Episode 95 - Risky Missions, and Does Charity Start at Home?

ON this episode of the podcast, more church fire problems,  Missionaries arrested in Laos - with another exclusive interview you will only see here, on the Hot Zone.

 

Hi folks.  There's a lot to get to today so let's get to it.  

 

Yesterday I touched on the untimely death of a Christian Missionary in Paraguay, named Wayne Goddard.  Now Paraguay is normally not associated with heightened travel risk - most places in the country are very safe.  But Wayne wasn't working in most places.  The place he lived was near what they call the "tri border region."  The State Department warns that Transnational criminal organizations facilitate the illicit trafficking of arms, narcotics, and other goods in Paraguay, particularly along Paraguay’s eastern border with Brazil,  including the Tri-Border Area of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. Coupled with the lack of sufficient police enforcement, the involvement of these organizations heightens violent crime in these areas.

 

We've been doing a lot of reporting this week on the risks being faced by missionaries around the globe.  And today I have two special guests to talk about that subject further.  First, let's talk to Terry Reed.

 

[Terry Reed]

 

[eric blievernicht]

 

Great interviews!  Now, let's move on to other news.

 

The investigation is just beginning into what caused the fire at Notre Dame this week, but already some whack job decided it'd be a good idea to burn down one of the United States' best known old cathedrals, Saint Patricks in New York City.  This joker apparently tried to enter the church with four gallons of gasoline, two cans of lighter fluid and lighters.  Wow.  What's interesting is that the cops already had an eye on this guy, so they were able to stop him quickly.  

 

 So the cleanup is already underway at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, only days after that world-famous church went up in flames and well over half a billion euros has been pledged to rebuild it.  some people are actually criticizing the fact that people are donating money for that, pointing out that there are hungry people around the world who could use that money.

 

Okay, let me explain something here.  

 

First of all, Notre Dame may in fact be covered by insurance if the true cause of the fire turns out to be an accident.  IN which case, the donated funds certainly can go to feed hungry people.

 

Also, Charity is not a zero-sum game.  Giving doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. In fact, generosity begets more generosity in three ways.  first, Giving feels good, and the more you give, the more likely you will want to continue giving.  Second, When you give to charity, it motivates others to do the same, and third, people who receive true charity (as opposed to "entitlements" from the government) Tend to want to pass those good vibes along out of gratitude for what they've received.

 

On yesterday's podcast I talked about Catherine, a single mother of two we helped start a business so she could provide for her children without leaving them unsupervised on the street all day.  And I suddenly got this flood of hate on Facebook by people insisting we should only help needy people inside the United States.  I mean, how dare we give to keep a couple of little dirty brown kids from starving?  the nerve! Some of the comments were incredibly instructive though about just how poor America's public school system must be.  There were dozens of comments telling this woman, who is living in Colombia, over 2000 miles from the US, to "stay out of our country."  Apparently these people think Colombia is somewhere near Phoenix or something.  This guy shared my post with the message "help American's First" which was a common refrain.  The whole "charity begins at home" refrain.  Well charity might indeed begin at home, but it doesn't have to end there.  And I'd love to take one of these people with me to Colombia, let them see the poverty there that is frankly worse than anything you can find in the United States, and I'd like to see this guy Joe look Catherine's starving children in their faces and tell them, "sorry kids, I only help people who look like me."

 

Then there was this gem:  A Venezuelan soldier who defected from the military and is taking a stand for his country, at great peril to his own life, posted this message in Spanish:  It says, "May God save the United States from the tragedy we are living through in my country."  

 

The first response to his message?  This warm-hearted American woman wrote: "This is America we speak English." 

 

Classy.  Just.  Wow.  So finally, to please the "We only help Americans" crowd, I put up this plea for Dr. Doug Burbella, who was shot delivering aid in Haiti last week.  A few people stepped up.  One was this man, my friend Imran Gilani, who is a Pakistani Muslim Asylum Seeker in the United States waiting for his Asylum hearing.   Apparently Imran didn't get the memo that "we only help our own."  In fact, he puts many Christians to shame.

 

There are about 130 million households in the United States, with a median income of over $56,000.  Now since only Half of the US Population claims to be Christian, let's assume 65 million households actually followed the biblical mandate to tithe on their income.  That means the average Christian home should be giving about a hundred bucks a week to the needy.  That would come out to nearly 32 billion dollars per month being given to charity. To give you a sense of how much that is, the US government currently spends about 8.7 billion a month on feeding the poor in America.  So we could feed all the hungry in the US so the US government didn't have to and still have more than 23 billion dollars left over.

 

My point is, there is more than enough to help our neighbors and even have a little left over to help others.  In my experience, generous people tend to be generous to everyone, not just those they are closest to.  So go ahead and help the people God puts in front of you, and if you want to take part in our mission to make the bad news around the world just a little bit better, then join me will you?  Americans are the most generous people group on the planet.  And we know that giving is more blessed than receiving.  So let's be generous, shall we?

 

That's it for today's hot zone.  Thanks for watching.  I'll see you next week!