What It's About

I greeted Saturday morning with a bad attitude. My alarm went off at 5:15a, just 25 minutes after I had gone back to bed after nursing Jude. I threw my bags together and hustled out the door to join the Jars guys in a van with a trailer, headed for Atlanta.

We had a benefit concert that night, and I was slated to make the pitch from stage. Though I speak in front of people frequently, I still feel anxious and ill-prepared for such a task. It had been a long week, and I just wanted to spend my Saturday morning curled up on the couch with my baby and my husband.

The goal for the night was to raise $10,000 - enough money to provide a well for a community in Zambia. With an expected audience of 1000, I planned to ask each person to consider donating $10. It seemed a simple way to get there, not asking too much of anyone.

But when the opening act began, the auditorium was pretty empty.

Like awkward empty.

Like this was supposed to be the most happening place on a Saturday night, but you were duped because everyone apparently went somewhere else kind of empty.

I felt duped, too.

"We can't ask for a well tonight," I told my colleague Jake. We'd be asking for too much. Reluctantly, I walked on the stage and told the scattered crowd about a community called Koloko, in Zambia.

I pulled these photos up, for the audience to see. They were taken that day by our team in Zambia.

There's Josh rolling the drum of water.

Community members use this to transport their water, over 2.5 miles away from their homes.

There's Courtney, accompanying a mama and her child on the walk for water.

Children under the age of 5 are dying unnecessarily from water-borne illnesses.

And here's the dream, I told them: that walking miles for water would no longer be necessary, that preventable diseases and deaths would disappear. A well could help them do that.

Despite the fact that I knew we wouldn't get the full $10,000 that we needed that night, I boldly asked the audience that we try.

So we passed the popcorn buckets through the aisles, and people placed dollar bills into the buckets. It was a beautiful sign of generosity.

But it wasn't going to be enough.

Until a man pulled me aside and handed me a blank check to get us to the $10,000.

A blank check.

In ten years of asking for money on behalf of my friends in Africa, I have never been given a blank check. It was a shower of mercy for my doubtful heart. A lifetime of water for a community we love.

It's moments like these where my narrow worldview continues to change because it's not about the thousands or the crowds or being in the hippest place on a Saturday night. It's not about demanding a guarantee of success before giving up a precious day for myself.

It's about remembering that God is bigger than our wildest dreams. That sometimes you don't need a thousand new supporters; but rather, just the faithful ones. It's about the stories we tell. And the faithful actions we live out despite our unbelief.

I guess, too, it's about being bold enough to ask, even when it feels foolish. And it's about letting love surprise you - because when I went back on stage to announce the good news, my colleague Michael ran up to tell me that another person had just donated $10,000.

And just like that, this small but mighty crowd had done something extraordinary. Koloko was now bound up in us, and us in them. But we had to have the audacity to ask. My own doubtful heart turned upside down.

For the Mothers and the Babies

"Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days..." - Isaiah 65:20

Eight days after I delivered Jude, I suffered from a postpartum hemorrhage. While it was a terrifying experience to bleed out in a public restroom and be taken by ambulance to the emergency room, there was an easy operation that fixed the problem. I stayed in the hospital for two nights and have fully recovered since. Meanwhile, postpartum hemorrhages account for more than 30 percent of all maternal deaths in Africa. I could have been one of them.

This morning I will be sharing a stage with Melinda Gates and Senator Frist, standing in solidarity of the 287,000 women around the world who die every year due to complications during pregnancy or childbirth. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been leading the way in bringing awareness and support to vulnerable mothers and children in developing countries.

Following their lead, James and I have joined a growing coalition of faith-based organizations and advocates to make a stand for access to contraceptives and healthy family planning because of our commitment to save the lives of mothers and babies. We have also written an op-ed that unpacks the complexity of these issues in places like Kenya. Blood:Water is already actively supporting clinics and making safe delivery possible for thousands of mothers and babies. The babies in the photo was a celebration of a mama with preeclampsia and her twins' survival thanks to the clinical care they received.

But we still have a long way to go.

It seems fitting that on my first day back to work from maternity leave, I will be spending it at a gathering on behalf of mothers and babies worldwide who deserve a better story. I dream of Isaiah's vision of the new heavens and the new earth where never again will a baby live but a few days or a woman not live out her years. It was personal for me before, but now as a new mother with dreams for my own child, I wish it even more for our women and children around the world.

A Lost Cause

When I was in high school, I was voted most likely to devote my life to a lost cause. I was mildly offended, but ultimately took it as a compliment.

Because sometimes the most important work in the world looks like a lost cause.

Day-in and day-out, a commitment to a person or an ideal can certainly feel like a lost cause, too.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that seven African countries have cut child HIV infections by half.

It's a remarkable piece of news, and a tell-tale reminder that the fight against HIV/AIDS is not a lost cause. Twenty years ago, we couldn't have dreamt of such a concept, and now it is within our reach.

In fact, it's so close that hundreds of thousands of us are committed to live in a world where there will be no baby born with HIV by 2015.

We still have a LONG way to go, but the end of HIV/AIDS is also within the reach of our lifetime.

It's why we can't wait.

It's why we can't slow down.

It's why we can't get distracted by naysayers or by complacency.

It's why, one community at a time, we walk alongside Africans in their commitment to ending HIV in their home villages.

You can consider it a lost cause if you want. I consider it a cause worth waking up every day to fight for.

The Friday Five: Issues that Complicate HIV/AIDS in Western Kenya

HIV/AIDS is complex. A horrific disease that affects all parts of life, it is also specific in that in attacks a community in a multitude of ways. No region is exactly the same in how it is affected by HIV, and so our approaches to combating it require us to apply contextual approaches to each individual community.

No where is HIV/AIDS so prolific and total as in rural Africa. In the Lwala region of western Kenya, 24% of the population is HIV positive. Here is a peek into one of the places where HIV is rampant - and five issues that complicate the problem.

1. Polygamy It is still common for some tribes to observe the Old Testament practice of polygamy. If one member of the marriage is HIV positive, it passes to everyone else. Concurrent sexual relationships give flame to a fire that becomes difficult to stop.

2. Circumcision Most baby boys in western Kenya are not circumcised. However, studies show that HIV transmission is reduced up to 70% for men who are circumcised. There are significant efforts being made in the region to encourage voluntary adult male circumcision.

3. Maternal/Child Health In the region where we work in Lwala, Kenya, only 35% of women deliver their children with a skilled attendant or qualified nurse. Sufficient medical care is essential during labor and delivery in order to prevent transmission from mother to child, and unfortunately, it often comes too late or not at all.

4. Gender Inequality Women in Africa are not valued as highly as men. They are not given equal access to education and employment. They are seen more as property than as valuable citizens. Because of this vast gender inequality, most women lack the ability to say no to a man, even if he is her husband. The population at greatest risk for HIV is married African women. In Lwala, 67% of our HIV patients are women.

5. Stigma HIV/AIDS is our modern-day leprosy. It drips with shame and fear, making it extremely difficult for people to be open about their status. The fear associated with HIV/AIDS breeds ostracizing and hateful acts and so people continue to live in fear, full of guilt and shame and hiding their disease. Even more, when HIV/AIDS is kept secret by individuals, it prevents a community's ability to address the issue together - to speak about prevention and provide treatment in a safe and caring environment.

This list could go on and on. But the good news is that Lwala and other communities in Africa are not alone in their fight against HIV/AIDS. To learn more about how Blood:Water Mission partners with communities in Africa to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, click here. To learn more about our partner in Lwala, Kenya, Lwala Community Alliance, visit their website here.

*Photo Credit: Chris Pereira for Lwala Community Alliance.

Happy FY2013!

It's October 1, the beginning of our new fiscal year! Sounds boring, right? For us, it's a reason to celebrate. Here's why: - Many nonprofits operate on a calendar year (Jan 1 - Dec 31), and Blood:Water has, as well.

- Many nonprofits also receive more than 25% of their entire annual revenue in the final 3 weeks of December because of Christmas giving and tax-deductible deadlines - putting tremendous pressure on the organization in a concentrated season.

- This is also falls in the same the time when nonprofits must programmatically close out the year and plan for the year to come.

- By changing our operating year to a new fiscal year (Oct 1 - Sept 30), our organizational rhythm changes for the better. It puts our biggest fundraising months in the first quarter instead of the last, giving us better revenue planning for the rest of the year. It gives us the summer months to be focused on performance evaluations and key performance. It allows us to singularly focus on fundraising from Oct - Dec. It gives the nonprofit a sustainable rhythm for the year.

Organizational health and work flow matter. It takes a lot of work to change internal operating systems, but it is worth fighting for.

We had a party in the office to celebrate our new fiscal year. More than anything, this particular Oct 1 is a milestone for us because it is our official acknowledgment of moving from a start-up organization (BWM 1.0) to one that is focused on scale of performance and impact (BWM 2.0). Our team is ready, and we can hardly wait to dive into FY2013.

Could We Still Believe?

This is post 2 of 10 in the Broken:Beautiful series.                              

My first thoughts of Africa were wrapped up in idealism, dripping with it. I had romanticized Africa as a place of simplicity, poverty, culture and beauty. Like other Americans, I imagined Africa as it belonged in the travel magazines, in the headlines of the newspapers and in the argument for why children should finish their dinners.

Perhaps, we sentimentalize places and people who are different from us until we truly know them. Or perhaps we long for them, in the way Isaiah longed for a New Jerusalem. As a 21-year-old, I co-founded Blood:Water Mission with the belief that we could eradicate HIV/AIDS and provide safe water for all. If we could simply rally enough people to care, certainly there could be enough resources in the world to make these things happen. In my naiveté I believed early on that I could be the one to usher that change.

Thomas Merton wrote a letter to a young activist and he urged him to struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. Merton’s advice reminds me of the I-Thou and I-It relationship advocated for by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. The I-Thou relationship occurs when two people see each other, simply, as people created by God in His image. There is no qualification of poor or rich or us or them. I-Thou sees the humanity and the divinity within each person. Conversely, I-It exists when a person sees the other as an object to be used to serve his or her interest. It gives a person permission to define, label and objectify the other person. To romanticize Africa is to make an “it” of the place and the people.

It was apparent, even on the plane that both James and I longed to live out the I-Thou relationship and realized our own idealism stood in the way. Perhaps not surprisingly to someone seasoned like Thomas Merton, our romanticism for the ideas and virtues of justice, healthcare, preferential options for the poor and for the hastening of a New Jerusalem would have to be shattered in order to understand the sacred I and Thou. It was easy to see someone as a brother and sister in the loving, general sense of the word.

But what would happen if the Thou you were trying to serve, lied to you, hurt you or disappointed you with corruption- or if the I that wanted to serve began to fall short in his or her false sense of capabilities or large promises  - could we still believe?

Admittedly, we’re still in the midst of picking up some of those pieces of idealism and reworking them. But we continue to commit our lives to social justice in Africa and invite many others to join in the journey with us – even as we are still learning. Because we do believe that the world changes when love is lavished upon others. We hold fast to the hope that someday all things will be renewed. Just as we know ourselves as recipients of God’s great grace, we pray the same for the injustices we see.

James' post next week will expose the broken of broken:beautiful.

The Friday Five: Reasons to Give a Dam

Our organization has launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign on behalf of an actually quite serious cause. We are in the process of trying to raise $75,000 needed to build an earthen dam for a community in Marsabit, Kenya.  So here are five reasons to give a dam (an earthen one):

1. Because Justin Beaver says so.

2. Because last year, northern Kenya experienced its worst drought in six decades. This dam will protect the communities from future droughts.

3. Because a gift as small as $25 can make a significant difference for our friends in Marsabit.

4. Because this dam will also allow for small scale irrigation farming for over 3,000 people.

5. Because isn't this video just irresistible?

[vimeo 47469878 w=500 h=281]

If you would like to walk with us in this journey, click here for more information.