The answer is dignity, not stuff.

Poverty is not a lack of stuff, have you heard us say that before? If it is not a lack of stuff, but we are called to help, what can we do? The answer cannot be to make other people's lives look like ours. We need to empower them to make their own lives what they want their lives to be. They need to own their own development and futures. This builds dignity which empowers communities, over the long term, to solve their own problems and not rely on outside resources. Nothing stifles dignity faster than dependency.

Some of our staff just got back from a trip to the Mathare slums of Nairobi, Kenya. They were visiting an organization there that has been doing development for more than 10 years. The picture above is outside one of the schools this organization runs.

Dependency kills development. If you haven't read the book, When Helping Hurts, now is the time.

Holistic

Its a term that gets used a lot in ministry. Unfortunately, its meaning may have been lost.

Its such an important part of what we do and what we believe in.

Dictionary.com defines it as,

Characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

How this applies to ministry is simple. When working in holistic ministry its important to understand that humans cannot be separated into separate beings. Most common in the church world, we focus on the spiritual but ignore the physical. Another common problem is focusing on the physical while leaving the spiritual up to whatever feels right. In America, its not uncommon to focus exclusively on the emotional.

The problem is, you can't separate humans into separate beings. We aren't one being at a time, we are all human all the time.

Thats why holistic ministry is absolutely essential.

You can't minister to one 'being' effectively without ministering to them all at the same time. How can ministry involve every piece of a human at the same time? The only 'system' that reaches the whole human is relationship. The trick is, relationship is not a system at all. More on that later... stay tuned.

Our New Trip Director

We would like to take the opportunity to introduce you to Pedro Tapia. He has been married to his wife Susana for 22 years and has three kids; Pedro, Priscilla, and Isaac.

Pedro has accepted the role of Trip Director in Puerto Peñasco. He will be responsible for executing trips, including managing the base camp, running the kitchen, and coordinating the construction process.

In the last two years One Mission has hosted more than 3000 trip participants who have built homes, staffed medical clinics, or hosted outreach events. One Mission believes in utilizing local resources and our most precious resources are the people involved. Adding to our local team is of the utmost importance for the projects to be effective and sustainable.

We are thankful for Pedro's heart of service and we are excited to see how God will use Pedro in his new role as Trip Director.

The Micro-Macro Paradox

The following is an except taken from the book, "Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo.

There's a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs ten people, who (as with many African countries) each have to support upwards of fifteen relatives. However hard they work, they can't make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.

Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the afflicted region, at a cost of a million dollars. The nets arrive, the nets are distributed, and a 'good' deed is done.

With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly put out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their 150 dependents (who are now forced to rely on handouts), and one mustn't forget that in a maximum of five years the majority of the imported nets will be torn, damaged and of no further use.

This is the micro-macro paradox. A short-term efficacious intervention may have few discernible, sustainable long-term benefits. Worse still, it can unintentionally undermine whatever fragile chance for sustainable development may already be in play.