February 26, 2021 – it was last February that we suspended for a time the livelihood groups. Then the pandemic came alone and prolonged our hibernation. But this week, one year later, we started some of them up again with a slimmed-down team.
Some have recently asked, why should we and do we spend the time and exert the energy on these endeavors?
- The people we serve have real needs – which can be met by giving them what they need (hand out) or helping them earn funds to purchase what they need (hand up). We want the folks to be independent and they need to learn how to choose what to spend their income on.
- It teaches the people how to do something and to be creative. For many of the older folks who grew up under communism, where they were not allowed to be very creative, the idea of doing something different to earn some money is still a foreign concept to them. We are not only teaching how to make something we buy from them but to think outside the box and try different things.
- It is part of Discipleship – Jesus speaks a great deal about money and how to handle it and for the workers, these programs are powerful ways for real-life challenges as to where their treasure is and how they use the funds they get. We have found these folks to be very generous even though they have so little.
We could go on with rationale as to why these are important in the discipleship process but I don’t want the post to get too long.
With that said this week say a prayer or two for the relaunch of the two groups and for the relaunch of the sewing group in a couple of weeks.
Pray for the upcoming annual meeting of the churches as we will be electing new national leadership and ordaining some new pastors.
Pray for Team Balkans as some of the nationals, that do a great deal for the work, are recovering from COVID.