Dominican Republic Video

Above is a video filmed (Tim) and edited (Cheez) by the Summit Student Ministries team. They are offering a trip to the Dominican Republic for high school students through Children of the Nations. This is the promo video they made for the trip. I hope you enjoy it, I think it's pretty sweet.

My Holy Discontent

My pastor talked recently about our "holy discontents," the injustices that personally stir something up inside of us.  These are things that we are individually passionate about and that often bring up pain and hurt that is close to us.  These holy discontents are different for all of us, but chances are you know exactly what yours are.  These are the things such as poverty, lack of education, sex slavery, disease, corrupt governments, injustices, and on and on.  There are thousands of things that may bring deep rooted emotion out of all of us.

As many of you know (or could probably guess), one of my holy discontents is people that have to live through tougher situations than I could ever imagine.  I know that I can never fully understand the pain that they have to live with, but I deeply feel for them and it absolutely breaks my heart.  As I think of the 11,000+ children that we help to care for on a regular basis, I think about all the pain that they have to deal with.  We work with children that were once children soldiers, sex slaves, have lost one or both of their parents at a very young age, had to deal with unimaginable hunger, were malnourished, live through extreme poverty, and so on.  I could share many of the stories of our children that seem as if they couldn't be real but for the sake of those that would rather not hear their stories, I'll spare you.  I wish I could personally hug every one of them, tell them I love them,  that they are beautiful, and that they matter more than they could imagine.

As I get to talk to many people about COTN and what we do, I can't help but to let my passion and holy discontent shine through.  Every time that I show a video about COTN or about Malawi, which I have seen many times, I can't help but to be moved all over again.  My eyes tear up every single time I watch the videos (notice how I said tear up, totally different from crying).  It brings back memories that I have of specific children and about my time overseas.  

I hope this has helped you to understand me and my heart just a little more.  This is a huge part of why I do what I do, I can't help but to want to do something about it.  I can honestly say that I would do anything that I could for our children.  This is what I want to pour my time, energy, and life into.