It’s been said Giving Tuesday is “a day dedicated to giving on purpose with purpose”. I’m not sure who coined the phrase first, but I like it! Last month, we talked about the importance of going deep with organizations to understand how we’re helping those we intend to help. And while giving once on a particular day (i.e. Giving Tuesday) isn’t necessarily going deep, it is a day set aside to purposely give to causes we care about. It’s a day to be intentional with our giving, and today I hope to help you bring your intentionality to another level by sharing organizations I’d support this Giving Tuesday and WHY. These organizations are ones I’ve personally gone deeper with either by spending my time supporting, interacting with, or supporting financially (and in most cases, all of the above!). Even better yet, they all embody the idea of “Helping Without Hurting”, a theme threaded throughout most of the stories we’ve read together – one being the organization who designed the framework itself! Ready? Let’s dig in!

September – It’s that time of year again, a month full of celebrations! Well, at least over here at Lovelight stories. 

The last two years, together, we’ve supported Charity: water – in 2017 as part of my birthday campaign (Yes! September is my birthday month!) and in 2018 as part of Charity: water’s own birthday campaign with the launch of Scott Harrison’s book, Thirst. If you’ve read last year’s story about Charity: water and Thirst, you know funds from the birthday campaign were put towards delivering water in Mozambique. Indeed they were! We just received reports of TWO water projects our campaign helped to support! Click here to see hot-off-the-press reports from Charity: water of both projects in Napera and Triangulo – detailing GPS coordinates, photos, number of people served, and more!

And as if that’s not enough to celebrate, this month, we’re celebrating two more birthday’s! Lovelight stories is officially 1 and MAP International is celebrating 65 years of bringing life-saving medicines to the world! In fact, MAP is the focus of this month’s story and is very much deserving so.

MAP International is a Christian organization providing life-changing medicines and health supplies to people in need around the world. While they’re Christian based, they serve all people, regardless of religion, gender, race, nationality, or ethnic background.

“Letters of Love” are one of the ways we encourage and share stories at Lovelight stories! It’s a storytelling technique that helps to convey more than just words on paper, but to invoke feeling, understanding, and meaning through the style of letter writing! These letters are a way to encourage those whom the letters are intended for, while also telling a story through the unique perspective of the writer’s experience.

Our team had such an impactful experience that we’ve already found ourselves describing our trip as being so much more than what can be seen or heard. Alas, I hope these “Letters of Love” help you to feel and better understand what’s happening in La Beyi, written by each member of our team.

As many know, I’m co-leading a mission trip back to Haiti this June (Yay!). As part of our leader training we had the opportunity to experience a poverty simulation lead by HOPE International. I was eager to partake in the experience for the first time, not knowing at all what it would entail. I was pleasantly surprised (and surprise is the name of the game)! We were taken through an immersive experience forcing us to make decisions and actively partake in roles to stay alive. It really hit home for me. After all, imagining what it would feel like to live in extreme poverty while carrying the immense heartbreak and burden it brings, is what ultimately drove me to walking with people living in poverty in the first place. I’ve often thought, “I don’t know what I would do if I were forced to survive on the streets”. This simulation helped uncover some of that in a deeper way – so much so, that I eagerly want to share it with you! 

In speaking with Ashley Dickens, the HOPE experience facilitator afterwards, I learned she’s already written a story about the experience and I decided there’s no better words than hers to share it with you!