July/August 2008

“Let's Dig Deep”

As a child I remember the cartoons and fantasy stories that depicted a person digging straight down and digging so deep that they came out somewhere in East Asia. It looked like an easy way to connect with that side of the globe. Easy, that is, if you had a good shovel or drill or something big that could dig. Connecting with another group of people is not always easy but many times our hearts are touched and we want to connect in the worst way. In recent months we have all witnessed the tragedy of natural disaster that have affected hundreds of thousands. In China, an earthquake affected millions of people. The New York Times reported the staggering statistics.

On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale hit Sichuan Province, a mountainous region in Western China. By the next day, the death toll stood at 12,000, with another 18,000 still missing. Over 15 million people live in the affected area, including almost 4 million in the city of Chengdu. Nearly 2,000 of the dead were students and teachers caught in schools that collapsed.

We have heard from Terry Wardlaw, who is with SIL, and who was traveling in the area at the time. As a representative of SIL, he has been asked to help with a specific task of helping to rebuild a school. The heart breaking story of the children who were killed when their schools collapsed filled the news programs in the last two months. When I heard we could help the children by sending funds to SIL for a project assisted we by someone knew, I saw the possibility of our connection.

So our challenge in these next 5 weeks is for each of us, young and old, to hink about what God might want us to do financially. We will collect the funds earmarked for the "Qiang School" until August 10th and then send it to SIL. I encourage you as families to work at this togehter. Maybe you want to do a garage sale, mow lawns or put aside some funds each week. I encourage you to think about something you could go without and give that money to the Qiang School. Let God work miracles as we reach out to people on the other side of the Globe who so desperately need our help.

So Let's Dig Deep,

Pastor Craig