Homes For The Holidays
The Christmas lights are going up on many of the houses in my neighborhood. Our family usually picks one or two nights during the month of December to drive around and admire the creativity of homeowners in our area. To be honest, it’s also a time when we ask each other how much these crazy homeowners must spend on the lights and the electricity for some of these elaborate displays.
In the northern hemisphere where I live, this is also the time when the temperature gets a little chilly. I’m reminded how nice it is to have a house with electricity, heat, and running water. I’m not sure if this is really a right, but home ownership with these amenities is an expectation here in America. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for many in the rest of the world. Countless people sleep in deplorable conditions throughout the world. They are unprotected from rain, from thieves, and from general privacy.
What if we could do something this holiday season to change this for a family or two?
This year, my church‘s Christmas offering is going towards building two houses in Haiti. Last weekend, they showed this video:
Christmas Offering 2014 (Haiti) from CHRIST’S CHURCH OF THE VALLEY on Vimeo.
The video inspires me as I consider helping to change the lives of families in and around the village of Santo Domingo Xenacoj in Guatemala. For some reason, God gave me a dream to build 100 houses in Guatemala. If you are keeping track, I’ve helped to build three houses so far. Only 97 more to go.
I love the faith and vision of this video. This video was shot early this spring by a couple from our church. They have a dream to build two more houses for the families shown in this video. And they had the faith to put it out there for our church to help out. This summer, our church will be sending a team of fifty teenagers to Haiti to realize this vision. It’s a trip that will change the lives of these two families, and it’s a trip that will have a major impact on the lives of fifty teenagers.
We need to have this kind of vision.
We need to have this kind of faith.
It’s not just about building houses though. It’s about bringing glory to God. I can see it in the faces of Keena and Mike Huss (the couple in this video). It’s not about personal gain or fame. It’s about pointing people to Christ. And this is what inspires me more than anything about this video. This is what it means to have a mission mindset.
If you want to help out with the Haiti project, click here.
If you want to help out with building more homes in Xenacoj, leave a comment or send me an email by clicking here.