Day 10: Big v. small--Wa

Kat and I did absolutely nothing but go out to buy much needed razors (the whole all natural thing wasn't working out so well). We were privileged enough to meet Joy, the Peace Corps Volunteer who's living with Evelyn until November 2009. Like all the women here, she's a woman of strength and determination. We had amazing talks about the Peace Corps, international travel, and personal growth. It has made me want to do the Peace Corps eve more. She says, "you have good Ghana days and bad Ghana days," and that the Peace Corps is whatever you make of it.

Kat and I have an interesting division of views: she's more for starting your own organization while I'm more for working with established organizations (to put it very simply). I can see the value in both: being alone allows you more freedom, but working with an organization generally gets more work done. I think the important thing to remember is that it doesn't matter how you do it, but it needs to be in love. And that love comes from Jesus and His desire for justice. Kat told me that the reason she doesn't like big organizations is because they can be bureaucratic and often loose the human touch of their work. She really cares about getting to know a community, inside and out. But so am I! If I seriously plan to love the oppressed, I need to live among them. How can you care about something without knowing the full story? I can read and research an issue to the fullest extent, but I won't know the real story until I am apart of the community. I don't want my life to be a 9-5 job and volunteer during my free time. I want to be apart of the people I am called to serve. I can't really serve women in Kosovo if I live in a comfortable house in suburb America. I need to be with them and become a genuine part of their lives. After all, Jesus lived among prostitutes and lepers. Why should I live any differently?

Now I am restless: how can I advocated for those in Darfur if I've never been among the horror? Doing good isn't sending money or wearing a T-shirt, it's going to the battlefield and being Christ's ambassadors to the oppressed and their oppressors. Think about it: all these issues we are so "passionate" about are only what the media decides to tell us. We don't know what the real story is. I fear that this humanitarian fad if just that, a fad. God help us that our hearts really are in the right place when we say we care about justice.