It’s 5:10 AM on Friday (Istanbul Standard Time) and the FH Bloggers are all cozied up in the Istanbul airport, enjoying our 9 hour layover in this place that is a bridge between where we have been and where we are going. Surfing the internet, sipping on lattes, indulging in crossaints and hazelnut spread. {Did you know that Turkey is the world’s biggest exporters of hazelnuts? Well, now you do.}

We had a great trip. Maybe one of the best trips of this kind I have experienced? This team was committed to not just observing Bangladesh but leaving an impact on it. I hope you can decipher from their posts how well they loved the people in Bangladesh. Our hosts.  The FH staff. The kids they sponsor. The women on the street, in savings groups, at the market, and in the beauty parlor.

I think my two favorite moments of the trip were:

1. Watching Joy play with Fulmoti and her friends. It was hilarious. They played so hard. There was jumping, pushing, cheating, and sweating. A lot of sweating.

And there is something so incredible about watching Bangladeshi kids play Duck, Duck, Goose.

2. Hearing Eti’s story and having her thread our eyebrows. If you aren’t familiar with threading, it’s an ancient method of hair removal originating in the Eastern world.

If you aren’t familiar with Eti, she’s a woman who learned vocational training from Food for the Hungry and was able to use money from her savings group to open up a salon.

Our time with her was priceless.

Girls being girls. Laughing, celebrating beauty, and swapping stories.

I really hope you have taken the time to read some of the posts, but I know I can it be hard to jump around the internet so I’m going to make it easy on you. Start with these, my favorite posts from each blogger.

Logan Wolfram’s “A Mother’s Heart”

Joy Eggerich’s “This is Dignity”

Lauren Dubinsky’s “What It Was Like To Meet My Sponsored Child” 

Max Dubinsky’s “Sanjay”

What was your favorite post from the FH Bloggers trip to Bangladesh?

Please consider sponsoring a child in Bangladesh. Your $32/month changes lives, families, and communities. Go here for more information! 

{Photos by Esther Havens}

Today was our third day to visit communities in Bangladesh. We had amazing day in another sweeper community outside of Dhaka. We visited with some families that are affected by FH’s work. Here’s a post I wrote for the Catalyst blog on the savings groups that we’ve seen impacting each community. PS – I just got my ticket for Catalyst West. I sure hope to see you in Orange County in April. 

One of the things that I’ve been so impressed by during our time in Bangladesh is our savings group model. It is obvious that these savings groups are the bedrock of our work in Bangladesh. They allow us to impact a community wholistically. Not only do the groups allow women to save for a future together, also they give the women the rare opportunity to learn to read and write, develop small businesses, raise healthy families, strengthen their communities, learn leadership skills, discover their rights, and prevent childhood marriages.

Currently FH has over 900 groups across 7 areas of Bangladesh. We have chosen to run learning and savings groups in these areas as they are particularly needy and vulnerable places, where women can be deprived or mistreated. In many of these places FH originally carried out emergency relief work in response to natural disasters. Eventually our groups help disaster torn communities to develop and recover in a sustainable way. Click here to read more. 

Have you heard of savings groups before? If so, I’d love to hear about when and how? 

We had a great day today in Bangladesh. A long, great day.

We drove out to a rural Hindu community that Food for the Hungry has worked in since 2011. 

Photo by Esther Havens

Today the bloggers all had the opportunity to meet their sponsor kids. It was such a joy to see them connect with these girls that live half a world away, to have them see firsthand the power of their sponsorship. Since we split into groups, I spent most of my day with my sweet {and kind of crazy} friend Joy. It was so fun to watch her play with Fulmoti.

Joy learned Bengali games.

And Fulmoti learned Red Light, Green Light.

And Duck, Duck, Goose.

Any observer would see that these two had a lot in common, they were both so vibrant, so full of life. And they both had quite the little competitive streak. {Pretty sure I saw some false starts and pushing.}

Can’t wait to hear about how their relationship flourishes.

Here are my favorite pictures from each of the blogger’s visits:

Joy teaching Fulmoti the double-high-five

Photo by Esther Havens

Max and Lauren with Kajol

Photo by Esther Havens

Logan with Ritu

Don’t forget to join us at 7 PM CST TONIGHT for the live #FHBloggers Twitter Chat. You can win awesome Bangladeshi prizes {seriously, some of the prettiest blankets I have ever seen} and ask any questions you have about our trip, Bangladeshi culture, Food for the Hungry, Child Sponsorship, or whatever else you’ve been pondering. More details here.

We started our morning tucked in the back office of a school in a community in Dhaka to spend some time together in devotions. We read 1 Corinthians 13, the ”love chapter.” A passage that is read so often it is tempting to tune it out.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, then I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, and deliver my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy or boast. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up the childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall now fully, even as I have been fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

But reading it here, in Bangladesh, the words I know so well sounded different. Different because the scriptures were read in Bangla. And different because those words are what this trip is about. This trip is an expedition in 1 Corinthians 13. This trip is an expedition in faith, in hope, and in love.

Faith. FH has been in Bangladesh since 1972.  What started as a relief effort to get rice to starving Bangladeshis amid a revolution, has evolved over the last 40 years. A vision of FH’s faithful founder Larry Ward who wouldn’t let the overwhelming need deter him, “they die one at a time, so we help them one at a time,” has grown. Mountains have been moved. Lifes have been changed. In Bangladesh alone, the organization provides agricultural training; health, hygiene, and clean water programs; pastoral training; income generating groups; and education initiatives. All funded through child sponsorship. 

Photo by Esther Havens.

Hope. FH has been in the community we visited today since 1981. What was once a slum perched on a garbage dump has evolved into a beacon of hope. Its cornerstone, a self-sufficient school operated by former-FH-sponsor-kids like Sirajul, Menohad, Josef, and Esa. Their former teacher, Rony, now works on the FH Bangladesh executive team. And he beams as he shares how the young men he taught inspire him. They inspire me too. They glisten with hope.

Photo by Esther Havens.

The kids they instruct shimmer with it too. {I suspect if I found my way back here in 10 years I would meet a new generation of former-FH-sponsor-kids continuing the tradition of teaching the kids in their community.}

Photo by Esther Havens.

Love. As Logan pointed so eloquently shared this morning during our dive into 1 Corinthians 13, “while faith and hope are something that we have, love is something we can give.”

And gave it we did.

Today love broke down common barriers…citizenship, religion, language.

Today love was dolled out in heaps.

And today love left us all full. 

Photo by Esther Havens.

Photo by Esther Havens.

Photo by Esther Havens.

Photo by Esther Havens.

Photo by Esther Havens.

Photo by Esther Havens.

Photo by Esther Havens.

If you want to love on these kids, these communities, you can. It only costs $32 a month to sponsor a child. Through your sponsorship, you will help Food for the Hungry assist your child’s entire community to provide food, a better education, clean water and medical treatment to its children. Go here to sponsor a child in Bangladesh.

Go here to read the posts from the bloggers on this trip with me.

Thursday morning we {my buddy Daniel C White and I} got on my first plane in Nashville.

After not so quick stops in Los Angeles and Istanbul, and not so short flights over North America {twice}, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, and the Middle East, on Saturday morning the FH Bloggers got off our last plane in Dhaka.

Whew! {That’s a lot of travel.}

We picked up some friends {Logan Wolfram, Max and Lauren Dubinsky, Joy Eggerichs} along the way, ate some In-N-Out {thank you Jacky and Clay}, tried Turkish coffee {bleh}, shared stories, laughs and of course a ridiculous amount of personal space.

Alas…We made it!

We dashed through customs in what might have been a national record, found the rest of our group {Esther Havens and Heidi Hatch}, checked into our hotel, washed off our travel funk, got outfitted in traditional Bangladeshi apparel, ate some food that wasn’t wrapped in tin foil, learned some Bangla, ventured around Dhaka, and did our best to embrace Bangladesh Standard Time.

But now it’s time to sleep.

In a bed. {Yay! Oh how I love beds! And not economy airline seats.}

<< That’s “Good Night” folks! Til tomorrow…

In 8 short days, the #fhbloggers will meet in Los Angeles to begin our LONG trip across the world to Bangladesh where we will spend a handful of days visiting Food for the Hungry’s staff and work there.

{We had a Skype call with the team yesterday and covered all the details. You know…to dos and not to dos, packing essentials, travel tips, making fun of Daniel C. White, etc.}

I am excited. I am nervous. And I am a little overwhelmed.

Before I pulled together this trip, I didn’t know much about Bangladesh. I knew I had seen “Made in Bangladesh” on some of my clothing labels, but truth be known I wasn’t even really sure where Bangladesh was. {For those of you like me, who aren’t quite sure  where Bangladesh is, Google Maps is here to help. See there it is..tucked in between India and Burma!}

Here is what else I’ve learned.

Bangladesh is a tough place to live. Climate change has made the country a flood zone. But it has also made the Bangladeshi people quite resilient.

Bangladesh is c-rowded. Imagine a country about the size of the state of Wisconsin that houses a population about half the size of the entire United States. C-rowded.

And Bangladesh is going to be quite a culture shock for all of us comfortable Americans.

In Bangladesh, people eat differently. With their hand, their right hand. {I guess your left hand is reserved for something else entirely?}

In Bangladesh, people dress differently. I can’t wait to sport my very own Salwar Kameezes.

In Bangladesh, people express themselves differently. Supposedly they take “personal space” to a whole new level.

And In Bangladesh, people do religion differently. Can you imagine living someplace where only .3% of the population were Christians? Yeah, me neither.

So all this to say, I’m pretty sure we are all about to have our world views rocked.

Would you please pray for me and the other #fhbloggers traveling to this whole new world?

Would you consider following our trip? We’ll be aggregating all the posts at http://www.fhbloggers.org or you can follow along on twitter by keeping up with the #fhbloggers hashtag.

And pretty please, would you consider sponsoring a child in Bangladesh? 

Christmas isn’t about stuff. And Christmas isn’t about busyness. Christmas is about the generosity of God. And Christmas is about the incredible gift He shared with us. For us!

For a child has been born—for us!
the gift of a son—for us!
He’ll take over
the running of the world.
His names will be: Amazing Counselor,
Strong God,
Eternal Father,
Prince of Wholeness.
His ruling authority will grow,
and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings. Isaiah 9:6, The Message

There will be no limits to the wholeness he brings. Now that is a reason to celebrate! 

Presents. Lights. Trees. Cards. Parties. Elves on shelves. Santa Claus. Reindeer. Blow-Up Snow Globes. Stockings. Hallmark Christmas Movies. They are all have their place. But that place isn’t shouldn’t be at the center of this special holiday. Yet sometimes, in all the stuff, and in all the busyness, we get lost in the festivity and forget the true meaning of the season.

This year, let’s not forget.

Let’s take back Christmas.

Food for the Hungry is launching a campaign this Christmas, “The 8 Days of Giving” Challenge. Our Director of Digital Media, Jeremy Reis, is leading the charge and will be blogging from December 9 to December 16, on the FH Blog. Our goal is to give 800 gifts, 100 gifts per day, from the FH Christmas Catalog.

The FH Christmas Catalog is designed to deliver gifts that impact the lives on the most vulnerable globally. Through the gift catalog, families in need receive items like small farm animals, school supplies and uniforms and bed nets.

We’d love it if you would join us in taking back Christmas. Here are three simple ways you can help:

1. Read and share about “The 8 Days of Giving” campaign.

2. Choose some items from the FH gift catalog to give to your loved ones this year.

3. Find other creative gifts for good. A few of my favorites are Project 7 Gum & Mints, Krochet Kids hats, 31 Bits Jewelry, Warby Parker glasses, and C & C Coffee Company’s Christmas Coffee.

How are you taking back Christmas this year?

Yeah. I know. That was mean to get you stuck on the lyrics of a catchy 80s song that is promised to be running through your head all day. Mean. But I couldn’t help it. I’m so excited!

Something that we has been in the works for quite awhile just launched. And with its launch comes a big announcement.

What launched you ask? Well, today we launched a new FH Bloggers site. We worked with Cross & Crown to design and develop it and they did an incredible job. Here’s a screen shot.

But don’t take my word for it, go check it out. Play around.

Which brings me to the announcement…With the launch of the site, you will find a trip page for our second FH Bloggers trip.

We are headed to Bangladesh in January 2013 with some of my favorite voices on the internet – Max & Lauren Dubinsky, Joy Eggerichs, and Logan Wolfram. Esther Havens is coming too and bringing her camera along. And…we are trying something new this go round. Our kind friend Clare Diaz-Ortiz is going to be joining the team as a virtual traveler {championing, cheerleading, etc.}. It is sure to be an amazing trip so stay tuned for more information about how you can follow along and help us impact lives around the world.

Personally, I am excited because Bangladesh is going to be a completely new experience for me. I have never been to that part of the world and can’t wait to meet new friends and take in new sites, sounds, tastes, and cultures. I’m just giddy that this all is part of my job. God is so good!

If you could vist one place in the world, where would you go? 

Another place I’m honored to contribute monthly is Prodigal Magazine. I will be writing on their Social Justice channel. Here’s some more information about the site:

Not everyone has the power to live a good story. I know that sounds unfair and the truth is, it is. Some good stories are blocked by injustice. There are people in this world who’s story is being stolen from them because of racism, slavery, injustice or abuse. They could be living a good story, but they’re not. They need hope. There are people out there who are rescuing these individuals. They’re using the resources they have to go to war against injustice, so that the victims can be set free to live a good story.

Be sure to go check it out! It’s a great collection of writers and stories. This month I shared a little bit about doing justice as a biblical calling. Here’s a quick preview:

I don’t get it. People who believe but don’t do. People who study the Word but don’t live it out. People who are comfortable asking for their salvation but are not willing to sacrifice for their neighbors, down the street or around the world.

I just don’t get it.

Yeah. I know. I’m no biblical scholar. Truth be told, I should be spending a lot more time There, with Him. But how some folks insist on a complete separation of faith and justice, well, that confounds me. Click here to continue reading…

Do you believe that as Christians we are called to do justice? 

Last week I attended The Story Conference, an incredible gathering of creatives that takes place every September in Chicago. There were several incredible speakers…Bob Goff, Erwin McManus, and Anne Lamott to name a few. But one of the highlights for me was seeing a young and incredibly talented spoken word artist, Micah Bournes, perform with the band that I can’t stop listeing to, All Sons & Daughters (don’t forget to buy The Longing EP).

Micah’s poem (yes, I clarified that spoken word pieces can be called poems) “Who Broke Africa?”  is one that will leave you questiong what poverty really looks like and the steps that we should take to ‘fix’ it. Here’s a video of a live performance “Who Broke Africa?” during last year’s The Justice Conference. Take a few minutes to watch it, it’s POWERFUL.

Speaking of conferences, conference season seems to be in full swing and I’m hitting up several of them. Please let me know in the comments if you will be at Catalyst East, Resurgence, or Allume. I’ll be at each and would LOVE to connect!

Have a great weekend!