Homelessness…

Blog post by Amalia K., Team Ethiopia 2011

As a child my family and I would always go to NYC to visit friends. Every single time I was there I always noticed the streets fill with people who had nowhere to live, the homeless. My family would always stay at a homeless shelter when we went visited because my mother was very good friends with the people who ran the place. While staying there I would have breakfast, lunch and dinner with the homeless.  Even though I was young, when I would see children homeless on the streets my heart would break for them. During my many visits to NYC I wouldn’t only watch the homeless but I would watch the business men, the beautiful people carrying designer bags, wearing $1,000 shoes and the fabulous train of Limo driving through the city. As I watched the upper-class, I noticed that they didn’t notice the homeless, the ones who has nothing, the ones who smelled bad, and the ones wearing dirty clothing. I was so disturbed by this. I would get so frustrated with them because it was like they saw right through these fellow humans. It was as if you lived on the streets you become invisible to the world around you.  I didn’t understand how they didn’t even notice the poor. I even noticed that the visitors who came to New York City would go across the street to avoid walking past a homeless person, they would hold their children close and look at the less fortune humans as aliens. It was as if just because they were homeless they weren’t as human as the rest of us.

15 Seconds

Blog post by Emily H., Team Uganda 2011

15 Seconds….

Did you know that in the time it took you to click on the link you got in this email and begin reading this blog post, another child in Africa has become an orphan due to AIDS?  Read two or three more sentences and you have a second AIDS orphan.  Finish this blog post and you have another 4 or 5 depending on how fast you read.  Did you also know that in the same time span, 7 orphans have aged out of the system and have no place to call home and no family to turn to?  “But, people are adopting children all the time, aren’t they?” you ask.  People are adopting, nearly 250,000 children are adopted every year, which is a blessing, but think about the children who don’t get adopted? 

Aging out of the System….Then What?

Blog post by Janice O., Team Uganda 2011             

A child growing up in a loving home has hopes, dreams and desires of the life they will eventually live, the person they will become some day, and their future as a happy adult.  How is that different from an orphan child in Africa? In Africa 11 million children die each year before the age of 5.  Many of these orphan children don’t think of their future adult lives, because most are thinking of when they will eat their next meal, where they will sleep tonight, or how they will survive another day.  There are approximately 143 million orphans worldwide and in Africa, 2,102,400 children are becoming orphans each year.  The lucky ones may enter into an orphanage system, to be cared for by strangers with the hopes of being adopted some day by a loving, caring family.   With only 250,000 African adoptions annually, there is a desperate need for a change. 

From Riches to Rags

Blog post by Michelle K., Team Moldova 2011

As I type up this blog, I do so on my own Dell lap top as my Smart Phone lays beside me and my iPod plays the $1.29 song I just bought on iTunes. I am surrounded by luxury. It is normal for me to drive along the roads of Jersey and see BMWs, mansions with fieldstone walls, and grocery stores filled to the brim with fresh produce and clean water. Surely, this must also be normal outside of New Jersey, and even outside of the United States, right? It seems as though David Platt’s “Radical” has been a page-turner for us Journey-117ers, including myself. Platt’s heart-penetrating words revealed that I am, without a doubt, living with my head in the clouds, far away from the world’s actual norm: poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, and disease.

Love With Skin On

Blog post by Carol, Team Uganda 2011

My parents spent WWII in Germany.  Their families fled their original homes/cities for safety.  They waited in camps for their turns to come to the U.S.  They were fortunate in so many ways.  Only one immediate family member died.  No immigration quotas in the U.S. allowed them a relatively short wait.  They had access to education, safety, housing, food, etc. as soon as they arrived in their new home country.  Their new lives were quickly filled with peace & prosperity.  They have always been grateful for our country.

I’m Not That Different

Blog post by Rachel D., Team Uganda 2011

Long before I had an intimate relationship with God, I knew there was something deep inside of me that was being pulled toward helping those less fortunate than myself.  About seven years ago I started volunteering in homeless shelters reading to the kids.  I yearned to help these innocent children who, for by no choice of their own, were victims of choices they did not make for themselves or due to unfortunate circumstances where in the situations they were in.  Looking at their innocent faces, I knew that there was not much if anything that separated me from them.  I could have very easily been one of them.  Although growing up I was fortunate to have been given a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back, my home lacked love and safety.  Something every child needs.  Something God desires for each of his children.  I wanted to do my small part to help those children who needed those very things.