Jim Henderson: The Recovering Evangelist

 About five years ago I protested what I thought were overpriced tickets for a Christian conference put on by an outfit called Off the Map. I wrote an email criticizing OTM and asked to be removed from their online newsletter mailer. Instead of that just being that, I was instead listened to and engaged with...and then comped to the overpriced ticketed event. (for a fun read about the relationship that then developed between me and OTM click here)

Jim Henderson is the guy who chose to engage with this critic rather than simply hit the delete button. I've since become friends with Jim and have learned that this is pretty much his standard MO. If someone is respectful and willing to dialog, then he'll give as much room and ear space to hear them out as he can. That, my friends, is effin' refreshing in this day and age of polarizing debate.

Jim just got a write up in USA Today by Portland based religion journalist, Tom Krattenmaker. Here's an excerpt:

Jim Henderson is a recovering evangelist. Back in his soul-chasing, church-starting days, he began hearing a grating dissonance between his faith in Jesus and the way he went about winning new converts. Henderson realized he was doing unto others what he would never want done unto him. He was manipulating conversations to set up a pitch. Viewing people as potential notches on his evangelism belt rather than fellow sojourners and prospective friends. Listening only to the extent it could reveal an argumentative opening. He realized he hated the whole enterprise.  (click HERE for the entirety of the article)

In an email earlier today to alert his friends and associates of the publication of this story, Jim said that Krattenmaker has provided the most accurate reporting he's seen to date of what Jim does and why he does it.

So check it out. Great article about Jim and also some ideas of atheists and Christians playing nice together in the sandbox. For real.

A Dollar a Day Can Change Someone's Story

 I cannot even begin to count how many times one of those tv ads pleading for money for some poor kid in some poor country becomes a total buzz kill for me when I'm just trying to relax and watch an episode of Modern Family or some other mindless entertainment.  I have become desensitized to the urgency of hunger in faraway places and the never-ending emotional appeals to get me to give them money right now.   I usually click it to another channel until the whole heartbreaking advertisement is over and done with.

But there I am, in the company of dozens of Vietnamese children who live in an illegal squatter village some place in central Cambodia I never knew even existed. These kids were never in those ads. This place doesn't have a big fundraising campaign to broadcast to millions. It's a dusty little piece of nowhere nestled along side the mighty Mekong River.

Cambodian Tuk-tuks, Vietnamese Superwomen and other Reasons Why I Really Need to Blog

"You haven't been blogging since you got back!" exclaimed a friend I saw earlier today.

Someone else emailed me with the subject line asking, "Post mission blues?"

Two weeks ago Joni and I arrived back to the States after a whirlwind time on the ground in Cambodia. Fatigued with jetlag then crazy busy playing catch-up with family, life and work, has kept me on the down low.No blogging for me.

I thought about hosting a photo show this month and use my best pictures to help me tell the stories of the people I met. But it ain't gonna happen. Nope. Have to let that go. I'll do it later this summer.  I have terribly underestimated the time-consuming business of getting back into the swing of my American life. However, I am helping Joni develop a communications campaign to help spread the word about the needs of Vietnamese youth living in Cambodia. Our goal is to launch it before summer's end. We are right now working on getting a logo together. We had a strong lead today from a potential logo designer;  too soon to tell how that lead will play out, so if you or someone you know can help with logo design (for hire!) than send me your leads and/or rates.  We are on fire!

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Riding around Phnom Penh in a tuk-tuk was a great form of transportation. All of our tuk-tuk drivers were Khmer men with the exception of one: she was a Khmer woman!

She parked her tuk-tuk in Joni's neighborhood so we managed to score her a couple of times.  It was fascinating for me to watch how other motorists reacted to her. They seemed startled to see a woman tuk-tuk driver. And then, they would look to see who her passengers were and were startled some more by the sight of two middle-aged white women and one of them heavily tattooed!  It was great entertainment to see people's reactions. One old man, riding on the back of a motor scooter - of which is the most common form of transportation in Phnom Penh and are referred to as "motos" - he peered over at our tuk-tuk and as his moto zoomed by he did a double-take and swiveled his head as if to check if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Nope, it's a woman alright. Driving that tuk-tuk like a pro.

Almost Home

 I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.  ~Mother Teresa

In about 30 more hours it will be time for me and Joni to head to the airport and begin our long journey home.  The time has gone incredibly quick and yet I feel as if I've been gone for much longer than two weeks.

I came here as a writer on a mission. It is too soon to tell if I will accomplish my assignment, but I am coming home armed with more than two notebooks of notes and hundreds of photos. More importantly, I'm coming home with a concrete connection to a corner of the world that lives in stark disparity to the world that I come from.

As a woman who has been bred and raised among the echelon of the Haves it is deeply disquieting to be confronted with the reality of the Have Nots. I am not referring to material haves, but rather basic human necessities.  In a 24-hour period, for instance, I met a woman whose sister lives in a village that is right now without clean water. They have no well and are so poor and uneducated that it is beyond their grasp to discover a solution to something as basic as drinking water that won't make you sick.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:  "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"  But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:  "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"  ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I also met two Vietnamese adolescent girls who are HIV positive. It is unclear if their healthcare is adequate. They, and many other children I met, live in squalor because of the generational poverty they had the misfortune of being born into.

The Blurry Lines of Temptation

She's the same age as my daughter. Sixteen.

Once a student in Joni's school, this girl disappeared from the classroom. Joni and her head teacher later discovered that the girl's mother, a desperate gambling addict, had negotiated for her daughter to work at one of the coffee shops around Saigon Bridge, a notorious Vietnamese slum area rife with drugs, gangs and prostitutes.

Coffee shops are actually entertainment centers, not cozy cafes where one orders a latte. Joni took be by a few last night. They serve coffee, yes, and are typically blaring loud music or a movie on a large flatscreen tv.  Tables and lawnchairs were crowded in the ones we saw with many motorbikes parked outfront. Young men loitered around the front of the coffee shops and a few were lounging within. Girls, much-too-scantily-clad  by Vietnamese standards,  flirted with  the customers.This is where the line gets blurry.