence for good or for evil among his people.

I want Thailand to have a leader who stands up for the 80,000+ women and children who have been trafficked into the Thai sex industry since 1990. I want Thailand to have a leader who is willing to turn away tourism dollars if it means its most vulnerable people are better protected. I want there to be someone in the highest levels of leadership who will speak for them.

One measure of a good society is that it is good to the weak. Psalm 82:3-4 summarizes God's heart on this topic:

Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Defend the weak.

This leads me to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has lots of things to say about people he perceives as weak. His insults to the disabled, the grieving, the unattractive, and the vulnerable are well documented and I'm not going to repeat them here. (His boasts about trying to seduce married women and kissing or groping women without consent are also well documented and have been recently corroborated by more than one of the women in question. He is clearly no defender of women.)

When I think about my country, I want the same things for us that I spoke of for Thailand. I want the most vulnerable people in our society to be protected, valued, and built up. I want the oppressed, the weak, the poor, the very young, the very old, and the very new members of our society to have advocates. I want there to be voices speaking on their behalf in the highest levels of our leadership. Additionally, as a woman, I want leaders who make it clear that sexual crimes against women will be prosecuted, not celebrated.

I want a leader who will set the standard for defending those who most need defense. Not mocking them. Defending them. A single leader can have a remarkable impact on how the least powerful people in a given society are treated.

Based on all that you have now heard from Trump, can you really imagine him defending anyone other than himself?


Post Script: For many months, I've intended to write out my thoughts on Donald Trump, and explain in detail why I am not voting for him. I intended to try to persuade you to join me in saying, "Never Trump," and especially I intended to try to persuade any of you who, like me, are lifelong Republicans and conservative Christians.

But so much has been said about Donald Trump and by Donald Trump already that the case against him has been made. I'm not sure I can add anything to the pile of reasons against him. My thoughts here are only one small reason why I don't support him for President, and I chose to write from this angle because I thought I could bring something new to the table by sharing my thoughts this week when I heard about the Thai king's death.

If you want to call, e-mail, visit, text, or message me to delve into the many other issues at play (character, experience, temperament, national security, abortion, immigration, foreign policy, Supreme Court, Clintons, Obama, religion, or anything else), I would be glad to share more of my thoughts with you. Please keep it civil if you comment here; I will delete comments that are off topic or unkind. And please, don't vote for Trump!

Speechless, with a Side of Siblings

Helloooooo my lovely blog readers. It's been too long since I've written to you!

Lately I've been busy and a little speechless.

Yes. I am a speechless-language-pathologist.

I'm speechless about being single, because it's been a few months since I've technically been single. And while it was lots of fun to joke around about being single and poke fun at myself for my #reallifeinthetrenches, I have no desire to poke fun at an actual real relationship with an actual real person. The upshot is that I'm a very happy but slightly less funny blogger.

I'm speechless about my family because I already got all crochety on here about how I won't be sharing about my niephews much because their privacy matters too. I suppose I could blog about my adult family members, though. (You guys wanna do something hilarious real quick so I can write about it?)

I'm speechless about my upcoming short-term trip to the Middle East because I still haven't figured out how or how much to share on such a public forum. I'm looking forward to telling stories when I return, and if there's a way to do it without breaching anyone's security, I'll share generally here. In the meantime, check out OUR TRIP WEBSITE for more details.

(For those of you wondering why I'm going on a short-term trip when I already got all crochety on here about how they often do more harm than good, I'd be glad to give more detail in person about how we are trying to avoid any avoidable pitfalls of short-term trips.)

I'm speechless that DONALD TRUMP is apparently a viable candidate for President of anything, much less the country I live in and would like to be proud of. This is an absolutely discouraging season in American politics, and it's hard to know what to say because everyone's mind seems so unchangeable. I might still try. :)  (Please don't vote for Trump, if for no other reason than that he seems like the most likely candidate to say something that will get us all bombed.)

Anyway, since I'm claiming to be speechless, I will stop talking and share with you some gems my sister uncovered recently in our childhood home.

When you see this picture, what do you think?

I know. "What is 7Cs, and how can I get some of that money?"

Simple! Travel back to the 1990s and join the 7Cs, a philanthropic club consisting of me and my sister, also known as Kids of Service or the Emily Jo Larry Corporation.  Your duties will be simple:

1) Attend club meetings. You'll notice this meeting started at 1:26 and ended at 4:27, but it appears about 90 minutes of that was lunch.

2. Participate in service projects, such as the pool tournament below. This provided our family the service of being able to use their own pool table at a cost of just $.75.

3. Follow the rules:



"Do not pot down other clabs."

This was an important rule, because we did indeed have another club in our family: The Compartment of Cleanliness (COC). They served our family primarily by selling us candy at a profit, as well as making an annual vacation video:



With two clubs and only three siblings, the rivalry was intense. My sister, who was a member of both clubs, got caught in the middle. We found a contract she had to sign for my brother that said, "COC comes first. I agree with my signature."

Apparently, 7Cs had too many rules for young Emily, unlike COC, which only had these:



(I can't read those second two either.) So, she left the 7Cs.

Later, she regretted her rash decision:

"Dear Alison, I wud like to be back in 7Cs. Becas of the partty's. I wantid to be out of 7Cs becas of the rols. Love, Emily."

Isn't that a sweet, contrite, little note? Here was my response, written on the back:

...  Maybe I'd better go back to being speechless. :)

(Sorry, young Emily! If you want to re-join the club again, we can sponsor a pool tourney at Christmas.)

Coincidence? I Think Not.

Well hello from LaGuardia airport!

I am just returning from a lovely little reunion trip to Boston, where I went to meet up with my good friend Sara, her newish husband Dave, and our mutual friend Gloria, who happened to be in town. (Sara, Gloria, and I all trained together when we started our China teaching jobs back in 2009.)

When I arrived at Sara's place, she and Gloria gave me the quick tour of the house. "But don't look in the bedrooms yet, because they're a little messy."

Sara and Dave disappeared to a church event, leaving me and Gloria to roam free in their kitchen. Then someone knocked on the door. Hm. Then they rang the doorbell!

"Should we get it?" I asked Gloria.
"We might as well," she said.
"Are you supposed to answer other people's doors?"
"It might be a package or something," said Gloria.

Sounded reasonable. I went down to the entry and opened the door. At first it looked like a nice, normal pair of strangers. Then, once their faces registered on my retinas, it looked like my friends Lisa and Merle!

From Canada!

Lisa and I taught together my first year in China, and now she's married with a little baby and living very far away. I had no idea I'd ever see her and her husband again.

Reunion! Note: Gloria and I are a couple of cool kids, but we are not A Couple.

We were so excited by Lisa's surprise that we had to break out the Asian photo gestures!

It just so happened that Lisa and Merle were in the States for a wedding in Pennsylvania and had decided to extend their trip up to Boston. And it just so happened that they asked if they could stay with Sara during THE VERY SAME WEEK that I had already planned to be there.

Coincidence? I think not.

It was an incredibly fun and refreshing time of fellowship to be together with these good friends and co-laborers. Also, props to Sara "Don't Look in the Bedrooms" K. and Gloria "Maybe it's a Package" S. for sneakily keeping the secret from me.

Spending time with Lisa and Merle was just one of three amazing "coincidences" this trip. The other two involved finding and making connections between ministry partners across several continents and fellowships.

Networking happens in the most unlikely ways.  God works in the most amazing ways.

Now enjoy some gratuitous photos from New England!

I used to be a non-coffee-drinker. Then I lived with Sara. The rest is history.

We saw mansions in Newport, Rhode Island!

We picnicked on this lawn. 

We marveled at this library.

I listened to the breakers from the mansion called the Breakers.

Great company! But we couldn't talk to each other because we were busy with the audio tour.

Nice views from the Cliff Walk along the row of mansions.

I guess there's barely a Boston picture here, but I hope you enjoyed this little taste of Rhode Island. Thanks for reading. :)

One Year Celebration!

This month marks the one-year anniversary of my little blog!

*sniff!* This is where it all began.

Writing for you here has been a pleasure and a blessing for me. In celebration of AlisonRoseWrites' one-year birthday, I'm taking a look back.

Here are my top five most-read posts:

1. Misguided Missions: The Culprit is Me (...and You?)

This post was part of a short series I did on the evolution of my views on short-term mission trips. If you're interested in this topic, I recommend you skip my blog posts and go straight to the book When Helping Hurts.

2. In the Style of Dave Barry: Night at the Caucuses

This post provided me with my favorite (ok, only) celebrity encounter. I am using the word "celebrity" here in the sense of "humor columnist."  Dave Barry (the celebrity in question) wrote a bunch of humor columns on the Iowa caucuses, and this post was my attempt to answer his columns in his own style. I tweeted it to him and he re-tweeted it! My night was made! I got more readers than usual! Which is still not very many! But that's okay, because DAVE BARRY read my article and he is the ONLY READER THAT COUNTS.

*Note: The above blurb is also written in my best Dave Barry imitation.*

3. Go...Sit...Stare: A Singles' Guide to Weddings

4. Singles' Holiday Guide

I had a ton of fun writing "advice" columns for singles.  If you read these articles and are somehow still single, I can only assume it's because you haven't been applying enough of my useful tips.

5. In Which I Test the Courage of my Convictions on Marriage

Rounding out the top five is one of my more serious pieces, a response to the legalization of gay marriage in America.

Thanks for reading and for giving me a place to write where I feel at home. If you'd like to join me in my walk down memory lane, please check out the archives, using the links on the side to find the topics you like best.

Cheers!

Taste the Grace

Anyone remember the 1990's Skittles ads where rainbows sprang up and rained down Skittles?

Here's the best example I can find: 

(Taste the rainbow!)

Lately I've been thinking about God's grace, and these Skittles commercials always come to mind. Skittles just came raining down! No one earned them or worked for them or made them or bought them. All those people did was open up their mouths and fill them with tasty, colorful candies.

Grace is like that!

Grace is God's undeserved favor and generosity toward us. We didn't earn it or work for it or make it or buy it. We just have to open up our hands and receive it. Ephesians 2:8-9 says:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 

In that old Skittles commercial, you can see the man's wonder and amazement. If we understood God's grace toward us, we would feel the same way. That's why it's called amazing grace!

I'm so thankful for God's grace in my life, not just in saving me from my sins but also in the many gestures of lovingkindness He shows me daily. This has been a season of life where God is showering me with grace, and I am reminded that I am loved by a generous God! John 1:16 says:

For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Grace upon grace, my friends. Taste and see that the Lord is good!

My Morning Walk to the Auto Shop, In Photos and Scripture

This morning I walked a mile down Eight Street to pick up my car from the shop.

And look! It's spring! Isn't April the most magical month?

Flowers were everywhere:

"Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. "But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith!" Luke 12:27

Look! Leaves!

And clover!




And the most perfect dandelion:

The trees were blossoming like they meant it:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. "But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. "So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows." -Matthew 10:29-31

I think Anne of Green Gables might have called this the White Way of Delight:

And my heart was full.

"You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." Isaiah 55:12

God is good. May He fill you with joy, peace, and song today!

What is a Medical Speech-Language Pathologist?

"Oh, you're a speech pathologist? Huh. So are you judging my speech right now?"

I get that question a lot. Someone asked me that this week and I said "Yep," and laughed, because I'm awkward like that and I was trying to make a joke but actually it came out more like an insult. Whoops. So now I'm over-compensating with a blog post.

The reality is that I'm most likely not analyzing your speech, partly because most of you do not have speech disorders, and partly because speech is one of the smallest parts of what I do.

My job title is confusing, and not just to people unfamiliar with speech-language pathologists, or speech therapists, as we're sometimes called. I regularly overhear families asking my patients, "So what do you work on in speech therapy?" Sometimes, if I haven't done a good enough job of collaborative goal-setting and education regarding my role, my patients respond that they are working on "speech," when in fact they are mostly working on something else altogether.

To help you understand what medical speech-language pathologists actually do, I am going to give you three things: a picture, a new name, and a pro tip.

First, a picture:

Basically, I tell people that we are involved in therapy related to lots of things from the neck on up, including the functions of your voice box, throat, mouth, nose, and brain!

Next, I have a proposed job title that reflects what medical speech pathologists generally actually do. I probably spend less than an hour a day working on speech accuracy with my patients. I find that the bulk of my patients have intelligible speech but need help with other communication, cognition, or swallowing issues. So when you are confused about the role of the "speech therapist," it might be helpful to think of us as "communication, cognition, and swallowing specialists," or maybe just "communication and swallowing specialists" since most of our work with cognition (thinking skills) is directly related to how those skills impact communication.

Finally, a pro tip. Swallowing disorders are confusing. How could someone not be able to eat? Sometimes, because the entrance to the airway and the entrance to the esophagus (food tube) are right next to each other in the throat, weakness or poor coordination of the swallow puts people at risk for things going down the wrong pipe. This can be life-threatening in the cases of pneumonia or choking. Another potential problem might be that the person's swallowing is so weak, effortful, or inefficient that they can't sustain adequate nutrition and hydration by mouth. Some patients may not even be able to elicit a swallow at all.

Sometimes a speech therapist will collaborate with a radiologist to do an X-ray swallow test, which goes by a lot of different names (videoswallow, cookie swallow, videofluoroscopic swallow study, etc.) in order to get more information about the disordered swallow. So here's my public service announcement of the day. I often, often, often have people ask me if So-and-So "passed" his videoswallow. But you can't "pass" or "fail" an X-ray; instead, the test gives us a lot of valuable information about what is going on inside the throat that helps guide our treatment and recommendations. Instead, you can ask, "What did the videoswallow show?"

So there you go! My job in a nutshell. :)

This was taken in my days as a baby speech therapist at the University Hospital

I'd love to hear from you. Have you or your loved ones ever worked with a speech therapist? What did they do? Any related questions for me?

It's a Good, Good Friday

I just walked in the door, settled into the world's deepest couch, and put my feet up.

All is quiet inside. Outside, a low, golden moon is creeping up over the streetlights.

My mind and my eyes are so tired. I worked a longer day today so I could take some time off tomorrow, and I think my sleepiness has wrecked my attention span. I'm thinking about e-mails, about laughs that I had with my patients today, about what my mom might be making for Easter, about when I might need to get gas. 

I, I, I, I, I.

These days, I've been thinking way too much about myself; about my opinions and my preferences and my gifts and my future and my past, and mostly I think there have been lots of times this week where my pride has gotten the best of me.

"HE must become greater; I must become less."

I've had that Bible verse running as a refrain through my head, and I had to look up the reference to find that it was spoken by John the Baptist in John 3:30. That's same John who, in Luke 7:28, Jesus called the greatest man who had ever been born.

If the greatest man who had ever been born knew that he must become less, shouldn't I, too?

It's the eve of Good Friday. It's time to take my eyes off myself and put them on the One who is greater.

My parents always encouraged us to spend time on Good Friday worshiping Jesus. They kept us home from school and gave us a quiet day to think and pray, and watch videos about Jesus. (Or Moses. Because The Ten Commandments is a nice, long, religious movie if you have three kids to keep busy for a whole day.)

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, a day of reflection, refreshment, and reminders for my soul.

Can I invite you to join me tomorrow in reading some stories about Jesus? You can find the Good Friday story starting here, in Luke 22, but any Jesus stories will do.

Let's turn our eyes from the temporal to the eternal,
From humanity to majesty,
From man to God.

It's a good Friday, friends.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.
And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 
(Hebrews 12:1-2)

"Go... Sit... Stare" - A Singles' Guide to Weddings

Bachelors and bachelorettes, it's been far too long since I've given you any advice.

Sure, I got you through the holidays with my Singles' Holiday Guide and my instructions on writing the perfect solo Christmas letter.

And yep, I helped you through the New Year with my Tips for Finding Love in 2016.

But now the holidays are over and it's spring, that magical season when a young person's fancy turns to love! ...Not yours, of course. For one thing, you are not that young. Also, you are not in love. No, your fancy is currently occupied with other pressing matters, such as registries and RSVPs, because it's almost Wedding Season!

How are you going to conquer Wedding Season alone? This is far too big a question for me to answer without help, so I turned to my Facebook friends for their advice. In addition to some actual, proper advice (such as "Remember that it's not about you"), here are some of the quotes I gathered:

• "Don't go."
• "If you must go, it helps make you feel better if others know you're miserable. So, I think it's good to cry, make self-deprecating comments, and say things to the married/dating people like "you are so lucky to have each other". '
• "Look hot."
• "Make sure to dance with people that are either one third your age OR three times your age!"
• "Give awkward hugs."
• "Perfect a dance that you can teach to others."
• "Bring a cat."

One guy said, "I just kind of go... sit... stare." He pointed out that this method has two advantages: It's really uncomfortable for him, and it's really uncomfortable for everyone else.

As tempting as that sounds, you may want some more specific advice, so here you go:

1) DO Drink.

The best thing a single person can do at a wedding is drink. No, not alcohol. (That's actually the worst thing. A little-known fact!)

You are going to drink a LOT, because you will be requiring a LOT of bathroom breaks. I recommend a minimum of five glasses of water, plus a few Shirley Temples to help you fit in at the kids' table, where you will probably be seated.

Once your bladder is sloshing with several gallons of non-alcoholic beverages, you will be ready to run frantically to the restroom anytime an unpleasant singleness moment arises. For example, you can escape:

• The minute you hear the words "bouquet" and "toss" in the same sentence
• Any time the DJ plays a song that's 100 beats per minute or less
• When you're stuck between two strangers who are conversing over you as if you are not polishing off a salad in the two-foot space between them. 

The next tip is specific to the gentlemen.

2) DON'T be like this guy:

One time, I was sitting with some friends at a reception and an unattached groomsman came ambling over and invited one of us (any of us!) to dance. I volunteered.

As we arrived on the dance floor, he said, "I don't really know how to dance, so you'll have to lead."

No can do, Mr. Awkward Sweaty Groomsman Guy. NO CAN DO.

If your plan is to make the girl lead, I suggest that you first find out whether or not she went to a conservative Baptist high school that did not allow dancing, thus forever cementing her dance skills at the level of "Bunny Hop," and if indeed she did go to said high school, back slowly away.

Anyway, my Facebook friends were all in agreement on the following points:

3) DO eat cake.

4) But DON'T cry about it. Apparently, the acceptable times to cry at a wedding are as follows:

• The ceremony
• The speeches

Every other situation is off-limits for tears, including:

• Eating cake
• Eating your second piece of cake
• Eating your third piece of cake

If you find yourself crying at a non-approved time, you must either put on your sunglasses or run to the restroom (see Point #1). No crying at the singles' table!

5) DO make jokes. If you can't cry, you might as well laugh.

One friend suggested that if you get a second piece of cake, you should claim that it's for your date, who "couldn't make it."

I think she's onto something. It's true that your date couldn't make it... TO YOUR LIFE.

Heh heh. Witty remarks like these are going to be essential for following the last piece of advice for attending weddings alone:

6) DO make friends. I'm not talking about making friends at the wedding. I'm talking about making friends before the wedding. Twenty years before, if possible.

Because the best way to enjoy a wedding solo is to be in the wedding. Think about it:

• You will walk into the ceremony on the arm of a well-dressed person of the opposite gender
• It's actually more convenient NOT to have your own date
• You will have assigned seating at the best table in the venue
• You will have many duties to keep you busy, thus giving you something to do other than visit the restroom
• You will acquire many lovely professional photos of yourself in formalwear. Perfect for your online dating profile!

So dust off your jokes, my fellow singles, and get out there and make some friends. It's Wedding Season, and we got this. See you at the head table!

When Helping Hurts: A "Misguided Missions" Follow-Up

Thanks for reading my series on "Misguided Missions," in which I explored the potentially harmful ways in which American churchgoers try to help others.

When I wrote that series, I hadn't yet finished this book:

Wow. I highly, highly recommend When Helping Hurts. Please pick up the book for a thorough treatment of "how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor... and yourself" (as the subtitle says).

Let me summarize a few of the points that helped me most.

What is poverty?

The authors interviewed North American audiences and found that most defined poverty in terms of material lack, while poor people worldwide tend to describe not only material lack but also psychological and social lack:

Poor people typically talk in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness. North American audiences tend to emphasize the lack of material things such as food, money, clean water, medicine, housing, etc. ... This mismatch between many outsiders' perceptions of poverty and the perceptions of poor people themselves can have devastating consequences for poverty-alleviation efforts (p. 53).

If we define poverty only as a lack of money, we will try to solve the problem by giving money. It really matters how we diagnose the problem, because the wrong diagnosis will lead to the wrong solutions.

The authors instead invite us to view poverty through the lens of the four basic relationships of every individual and society:

• Relationship with self
• Relationship with others
• Relationship with creation
• Relationship with God 

Poverty (of any sort - spiritual, relational, or material) is rooted in brokenness in one or more of these foundational relationships. Read the following example from the book and note the brokenness of each of Mary's relationships (to self, others, creation, and God):

Consider Mary, who lives in a slum in western Kenya. As a female in a male-dominated society, Mary has been subjected to polygamy, to regular physical and verbal abuse from her husband, to fewer years of schooling than males, and to an entire cultural system that tells her she is inferior. As a result, Mary has a poverty of being and lacks the confidence to look for a job, leading her into material poverty. 

Desperate, Mary decides to be self-employed, but needs a loan to get her business started. Unfortunately, her poverty of community rears its ugly head, as the local loan shark exploits Mary, demanding an interest rate of 300 percent on her loan of twenty-five dollars, contributing to Mary's material poverty. Having no other options, Mary borrows from the loan shark and starts a business of selling homemade charcoal in the local market, along with hundreds of others just like her. The market is glutted with charcoal sellers, which keeps the prices very low. But it never even occurs to Mary to sell something else, because she does not understand that she has been given the creativity and capacity to have dominion over creation. In other words, her poverty of stewardship locks her into an unprofitable business, further contributing to her material poverty. 

Frustrated by her entire situation, Mary goes to the traditional healer (witch doctor) for help, a manifestation of her poverty of spiritual intimacy with the one true God. The healer tells Mary that her difficult life is a result of angry ancestral spirits that need to be appeased through the sacrificing of a bull, a sacrifice that costs Mary a substantial amount of money and further contributes to her material poverty. Mary is suffering from not having sufficient income, but her problems cannot be solved by giving her more money or other material resources, for such things are insufficient to heal the brokenness of her four foundational relationships. (pp. 63-64)

Man, that's a long quote, but so good. I wish I could just quote you the whole book! But anyway, the point is that our definition of poverty matters, and we must define it holistically in order to implement solutions that help.

At the heart of it, the fall of man in Genesis 3 threw all of our relationships out of whack. It is Jesus who reconciles and restores our fundamental relationships, which the authors note:

Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all things into right relationships again. (page 77)

and

Our relationship with the materially poor should be one in which we recognize that both of us are broken and that both of us need the blessing of reconciliation. Our perspective should be less about how we are going to fix the materially poor and more about how we can walk together, asking God to fix both of us. (page 76)

When Helping Hurts

As the book title says, our efforts to help may result in harm, not only to the recipients of our good intentions, but also to ourselves.

One way this happens is when our charitable efforts give us a kind of "god complex," which contributes to our own poverty as it disrupts our fundamental relationships with self and with God, while at the same time contributing to the "poverty of being" of the poor, as our charitable efforts increase their feelings of inferiority, shame, or helplessness.

The authors state that, "one of the major premises of the book is that until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do far more harm than good" (p. 64).

They go on to reference development practitioner Jayakumar Christian, who believes that "the economically rich often have 'god-complexes', a subtle and unconscious sense of superiority in which they believe they have achieved their wealth through their own efforts and have been anointed to decide what is best for low-income people, whom they view as inferior to themselves" (p. 65)

What I gained from this reminder is that I absolutely shouldn't engage in any charitable or "helping" work in order to make myself feel good. This contributes to my own poverty of being and may contribute to the poverty of being of others too.

Solutions

Part Three of the book covers practical strategies, including a section on "Doing Short-Term Missions Without Doing Long-Term Harm."

There are some good reminders there about RELIEF, REHABILITATION, and DEVELOPMENT.  Relief (e.g. one-way giving, doing things for people rather than with people) is appropriate only in the aftermath of a major catastrophe. We shouldn't apply relief when development is needed, and even then we shouldn't assume that short-term mission teams are necessarily the best people to apply relief aid.

The authors give many suggestions for improving the impact of short-term teams, and I will summarize the majority of them here (from pp. 174-179):

• Make sure everyone involved understands the nature of poverty, as described above
• Make sure the host organization and community have requested a team
• Be sincerely open to not sending a team
• Design the trip to be about "being" and "learning" as much as "doing"
• Ensure that the "doing" avoids paternalism (Don't do for people what they can do for themselves.)
• Don't create or advertise trips that focus on adventure and fun
• Change the trip name to "Vision Trip" or "Go Learn, Return, and Respond"
• Require potential trip members to demonstrate a serious interest in missions by being active in their church and its local outreach efforts
• Make pre-trip learning a requirement
• Schedule training time on the field 
• Have a well-planned, mandated post-trip learning journey for at least one year following the trip
• Require every member of the team to pay a portion of the expenses ("Why? Remember, this is a learning experience, not a trip to save the world. Learners are more likely to value their training if they are paying for a portion of it.")
• Consider donating as much money to organizations that are pursuing sound community development in that community as you do for the trip costs themselves

That's a tall order. I wonder how many of you have been on a trip designed according to the above principles? I'd love to hear.

I was encouraged to find many practical ways to help the poor while reading the third part of this book. It's not all doom and gloom! While the point of my original blog series was primarily to discuss short-term missions, the book also provides a very helpful framework for long-term development. For example, they discuss ABCD - "Asset Based Community Development" and how powerful it is to start development efforts not by focusing on what's missing in a community, but by capitalizing on the resources and strengths that are already present.

(As an aside, I catch myself missing this point all the time in my work as a rehab therapist. I immediately look at my patients' impairments and how they can be fixed, rather than analyzing their strengths and how they can be maximized.)

Let me close with an article I came across recently:

An Antidote to Extreme Poverty: Generous Billionaires

The article suggests that the world's billionaires alone could give enough money to poor countries to draw millions of people over the poverty line. It cites a recent study which "manages to put into perspective what one person, or what a group of people, could accomplish in a concerted effort to help the world's impoverished. The combined efforts of all the billionaires in the Philippines, India, Swaziland, Georgia, Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Peru and China would completely eradicate extreme poverty in their respective countries."

How would you re-write that quote according to the principles from When Helping Hurts? Here's my best shot:

The combined efforts of all the billionaires in the Philippines, India, Swaziland, Georgia, Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Peru and China could temporarily eradicate extreme material poverty in their respective countries, while potentially worsening the poverty of being of the material poor by creating a relationship of dependency with the billionaire, contributing to their feelings of helplessness and inferiority, and removing their initiative to steward the gifts and resources around them. The billionaires would meanwhile risk inflating their own feelings of superiority, furthering their broken relationships with self, others, and God. The end result may be that everyone's fundamental relationships remain broken, which will likely lead the formerly impoverished recipients back into material poverty when the original monetary donation runs out.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, both on short-term missions and on the wider question of how Christians and non-Christians can best respond to the needs of those around us. (And don't forget to check out the book!)