Sunday, August 15, 2010

World Vision Backback Project







Yesterday, Van, Juliet, Michael and others from our church, including Carol and me, met at the World Vision warehouse in Medley to help stuff school backpacks. Someone had given $100,000 to WV to equip a very special cohort of Haitian children for school here in Miami-Dade, which is soon to open. These are children who had arrived from Port-Au-Prince over the last several months, following the earthquake. As the WV worker told us, disaster responses follow a pattern, and one part of the pattern is for the people who lived in the disaster area to come out of it and go elsewhere. Miami is an accessible elsewhere place.

So here are some photos of us stuffing backpacks with school supplies.

In addition to folks from our church, there was a group from Riverside Baptist Church. The Baptists really know how to do "applied Gospel" these days. (I hate the phrase "Social Gospel," as if there is some separate Gospel at war with bringing people to Christ. I nominate "applied Gospel" in its place.)

By the way, there is some irony in the way WV labels its current Haiti efforts: "Operation Hope for Haiti." The current thinking of people in the know about Haiti is that there is no hope for Haiti. But we worship the God of Abraham, who, according to Paul, gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist. Romans 4:17b (N.T. Wright's translation.)

No comments: