Recent Posts

On prayer… (LINK UP)

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Nish Weiseth in Conversations

I thread the glass beads between my tired fingers in my left hand. My right hand holds the pen to paper. I scratch out prayers in the quiet morning over coffee. God and I meet best in the early hours, my mind needing awakening and my bones still heavy from sleep. I suppose He’d meet me anytime, but I’m most sincere in the morning. I’ve never done well with prayer. It’s always been a hurdle to jump, my brick wall in the marathon of faith. Putting me in a group of people who speak whispered prayers makes me uneasy, and I clam up tight and choose to be quiet. If I speak my prayers, my language changes. I don’t sound...

Marriage, miracles, and Micro

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Guest blogger in Microfinance

The following blog post was written by Timothy Hall, Africa’s regional field specialist for VisionFund International, the microfinance subsidiary of World Vision. On my final day in Rwanda, I attended a wedding. Weddings in this part of the world are a blend of the traditional and the modern. The celebrations begin in the morning with negotiations between the two families’ representatives. There are dancers, drums, and traditional costumes throughout. This is followed by lunch, and then progresses to a church where the ceremony is much closer to a typical Western wedding — complete with a white gown, attendants, candles, and a priest. The bride was a young woman who worked for one of VisionFund’s microfinance banks, translating and posting information...

Confessions of a sponsorship skeptic

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Rachel Held Evans in Child Sponsorship

I confess that, until recently, the first thing that came to my mind when someone mentioned child sponsorship was Sally Struthers kneeling next to an emaciated African child, mascara running down her face, telling the TV that “if you can just save one life, won’t it be worth it?” As passionate as I was about social justice and alleviating poverty, child sponsorship struck me as an old-fashioned model for giving, in which a few select children essentially walked through a breadline to receive meals, school supplies, and medical attention from faraway white “saviors” whose first-world guilt was eased by letters ensuring that their contributions made a difference. I worried that child sponsorship created dependency and that families were forced to...

The mystery of suffering: A before-and-after photo story

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Jon Warren in Stories

The mystery of suffering | World Vision Blog

I’m often asked how I’ve been able to photograph human suffering for so much of my career and still maintain my sanity and belief in the goodness of God. Suffering is a mystery. I’ve met many good, righteous, faithful people who have lives full of misery. My dear sister-in-law, Karen, passed away last week after years of battling cancer. She volunteered with orphans in Haiti and gave to people in need in India. She made sure her home was always open to visitors, both family and strangers, even during her illness. She was generous to a fault, wonderfully kind, encouraging, and selfless. Her life of service was lived to the glory of God. Yet she died painfully and young. Suffering...

Your chance to fight human trafficking [Livestream]

Posted on September 27, 2011 by James Addis in Advocacy, Causes

Your chance to fight human trafficking | World Vision Blog

It’s easy to get disillusioned with political debate. Frequently, it degenerates into petty point-scoring and partisan bickering. Constructive dialogue, it seems, often disappears out the window. So it’s nice when an issue comes along on which nearly everybody can agree. One such issue is the problem of human trafficking — the use of fraud, force, or coercion to exploit a child or adult for profit. It’s estimated that there are more than 12 million trafficked people in the world today — a $32 billion industry. Every day, children are forced to perform sexual acts or work long hours in filthy, dangerous conditions for the financial benefit of someone else. Sometimes, I imagine my own children forced into this position, and...