Editors Note: We welcome Trisha Weber as a guest writer, she is an adoptive mom and a member of the Hope for Orphans ministry team.
by Trisha Weber
When I was in elementary school, the "We Are the World" campaign was in full swing. I sat and watched the pictures of kids starving in Ethiopia and my heart was captured. At the time, my parents were planning a garage sale. I asked if I could make plaster magnets for the fridge and plaster bugs to stick in plants to sell at their garage sale (I had learned to do this amazing craft in Campfire). They agreed.
I set up my little table with my homemade crafts and posted a sign asking people to buy them so that the money could go to Ethiopia. I raised something like $50. The church put a little note about it in the bulletin. I was stoked! I realized I could make a difference!
A few years later, in middle school, I realized that hunger was an issue in my own community. I worked with a school club to organize a school-wide can drive. I was told we had one of the biggest can drives in the area that year. At that point, I realized that not only could I make a difference, but I could help others to make a difference.
In high school, I got involved in a before-school program for kids who would not have enough money for breakfast (this was before schools were serving breakfast). My church also gave me the opportunity to go work with kids in the inner city. At that point, I had real faces to put with these needs and fell head-over-heals in love. In college, that progressed to being involved in programs in the housing project in town, then spending a summer on a mission trip to the inner city.
When I look back at my life, I can see how God was leading the direction of my life from the time I was a little child. He put a passion in me, and He showed me that He can use even little ol' me. The things I did may have been small, but hopefully even my little $50 made a difference. I prayed that it did. He not only developed in me a heart for "the least of these" but more importantly doing this showed me who He was. As I did these things I fell in love with God.
Are you teaching your children to serve others and love God?
God started with my very small first steps and turned them not only into bigger steps but into something that brought me closer to Him. November 8 is Orphan Sunday, and churches all over the country will be speaking up for 143 million orphans and waiting children. Focus on the Family, Show Hope, and Hope for Orphans, a ministry of FamilyLife, will be sponsoring one such Orphan Sunday event in Nashville. Steven Curtis Chapman will be performing and will be joined by the president of Focus on the Family, Jim Daly, and the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey.
You and others from your church can join in on this event via live webcast November 8 at 4 p.m. (CST). You can learn more by visiting CryoftheOrphan.org. It is our prayer that as a result of Orphan Sunday, many believers would take the next step in caring for the orphan and in doing so would get to know God that much better.
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