The Challenge

I was asked to come speak to our local private Christian school recently. Actually, it was the weekend that Jay & Amy were in town...February 6, to be exact. I was asked to speak on ministry---not necessarily about Living Water---but I was asked to encourage their students to get involved in ministry. I thought and prayed on what to do. I'm a very visual person and I think students respond to something they can see and "get." And I know God gave me this idea---I can take no credit!

First, I asked how many of them were rich. One teacher raised her hand. Then I had 5 students come up and help me. I handed 4 students signs that had names of countries: China, Africa, Mexico & United States. These represented countries who had hungry people. Then I had 1 student hold the Borger sign....the sign of wealth. I told them that just because they went to a private school in Borger, many people even in Borger looked upon them as wealthy! I gave the 4 students part of an orange and I gave the Borger student a large plate of a huge breakfast. Then I went back and took parts of the orange away from some of the hungry countries and gave it to the Borger student and told them I had to redistribute the wealth because they had too much. I told them there are hungry people out there and we have so much. I pointed out that I never told the Borger student he couldn't share his food---but he didn't.

Then I gave them a bunch of statistics. Did you know that 40% of the world lives on $1/day or less? And 80% of the world lives on less than $10/day. 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And over 1/2 of the children in the world live in poverty. The world's richest (which is 20% of the world) consume 76.6% of the world's resources. The world's poorest (10% of the world) consume .5% of the world's resources. And globally, $35 billion a year is spent just on entertainment--and 17 billion on pet food!

Living Water then gave each student and each teacher $1.00 (which only cost me $32.00). I told them I knew it wasn't much, but it was what 40% of the world lived on. And then I quickly reminded them of the story of the talents---how God gave a different amount to each and expected a return. I divided them into groups and asked them to talk it out, pray, and ask God how they could make a profit with that $1.00 and return it to Living Water.

I walked out of there so excited!! The kids had gotten it!!!! And there was a buzz in that room as the kids began discussing what they could do to increase it. Well....yesterday, the first group brought in their increase. They had written a letter telling what they were doing and began going door-to-door and telling people that they had matched the $1.00 themselves and asked them to also match the $1.00. They brought in $38.85! (Already more than Living Water gave out to begin with!) I thought their idea was pretty creative. And it was exciting to see the lesson they learned of what could happen when they started with only one dollar--how God could increase it and use it for His kingdom.

So I just had to share this story and post the picture they took yesterday as they presented their gift to Living Water.