Celebration of Hope 2008

First of all, yes, I realize it has been almost 3 months since my last post. I attribute this to both my laziness, and to the fact that so many great and sometimes hard things have happened, that I had a list piling up of "things I need to blog about," and rather than actually starting that list at some point, i just kept adding things, and then eventually lost the list. I didn't really lose it, but it sounds better than saying that I just decided not to start it. However, I feel like today I have something really worth Blogging about. And I hope you enjoy it.

Beginning today, thousands of people in the Willow Creek community, including just about all of the hundreds of staff at the church, are beginning something called the Solidaritiy Challenge. Since half of the world lives on less than $2 a day, we are being asked to limit our consumption for this 5-day challenge, and at the end of the week donate what money we would have spent on food to aid eliminating hunger around the world.

For these 5 days we have three meal options to chose from, each of which in 8 oz. portions:
Plain oatmeal or cream of wheat
A tortilla, rice and beans
Rice with bits of fish or chicken and a vegetable.

For most of the people doing this challenge, me included, I think it is going to be pretty hard. But I think we, who are so blessed to be able to have large meals multiple times every day, are going to think about the people in third world countries who feel those hunger pains every day, and hopefully those images and those feelings will give us strength to make it through the challenge.


The Celebration of Hope that Willow Creek is engaging in this week is so much more than just this one initiative of limiting our consumption, and as I give updates on how this challenge is going for me (hopefully each day), I will also write about another aspect of the Celebration of Hope that we will all be experiencing this week.

Until then, in my next post (which, for you will actually be the previous post) I am going to post pictures from the Dominican Republic. I wish I could write more about that experience to go along with the pictures, BUt i have only recently started journaling about that time, and truly getting to see what God taught me through that experience. So when I get all that figured out, I will share it.

Good days!