30 Hour Famine

More than 1 billion people go hungry every day. There are more than 6 billion people on the planet. One in six will go to bed hungry tonight. Why so many? For some families, the only food they have is whatever they can grow themselves. One drought or flood can wipe out a year’s harvest. When it does, there’s no supermarket or food bank they can turn to. Others can barely afford food for their families, despite their best efforts. Either way, hunger is anything but yesterday’s problem. For 1 billion people, it’s a problem right now. But world hunger is 100 percent preventable, and I want to be ready to be a part of the solution.

This February, I will be joining the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people all over the nation who will set aside the usual “stuff” that fills their daily lives. Instead, we will do World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine. This year will be especially special to me because during the famine, I will be in Ethiopia with World Vision. Although I am needing support for my trip, I also want to raise money for world hunger. For every $30 donated, a child will be fed for one month by World Vision staff. $360 will support a child for a year! 

Funds raised by 30 Hour Famine participants help feed and care for children in communities in need around the globe through World Vision. Additionally, a portion of the funds raised support World Vision’s efforts to assist families in need in the United States. Famine funds contribute to World Vision’s response in areas where famine, conflict, and other crises make children vulnerable to hunger and preventable disease. Since 1992, 30 Hour Famine has raised close to $130 million, representing countless lives saved. World Vision works in nearly 100 countries, helping approximately 100 million people every year.

Visit www.30hourfamine.org or call 800-7-FAMINE for more information.

Would you be willing to donate $30 to support a child for a month? I have invited my small group at Lakeside Church to join me in raising funds. I am also inviting my CCS class families to join me if they wish. (If this is you - contact me and I will send you the details!)  All money is tax deductible. You may make a check out to World Vision and give to me to mail in with our materials. I will send you a receipt. Please email me at jimison4Him@sbcglobal.net if you need my mailing address.

Everything

God asks us for everything. Think about it. Everything is a big word if you really grasp what that is saying.  As we prepare for our trip to Ethiopia in February, our group from Lakeside Church is reading A Hole in the Gospel by Richard Stearns – current CEO of World Vision. I’ve read it before, but as I work back through it, passages pop out and I wonder – what does that have to do with me and what am I going to do about it?

“Christ calls us to be his partners in changing our world. If your personal faith in Christ has no positive outward expression, then your faith – and mine – has a hole in it…Living out our faith privately was never meant to be an option.”

Lauren took a recent class in general epistles at APU and shared with me some statistics…there are 560 direct commands to care for the poor in the Bible. In the New Testament, 1 out of every 16 verses talks about the poor and in the gospels it is 1 out of every 10…Luke 1 out of 7 and James  1 out of 5.

Dr. Phillip Harter of Stanford University School of Medicine wrote the following: If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of only 100 people, there would be…

57 Asians

21 Europeans

14 North and South Americans

8 Africans

30 white

70 nonwhite

6 people would possess 59% of the world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the United States

80 would live in substandard housing

70 would be unable to read

50 would suffer malnutrition

1 would have a college education

1 would own a computer

When I first visited a poor section of Mexico years ago, I was filled with emotion. My tears flowed. Just like this book, I felt guilt – Lord, I didn’t know. But I did. I knew about the poor and suffering in the world. I’ve seen it on tv, read about it in papers. But I must admit – it is different actually seeing it. Yet I have lived in my insulated bubble and looked the other way. It’s easy to do.  “Twelve million orphans, and no one noticed? Where was the church?”

“The kingdom of God, which Christ said is within you (Luke 17:21) was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it.”  We’ve been going through the book of Ruth at Lakeside Church and Brad’s message this past week focused on the word “redeem”.   Jesus is our redeemer. Christ came to redeem the world. And if we are to bring his gospel to this world – we need to help him redeem it. “We are also commanded to go into the world – to bear fruit by lifting up the poor and the marginalized, challenging injustice where we find it…and loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

I am a full time missionary. My mission is to carry out his gospel daily in my life. Right now, that’s as a teacher at Capital Christian School, a neighbor in El Dorado Hills, a driver on highway 50, a person in line at Costco.  Many of you who know me know I would love to work as a full time missionary in Africa or some remote part of the world unreached by His gospel. But, at this point in my life God hasn’t called me to that. He has called me to CCS and EDH. And – for two weeks, Ethiopia. There is that longing on my heart to do more – to reach the unreached, to give to the poor, to spread his love. I can’t turn my eyes away. I need to look farther than my own bubble and go where he sends me…whether it’s only for two weeks or longer.

God asks us for everything. That’s a big call. It’s a whole life. It’s everything. I’m still pondering how that looks…and I’m so thankful for His patience.


Would you like to partner with me? I need prayer and financial support. I'd love to hear from you!  If you would like to pray for our trip and receive information by email, please email me at jimison4Him@sbcglobal.net and I'll add you to my info list. You may support me financially by going to http://www.lakesidechurch.com and click the giving tab.  Click "missions" and sub-folder "Pam Jimison - Ethiopia '11" . Or, you may mail a check made out to Lakeside Church with Pam Jimison/Ethiopia in the memo line to: 

Lakeside Church

ATTN: Gina MacFarlane

745 Oak Avenue Parkway

Folsom, CA  95630

ETHIOPIA: Developing the Abaya Community

I am very excited that I have decided (and accepted God's calling) to go to ETHIOPIA. :) Lakeside Church is partnering with World Vision to work with a developing community in Abaya. This community is in the beginning stages with World Vision and I am excited to go and visit during the early stages of development because I hope to make a long commitment to this community.

Physical and social needs in the Abaya community, located 220 miles south of Addis Adaba, are pervasive. World Vision has assessed many of the needs and we hope to work with them through 2013. Here is a run-down of the key sectors:

Food: Most members of the community depend on agriculture for their livelihood.

Plans: Develop small scale irrigation, build a cattle trough and cattle crush, community crop training

Water: Only 28.5 percent of the people in Abaya have reasonable access to clean and safe water.

Plans: Develop 4 springs (one per year), construct a safe and sanitary toilet facility, construct 2 communal waste disposal pits

Health: The Abaya community has a high incidence of HIV/AIDS.

Plans: Build an office and staff residence, build a health post and counseling/testing center

School: July half the children eligible by age for grades 1-4 and only one third for grades 5-8 are enrolled in school.

Plans: Build 6 schools, build a library

Work: Plans: Offer vocational training in woodworking, pottery, masonry, mud technology and silk work production, develop nurseries, beekeeping, facilitate microcredit opportunities, increase opportunities for women.

Faith: Churches are not fully participating in the development process within the Abaya community, mostly for lack of leadership. Plans: Train Christian leaders for holistic development, so they can enable members of local churches to care for the marginalized, disadvantages, voiceless, and vulnerable members of their community as an expression of God's love.

All these phases, with World Vision, will take until approximately 2023 to finish. But what awesome plans!

Would you partner with me in this venture? I will need prayer and financial support. Would you be interested in sponsoring a child from this community? Let me know! :)

Trip Dates: February 22 - March 3
You may contribute online at :

http://www.lakesidechurch.com

Click "Give Online"
You may need a username and password. It will step you through the process.
Click "Missions"
Click the subfolder "Ethiopia '11 - Pam Jimison"

OR
Email me and I will give you information to mail it in!
jimison4Him@sbcglobal.net

My Shutterfly Experience

Not a part of our mission trips...but definitely a part of my life...teaching.

I use Shutterfly.com for my classroom website and LOVE it. Using shutterfly is free and enables me to keep the families in my classroom informed. I am able to update our site at any time, load pictures of projects, load files that parents can print out at home, and I can have a safe place for web site links that are commonly used.

I think some of my favorite uses of shutterfly has been keeping extended family members informed! I had one parent send our shutterfly link to the "grandma" in New York. I then was able to upload pictures of the student's book report project so that grandma was able to see it at our classroom site. How cool is that?

I have tried various class web sites and shutterfly is absolutely the easiest to use. It is user friendly! Best of all...it is free! Yea for shutterfly. I hope they continue their service because I rely on their product each week. Thanks, shutterfly.

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Want some free things from shutterfly? If you have a blog, post your shutterfly experience. Maybe you'll get some free product samples! :)

Haiti Update

Lee is back safe and sound! Thank you so much to those who prayed for and supported him! Lee is not much of a writer - so much of this information is from a member on the team, Mike Slusher. Thanks for the info, Mike.

As we entered the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, a city of over 3 million people, we occasionally noticed a building damaged by the earthquake. As we drove closer to the city center, we drove by the U.S. Embassy, the U.N. compound, and other compounds for various other countries military personnel. The damage became more and more noticeable. Instead of 1 or 2 buildings being damaged every 5 or 6 block, we began to see damage every 4 or 5 blocks, then every 3 or 4 blocks, etc. Then, the damage was several buildings on every block until you get to the city center, which is also the Capitol. We were told that an unknown number of bodies remain in many of these buildings.

You may have seen pictures of their Palace. A beautiful white building…completely collapsed. Imagine our capitol building with the dome sitting on the ground and everything crumbled around it. All of the government buildings surrounding the Palace were severely damaged or flattened. Three and four story buildings were nothing more than a pile of ruble with multi-colored government papers mixed in the debris and floating around. A huge tent city has been erected on the grassy areas surrounding the capitol. In fact, everywhere we traveled there were tent cities. The various relief agencies, government, private/religious are providing food and water to those living in these tent cities. The term tent-cities is also a generous term. Although there are numerous tents provided by relief organizations, there are countless rag tents mixed in as well.

We also went into neighborhoods that had been destroyed by the earthquake. We went to one area where over 100,000 people had once lived. Imagine a V shaped ravine. From the top of the ravine to the bottom was at least ¼ mile. The ravine was over ¾ quarters of a mile long and opening out into the bay. We stood at the top of the ravine and looked down a sidewalk that led through the neighborhood to the bottom. As we looked out, it was easier to count the number of homes and business’ that had not been damaged, than to count the damaged ones. We were at this area because one of the pastors, who escorted us, lived in the area. He is a young man who lived with has parents and his church building was located across the sidewalk from his home. The church was destroyed and now a tent, provided by the citizens of the United States, stands in its place. His home, where his step-mother perished, is still a pile of ruble.

Ruble. That’s what is amazing. Ruble is everywhere with no way to remove this much debris. We saw 2 front loaders and 3 or 4 dump trucks removing debris in the capitol area. In the neighborhoods, a handful of people are using sledgehammers and hand tools to break the concrete away from the rebar. They are going to recycle the rebar. The concrete is being left in piles since there are so few private dump trucks to haul it away.
You can’t rebuild until the demolition is done. You can’t demolish because you don’t have the proper equipment to handle the heavy loads and to carry the debris away. If you are living in a tent city, you are so far from your old house, how do you get back and forth? You have to stay in the tent city to get your food and water…and protect what you have left.

We were exploring relief possibilities through Missions Door and Delta Ministries. We visited a destroyed community center/church where the pastor and 4 students escaped. When the earthquake hit, it lasted about 8 seconds, paused and then lasted for 17 seconds. During the 1st shake, this pastor and his students tried to leave the 3rd story of the building only to find the staircase blocked by a collapsed wall. When the 2nd shake struck, the wall fell back out into an open area and the pastor and students were able to step out of the building and flee. As soon as they cleared the building they turned, and watched their building crumble to the ground, completely destroyed.
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Lakeside Church is sending a new group May 2-8 led by Mike to Haiti to see about working with AIM. There is currently so much ruble that nothing can be done about building until more clean up happens. AIM may send groups for more immediate relief - food, shelter.

Dominican Republic...They landed.

We finally made it with flight delays and Mike losing his bag. The Airline lost one of his bags so we were at the airport longer than expected. The flight left about 1 1/2 hours late. We had to stop by the store to buy Mike the things he needed to get by this week since we will leave for Haiti before his bag gets here. We just finished eating dinner and we plan on leaving for Haiti at about 7.30 in the morning. I'm on the computer at the hotel. It's going to be another long day on the bus tomorrow. I love you lots and hopefully I will be able to use a computer to write again once in Haiti.

Lee is Off!

Lee is on his way to Haiti! Finally. It was quite a day yesterday. He is traveling with Mike Slusher and Jimmy Record. I dropped Lee off at church for his ride to the airport and came home. By the time I got home, there was a message on our machine saying the airline canceled the flight to NY. So I went back to church and told Lee and we drove home to call Jet Blue. We looked on line again, and the airline said it was now on time. So...we called the others and they all headed to the airport. Their flight was for 11:45 PM. Well, when we got there we found out it was indeed canceled due to storms in NY. They rescheduled the closest time - today at 10:45 PM but this time out of San Francisco.

Thanks for your prayers for the trip! They are now flying through Ft. Lauderdale. Lee won't have his phone, but promises to send me email updates IF he has internet access!

We SOOOO appreciate those who have supported him on this trip!

Lee to Haiti!!

Well, within the last week Lee has been called to Haiti! This was a last minute request and decision and Lee feels lead by God to accept and GO. He will be on a small 4 man team with Lakeside Church through Delta Ministries to go to Haiti. The purpose of the trip will be two-fold: provide some relief efforts and look into needs for bringing future groups. Lee feels it is a great time to go for him because he is currently out of work and so he has the time!

Mostly, he needs your prayer support! He needs at least 10 people who will partner with him in prayer - agree to pray throughout his whole trip.

He also needs to raise money for the trip so if you would like to donate, you may mail a tax deductible donation to:

Lakeside Church (write Lee Jimison Haiti in the subject line)
attn. Gina Macfarlane c/o (Trip Name)
745 Oak Avenue Parkway
Folsom, CA 95630

He will be gone March 13-19.

Thanks so much for your interest and prayers!!