We are a learning community

They shall hunger and thirst no more. (Rev. 7:16)

September 10-14, 2010
Oregon and British Columbia

"We know the economy of our country is not going to change," Susan Ban told us. "So we have to do things differently in smaller strategies that don't feel too huge and that can help our county be caring and compassionate."

Susan, the executive director of Shelter Care, a church-based ministry for responding to situational and chronic homelessness in Eugene, Oregon, told the West Coast MCC board that Shelter Care is finding creative ways for the church to partner with the public sector to respond to problems facing her community.

A day later, the West Coast MCC board and staff headed north of the border to Abbotsford, British Columbia to learn from the MCC programs there. They joined a Sunday celebration for the relief sale the day before that raised over $600,000 to help meet human needs and work for peace and justice all over the world.

Dan Wiens, water and agricultural coordinator for MCC, told the crowd that there are over one billion people in the world who live on less than a dollar a day and who suffer because of lack of food and water. He shared creative solutions like sand dams and conservation agriculture, ideas surfaced by the communities in need themselves that MCC is helping bring to fruition.

The following day, the MCC BC staff introduced us to an array of programs serving the people of Abbotsford, Vancouver and beyond. One innovative program is a for-profit landscaping business that employs 30 homeless people and youth at risk. Another program partners with a local credit union to help people save money (and get it matched) for downpayments on housing, starting small businesses or for education and training.

In an opening devotional, Rachelle Lyndacher Schlabach told the West Coast MCC board that Christians are called to hospitality, peacemaking and generosity rather than suspicion, selfishness and accumulation.

In visiting Eugene and Abbotsford the West Coast MCC board is modeling for us how to be a learning community. They are dreaming about a world in which people hunger and thirst no more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family includes seven
Read more