If you're a regular reader of my blog, you may be familiar with the Smith family. Friends of mine back in Webster Groves, Missouri, and one of my favorite families on earth, I've mentioned them before (here, here, here and here).
Karen created a missionary organization called Get the Word Out, Inc. Its underlying goal is to distribute Bibles with the understanding that God's Word changes lives, replacing despair with hope, conflict with peace, and hurt with healing.
Much of their ministry has taken place in Kenya where they have also been able to help people through such projects as digging fresh-water wells, building an orphanage and a school, and even bringing children with cancer back to the United States so that they receive medical treatment which otherwise would have been impossible.
They are preparing to send a team to Kenya in a little over a week, and just the other day, the resale shop they started to help fund the ministry was featured on KSDK Channel 5's Show Me St. Louis. Check out the video below. And please consider how you might be a part of the wonderful work they're doing!
If you live in St. Louis and are interested in visiting the GTWO Store, their address is 10050 Manchester Rd. in Glendale and their phone number is 314-368-8184. You can also reach them via email at gtwothrift@gmail.com.
Some of you know my friends back in Webster Groves, Missouri, the family of Mike and Karen Smith. If you don't know them, I guess there's a (slight) chance you might remember them from a post I did back in March when it was announced that they would receive the Froebel Gaines Family Award, which by the way was presented to them October 16th at the 2010 Statesmen Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Congrats again, Smiths!
As I mentioned in that previous post, the Smiths have been very active in ministering to the people of Kenya through Get the Word Out, Inc., a missionary organization founded by Karen. One of the really neat things I didn't mention in that post was the impact that GTWO and the Smiths have had on the life of Esther Tudo. Here is a story about Esther that ran on KSDK Channel 5 in St. Louis early this year:
The good news is that this summer, Esther returned home to Kenya, doctors having successfully treated the cancer that had been so imminently life-threatening. The bad news is, as Karen says in the TV story, Esther is the face of so many other children in need. Yesterday, I got a message from Karen about one other such child. I don't normally use this space for things like this (in fact I don't think I ever have), but I wanted to forward her message on so that as many people as possible could prayerfully consider if they might be able to help out. Here is the body of the message Karen sent:
Here’s the deal… there’s a young boy in Kenya whose name is Koech (James Koech Lokwakapel). He has been diagnosed with cranial sarcoma and the doctors after treating him for over 2 years (for malaria, tuberculosis, even removing his spleen) can do nothing else to help him.
Enter Dr. Rob Hanson and St. John’s Mercy Hospital… both are ready, willing and able to treat Koech and attempt to save his life. Awesome God, mighty servants!
The problem… the US Embassy in Nairobi is refusing to give him a medical visa because of “a spelling error of his mother’s name.” The error has been corrected, everything verified, but no one will respond. US Senators have attempted to help but without success.
So…I’ll be traveling to Nairobi on Monday, Oct 25th, to go personally to the US Embassy as Christ’s ambassador and to stand in the gap for Koech – my hope is to bring him back by Friday, Oct 29th.
What can you do?PRAY, PRAY, PRAY.Pray for favor, pray for justice, pray for victory in Jesus’ Name!And you can help financially – we need to raise $3000 for plane tickets, and for expenses to bring him back for treatment.
As you know…all contributions are tax-deductible by IRS guidelines as we are a 501(c )[3] organization.
Thank you for your partnership - we work together against Satan’s plan to destroy and have the honor to bring help to a child and glory to God!He is MIGHTY TO SAVE!
If you're interested in helping, here is their contact information:
Get the Word Out, Inc, is a 501[c](3) and all donations are tax-deductible under IRS guidelines. Contributions should be made out to Get the Word Out, Inc. and should be mailed to the address above.
The Beach Boys once sang, in all of their brilliant harmonies, "Be True to Your School." It can not be debated; I have heeded this command.
I still follow my high school's football and basketball teams as closely as I can from 568 miles away. I have read about them in the online edition of my hometown's newspaper, exchanged text messages with friends and family members while they were at games, watched games streamed live on the internet and even once upgraded my TV package so that I would have the station that was carrying a game in which my high school was playing. As a matter of fact, the color scheme of this blog is inspired by the orange and black of the Webster Groves Statesmen.
I still show the same type of support for my college as well. Each Saturday during football season, you're sure to find me decked out in my Mizzou black and gold, watching the game if the Tigers happen to be on TV, or listening to the radio broadcast online if that's the best I can do. More Saturdays than I'd like to admit have been made or ruined on the basis of a Tiger football game.
As much as I am committed to my high school and college though, I am perhaps even more enthusiastic in my support of my other alma mater. I have often told others that my three years at Covenant Theological Seminary provided me with a foretaste of heaven. Thanks to both the teaching in the classrooms and the atmosphere that is cultivated, an ethos of grace pervades the campus.
Dane Ortlund captured my thoughts perfectly when he recently wrote about Covenant:
Every institution is filled with nothing but sinners. We are fallen, and our schools reflect that. And when I left three years ago, the school's overall sin-meter dropped considerably. But the norm is for institutions, even seminaries, to contain islands of grace amidst an ocean of self. Covenant is the only school I've ever set foot on that contains, in the mercy of God, islands of self amid an ocean of grace.
I shake my head with wonder at God's kindness to this institution.
Covenant recently released a number of faculty videos on YouTube that help communicate what makes Covenant so special. I've included four below from some of the professors who had a particular impact on me.
Okay. Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat. This post has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, the Bible or the church. It's not even an installment of Friday Funnies (which will be coming up a little later, by the way). If you are a regular reader of this blog, it's quite possible that you will have no interest in this post.
That being said, today Webster Groves High School (my alma mater) will begin its defense of the Missouri Class 5 State Football Title. For those of you who might not remember (like that's possible!) or who never heard about it in the first place, the Statesmen's run through the playoffs was punctuated by a quarterfinal win over Chaminade in what immediately became known as "The Miracle at Moss" (so named for Webster's Moss Field, where the game was played).
Check out the video below and fasten your seat belt. With no less than five game-changing plays, it's hard to imagine that the final 45 seconds of a game has ever been more thrilling.
Webster Groves High School (my alma mater) recently announced its 2010 class to be inducted into the Statesmen Sports Hall of Fame. The induction banquet will be October 16 and at that banquet, one of the special awards given out will be the Froebel Gaines Family Award. This year’s (very deserving) recipients are the family of my dear friends Mike and Karen Smith.
Mike and Karen have five children who have graduated from WGHS, with numbers six and seven graduating this year and next. The 2010-11 academic year will be the 17th consecutive year that at least one of their children has been a student at WGHS. Each of those children has been involved with athletics, but more important than that is the Christ-like love that the whole family has shown to countless students over the years who have come to consider the Smiths as their adopted family.
In addition to this, in recent years this love has been extended to the country of Kenya, where Karen has ministered through the missionary efforts of Get the Word Out, Inc., which she founded. To learn about the wonderful work being done there, watch the video below taken from a Kenyan national newscast in 2009.
I am thankful to know them and am blessed to be able to consider them my friends. Congrats to the Smiths!
