beautiful pics

World Water Day 2011 has come to an end. Here are 2 (of the many) beautiful pictures i looked at today.

a little girl in the Philippines...

a boy in Nicaragua...

(pics via of Halogen TV)

5,000 children die every day because they don't have clean water. Here are 2 children who won't be a part of that statistic!

so, these pictures are beautiful.

World Water Day + Happy Birthday, Mom!

what are the chances that these 2 momentous days happen at the same time?

check out everything for World Water Day HERE. imho - it's pretty dumb and ridiculous that there are still countless people dying every day because the simply don't have any access to clean water.
we can fix that!

& you should wish my Mom a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! if you're her Facebook friend you can hop on there and tell her.

Mom - thanks for being an awesome Mom all these years! you're the best. Happy Birthday!

happy birthday = clean water

my birthday is almost here & i definitely don't want any gifts. (just read HERE or HERE.)
same for Christmas. you're invited to join the conspiracy.



But you can even give gift cards now to help build a well = HERE.

advent conspiracy year 3

It's time for my favorite thing of the year again! = Advent Conspiracy! (In order to save some time in this blog you can read what I wrote about Advent Conspiracy HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE. If you read those I won't have to repeat myself a lot.)

Here's a short video that will give you the scoop too:


So that's what we're about in this conspiracy. It's a conspiracy because it is sooo counter-cultural. It's a rebellion really. We're trying to take Christmas back!

Here's the bottom line if I can summarize it really quickly:
Dirty water is killing more people than anything on earth! People just don't have access to clean water. 5,000 children die every day because they don't have water to drink! That's 1 child dying every 15 seconds because they don't have something we take for granted. That does something in my soul. That makes me outraged and devastated all at the same time.
Jesus SAID that if we see someone thirsty and give them water it's just like we gave the water to Him! And if we don't give them water it's like we refuse to give water to Jesus when He's thirsty. not cool. (Matthew 25:31-46)

It would cost $10 billion to give everyone on earth clean water... & just in America we spend $450 billion on Christmas crap every year!!! Something is jacked up with that & you know Jesus agrees.
So, 2 years ago I jumped in on this advent conspiracy. For my birthday (december 3rd) & Christmas all I've asked for was for people to take the $ they would have spent on buying me a gift AND GIVE IT TO ADVENT CONSPIRACY, so that Living Water International could use it to build wells so people could have clean water! People did it and in 2008 almost $1,000 was given to build a well! It went to rebuild a well in Nicaragua and over 450 people in the San Rafael village of Leon now have clean water! - All because of this little Christmas rebellion!

Last year I did it again. I was feeling really rebellious. I also invited all of my friends in Student Impact (our student ministry at Ridge Church). It was awesome.

So, we're cranking it up again this year with Student Impact.
It would be so awesome for us as a student ministry to say in a couple months - "Because we did Christmas differently this year, we helped a whole village have clean water!"
I know... that's a pretty audacious goal for a handful of broke middle school and high school students. But I think we're up to the challenge!
& that's advent conspiracy in a nutshell.

*So, let me be clear (this is my open letter to all of you) - I do not want anyone to buy me birthday or Christmas presents! The only gift I want is for you to give money for Advent Conspiracy so that Living Water International can build a well with it! SO THAT people can drink clean water and stop dying from dirty water.
You can click here and donate or you can give it to me & I will add it to our water cooler in Student Impact to help us build a well.

In case you missed it at the top, below are 4 articles I wrote last year about advent conspiracy. check them out!
ADVENT CONSIRACY
double advent conspiracy
happy advent
best Christmas EVER!

ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE JOINING THE CONSPIRACY?

watch

charity: water promo featuring "Time Bomb" by Beck from charity: water on Vimeo.

the fresh prince & clean water

the 1st time i ever saw Will Smith was in 1 of my favorite shows as a kid = "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air"... and that's the only way i knew him for years.
Over the years he has become one of my favorite actors. He's played some amazing roles in some great movies.

now what he's a part of for his birthday is even more important though. check it out:

Will and Jada's Birthday Celebration from charity: water on Vimeo.

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of clean water and how YOU can get involved and make a difference. One of the cool ways to get involved is with Charity Water by donating your birthday... just like Will and Jada.

Who would have ever thought - from "chillin out, maxin, and relaxin all cool and all shootin some bball outside of the school..." to providing clean water for the poor in Africa.

meet joseph (& see why clean water matters)

this is Joseph. he lives at the orphanage we worked at for a couple weeks. he won over our hearts. (all of the orphans did, but Joseph just had an extra hold on both our hearts.)

it sounds like Joseph's mom was murdered by a witch doctor when he was just a little kid. and then his dad died over 5 years ago too. it's heartbreaking to hear Joseph talk about it.
Thankfully, Joseph and his older sister got to move to Havilla and live at the Children's Home.

Joseph is the life of the party at the orphanage. He is the one always cracking jokes and making people laugh. He writes his own jokes a lot too. He loved to make Crystal and I laugh. here is a short video of one of the jokes he loved. i hope you can understand his accent... i don't even notice it anymore.

(sorry the vid was so dark & blurry... i don't know what was up with that one.)

Joseph works really hard in school too. he's got big big dreams. he wants to go to law school one day and eventually become the Attorney General of Kenya so that he can help the people of Kenya. pretty audacious for an orphan. :)

Joseph lives at the children's home where he gets clean water every day and so does his older sister. Joseph's younger brother didn't get to come to the orphanage with them - he has lived with their uncle instead.
His brother is only 11 years old.

was. was only 11 years old.

Joseph's brother died last month. why? because he didn't have clean water. he died of a water related illness.

i fought back the tears as Joseph told me the story and how he got the letter from his uncle just 1 month before. he told me - "Usually I finish 1st or 2nd in my class on all my exams... but that day, the day I got the letter about my brother... I finished 6th on that exam. I just couldn't concentrate."

i can't imagine.
Joseph and his sister, Hannah, got to go to their brother's funeral and grieve while being supported by some of their relatives. and no doubt when they returned to Havilla they were surrounded by love from their 45 other "brothers & sisters". i can't help but think that Joseph's little brother might have been a full of life little jokester as well.
i'm thankful that this never needs to happen to Joseph. At his orphanage he'll always have clean water.

but the problem is that this shouldn't happen to ANYONE.

ever.

period.

and you and me can do something about it. you've got a birthday, right? whenever it is... consider leveraging it for clean water for the poor. just click HERE and join the awesome birthday bash with Charity Water.
And we all celebrate Christmas. click HERE & celebrate a little differently with Advent Conspiracy. and because you leverage Christmas for the poor without clean water you can save lives...

and change the world.

kiu

thirsty.

kiu SANA = so so thirsty. that's what i was the other day walking home with the kids from Havilla. i hadn't had a drink all day.

Many times I have thought to myself regarding the water crisis in Africa – “If you know the water is not clean and drinking it will make you sick… and even kill you – then why drink it?”

Easy for me to say.

Easy to think until you’ve walked in a thirsty man’s shoes.

i walked by a FILTHY river and would gladly have drank from it! KNOWING that it would make me sick. i had to force myself not to stop and drink from it.

today is "Blog Action Day" and the cause is Clean Water. I've written about this so many times before here on renown. HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE and more times than i can list...

The stats make us cringe. kids dying every day because they don't have something as simple as water.

But those are just stats. 

And those stats represent individual stories. Deaths. 

I was affected by one of those stories just last week in Africa. it's a little too fresh to tell right now... maybe tomorrow or some time within the next week.

it's almost time for Advent Conspiracy to crank up again with Living Water International, but here is ANOTHER awesome way you can donate your birthday to save lives through Charity Water... check this out HERE! Will Smith thought it was a good idea... maybe join him in donating your b-day?

OK, so we just got back to America today. lots of processing our trip to Africa going down here on renown very soon.

thirsty?

These 2 people live in Bulgeta, Ethiopia. i don't know their names. They are getting water to drink. Every single person in the town drinks the water from this pond.

I showed this picture to my wife and she had no idea it was even water. She said she thought the people were playing in a sand box. that made me want to cry.

NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DRINK THIS WATER!

There is no reason anyone in our world should still be dying from unclean water... but several died from unclean water since you've been reading this. that's messed up.

Thankfully some other people thought it was messed up too. They gave to Charity:Water (an awesome org. that i love) and they built a clean water well in Bulgeta! These 2 people never have to visit this pond again. People from this town won't die from unclean water anymore.
*Because some people were generous. They thought the future for this town should be different so they did something about it.

you can read more about this town and water project HERE and there are even links that will take you to the google earth coordinates to see these villages who have been helped in Ethiopia!

Would you be willing to be generous so that an entire town would have clean water instead of drinking from that "sand box"?

i'll be on the radio tomorrow

Tomorrow, (Tuesday, May 25th) from 2:30PM-3:30PM I'll be on the radio for 2 straight shows (2:30 & 3). just wanted all you guys to know in case you're bored and wanted to listen?
(When i was a little kid i was on the radio a couple times, but just as a caller. This will be my 1st time actually being interviewed. pretty exciting.)

If you really want to listen, i'll be on 89.3 The Storm. They'll be interviewing me on the 2:30PM show and the 3PM show back to back.
(i'll be honest, i have never actually listened to 89.3 here in Charlotte. anybody out there listen to this station?)

The topic for both shows will be Social Justice. That's what i was asked to talk about in this radio interview.

i think specifically the hosts will be asking me about some cool stuff like:  
- Advent Conspiracy and building some clean water wells through Living Water International,
- Compassion International and specifically the Upstreet kids sponsoring a child in Kenya through Project Generosity at Ridge Church.
- the Junky Car Club!
- and the Now Project at Ridge Church.

(i have probably written 50 blogs posts on all these things, but instead of linking them - if you really want to know what i have to say about this stuff just use the "SEARCH" option up in the top left hand corner of renown. example - type in "Advent Conspiracy" and all my posts will come up for you.)

So, if you want to listen to these 2 shows with me on the radio you can simply tune into 89.3 here in the Charlotte, North Carolina area at 2:30PM.

But, if you don't live in Charlotte, here are a few links for you to listen live online!
-  For live streaming audio click HERE.
-  it looks like (unfortunately) you must listen to the streaming radio show with Windows Media Player. (so, if you have a MAC like me the links won't work and you will have to download WMP for MAC HERE.
-  on your iPhone, download the "Pocket Tunes" app to listen to 89.3.
-  on any other phone you can download an App called "Moodio" HERE.

*Hopefully the interviews will go well. my prayer is to represent Jesus well and somehow bring Him glory and make His name famous to people who may not think much about God. i'm excited to talk about "social justice" = helping the poor and those who live in poverty. for me it's a God thing. it is the gospel. it's not separate.

Any expert radio peeps out there have any advice for a 1st timer like me?

anyone else have any thoughts?

World Water Day (Haiti update)

it's "World Water Day". you know how I feel about providing clean water for people who don't have it.
Check this awesome video from Charity: Water updating us on what they're doing in Haiti!


Unshaken - charity: water's campaign for Haiti from charity: water on Vimeo.