The Real Picture

This morning, during our team’s time together for singing and sharing, I was thinking back on my time in the States, and how difficult I found it to really give people a mental picture of just how unique a situation I am in here. I think the general mindset when you hear someone serves overseas, is to think I’m in a tiny, rundown room with ancient equipment and practically catching my own fish in the harbor in an effort to survive. Ok, so that may be a little extreme, but at the same time it’s probably a closer visual to what people think of than what actually happens here.

And what happens here, and the people here, so clearly reflect the Father at work. Every single person here works for no income at all, but chooses to be here because they have been called to be in this place. We have people who are highly educated, know the ins and outs of business management, up-to-date design, web, and other programs, and people who are incredibly organized and competent. When we print flyers or invitations to invite the community to events, these aren’t publications made using Clip Art and MS Word (not that there's anything wrong with that!), but rather professional quality products. This often gives people the idea that we aren’t as non-profit as we say, but in reality it’s because the Father has led his kids to be here, and all are very competent, hard-working people.

We also find ourselves faced with wide open doors of opportunity that literally fall into our lap. For example, we have a HUGE piece of land in Hong Kong (well, huge by HK standards), which was just given to us by the government, and what’s more is a prestigious development company has agreed to develop our site (ie landscaping, warehousing, and more) free of charge. In addition to this miracle, we made friends with some influential people in the UN and because of this bond, they asked us to present an event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week. They flew and are boarding about 12 of our team members there. How crazy is that?! We continuously have corporate groups and other people within Hong Kong who just keep throwing money at us. Some of our more senior members in the organization are invited to high level meetings with people in government, many of which result in huge partnerships and PR for us (which gets us more money, and lots of people within Hong Kong who want to volunteer with us). I can’t tell you how coincidental so many factors are, like when we were petitioning the government to grant us our site in the first place, and it just so happened that the highest government official in Hong Kong’s daughter had recently volunteered with us and gone home to tell her dad how much she liked it, getting him interested and playing a pivotal role in our acquiring of the land we now have. Just so many amazing things.

In addition, we have some very, very creative people on our team, particularly when it comes to music. We have a professional singer/songwriter who writes and records music about world issues, such as refugees and child soldiers. We have a few others who also write and perform songs as a hobby, and are very talented as well. Just this morning we sang a song called Father of the Fatherless that several people wrote as a collaboration. It was a beautiful song, and with it we watched a slide show of photos our own people had taken of orphans all over the world, suffering and destitute.

I don’t know if this gives you any more of a visual picture of the place I’m serving in, but I hope it does. What started off as a small family taking in just a few boxes of clothes to help flood victims in China less than 15 years ago, has grown by leaps and bounds. It is now a team of about 80 people who come from all over the world, have an array of skills, degrees, knowledge, and talents. Each chooses to forgo a ‘normal’ job making a paycheck and instead live in a foreign culture, receive no money, but do so with great joy because they have been called out to serve the poor and bring hope to millions.

If you want to learn more about Crossroads in Davos, click here.