June news from Crossroads Hong Kong
0 comments | Posted by St Peters on 28 Jun 2011 in Missionary Support ::
Website: www.crossroads.org.hk/
We had some wonderful feedback from our last hotline, where we changed the format a little. So we’re continuing it here. Thank you for your comments, and please do feel free to keep them coming!
GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION
What is this? We are donated goods of superb quality by business and private donors in Hong Kong. We distribute these to people in need, locally in our community, and around the world.
What are we working on in the coming month? A shipment to China with disaster relief packs for people made homeless by summer flooding. Medical goods to equip a new rural hospital in Papua New Guinea. A container to a non-profit group serving a marginalised tribal group in southern India.
GLOBAL HAND
What is this? Global Hand is a match-making service which links for profit and non profit organisations that want to help with global challenges.
A brand new partnership was formed through the Global Hand site recently. A primary school in Gloucestershire, England, offered a large number of superseded school uniforms through our website. A school in rural Uganda, registered with GH, put their hand up and delightedly accepted the uniforms and now the students from both schools are eager pen-pals, cementing a friendship that all parties hope will continue indefinitely! That, we think, is what people mean when they say something is a match made in Heaven…
GLOBAL X-PERIENCE
What is this? In Global X-perience, participants don’t just hear about global problems. They actually ‘step into the shoes’ of people who face them. So, for a few hours, they ‘become’ refugees, slum dwellers, disaster victims, blind people, HIV-vulnerable and so on.
As you know, so many Hong Kong people have shown interest in these x-periences that we are now looking at developing a Global Village. At the same time, amazingly, those in other countries are also asking for them. This month, two of our number will take our “slum x-perience” to Poland for an international conference of leaders in the field of such simulation activities. DJ and Riba will run it for all attendees who, like many of you who have visited, will need to make paper bags, manually, to ‘survive’ slum life, fending off loan sharks, disease and other perils of poverty. It is a privilege to take it to this community of experts. Thank you, MD, for local and global impact!
GLOBAL HANDICRAFTS
What is this? As well as giving aid to people, we also love to generate income for them so they can have ongoing solutions to poverty. Aid helps them today. An income helps them tomorrow. So our Global Handicraft Marketplace sells goods from people all over the world on a Fair Trade basis.
One of our Fair Trade outlets is a Silk Road Café, generating income for coffee and tea growers in poverty. Recently, as well, we began to stock a new range of baked goodies from a Hong Kong group that trains and employs disabled people. It uses a social enterprise model: creating a business that helps these people earn money and hold their heads high. The smiles on their employees’ faces show massive joy in their change to work. We love being able to serve treats that make a difference!
Why do we do the work we do? What motivates our team to pour out our lives in this way? The answer, in a nutshell, is the suffering of those we serve. By way of example, may we share this admittedly harrowing story from Africa? It came from friends living and serving there, but, at this point of instability, we are hesitant to name the geographic area as we in no way wish to jeopardise these dear folk.
The pregnant woman struggled to breathe. Blood gushed from a bullet wound, staining her dress as she gasped and looked down with wild eyes at her belly. The baby in her womb, a tiny life that had not yet breathed air, began kicking and flailing, in evident desperation, fighting for a final chance of life, even as the mother’s slipped away. The woman succumbed at last to the fatal shot, and fell back, dead. Inside her, the kicking ceased, and a second life was lost.
The woman and her baby were only two of several thousand casualties who succumbed to unrest in their corner of Africa. Recently, a huge supply of ammunition had been dispatched to quell trouble in the area: an incessant spate of kidnappings and disorder. The weapons were stolen and ransacked en route, however, by youth gangs. Poor, disenfranchised and with nothing better to fight for, they were now, more than ever, empowered to kill indiscriminately in order to get what they wanted. The local people lived in hourly terror, never knowing, morning to morning, if this day would be their last. If they sent their children to school, they could be abducted for large ransom sums. If they went to the bank, the “guards”, supposedly there to protect customers, often proved to be rebels who routinely robbed them until the banks simply closed. When civilians saw cavalcades of military tanks coming through their town, they were, at first, delighted thinking this would bring them protection from the dissidents. To their horror, though, these too were often manned by the renegades who, once again, turned their gunfire on the unsuspecting public. Life became almost a roulette wheel.
The police had much smaller firearms than the rebels so, when confronted, they were overpowered. The terrorists expended so much ammunition that, at times, the roads were thick with bullet shells. Hospitals and schools had no choice but to close.
This brave couple continue, in the face of battles such as these, serving, loving and reaching out to their community. Even though a measure of peace has been restored to the streets, the aftershocks of this recent time of terror will be felt for many years to come, we were told, and disorder is still a fundamental challenge.
We have sent goods to support their work in the past, providing for AIDS education, training for unemployed young people, and care for the poorest of the poor. We are preparing another consignment at the moment, which will be on its way in the coming months.
Hearing their story is yet another reminder that those we serve often face dangers beyond our comprehension, being willing to lay down their lives in doing so. The very least we can do is put tools in their hands to help them build a community based on trust, rather than tears, and a tomorrow that holds hope.
THE MD’S INSTRUMENTAL TOUCH
Even amidst the turmoil, though, are little sweet stories of harmony… When we received the ‘wishlist’ of goods needed in this terrorized area, one item mentioned was an electric guitar. Our friends use musical instruments in their work with young people. Many months ago, though, their guitar broke, and they had no hope of replacing it.
Electric guitars are one of those things we don’t see donated every day. Yet, as we know, no item is too ‘odd’ to pass through our Incoming Department. (Just this week we were donated a carousel horse – only the one!). Without missing a beat, just as we were in the midst of choosing items for this shipment, we had a call from a Hong Kong musician who was leaving the country and had some musical instruments she couldn’t take. She wanted to see them given to someone who really needed them. Could we use, for example, an electric guitar?!
Nicely played, MD! That guitar will be just one of many items in the shipment they have specifically requested to outfit the programmes they are establishing.
NEW TEACHER
Oh wow! We were thrilled that many of you wrote in response to our plea for help! As a result, we have just welcomed ‘Miss Alison’ to our team, and she is now finding her feet as teacher to our precious primary aged staff children. We were delighted to hear that not only does she bring a wealth of experience with her, but she has taught in the region for many years, feels very much at home here, and (quite unusually) speaks two kinds of Chinese! The children are very excited to be learning some Mandarin twice a week, alongside their other studies.
As well, a couple of other teachers applied from elsewhere and, although still waiting on their visas, we are thrilled they are happy to join the team, serving either in support of the kids or by filling other desperate roles.
If you could hear the joy up here, you’d see us thanking the MD over and over for this longed-for news!
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