Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Living your Values

So...this week I have been really being hammered. Lori and I last Thursday watched the movie Amazing Grace. It's about abolitionist William Wilburforce and ending the slave trade in England in the early 1800's. He eventually saw the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807. Watching this movie really stirred me as I have been starting my T-shirt ministry through YWAM Pismo Beach.

About a year and a half ago, i felt like i wanted to try and do something to help people overseas. When we went to Tanzania over 3 years ago. I heard stories of people that would die because they couldn't afford the 3$ malaria medicine. 

So i decided to try and do something about it. I decided i was going to start a t-shirt company. Some of thoughts i had were:

Hope to bring Change
Hope to bring freedom
Hope to bring life
Hope to bring a future
Hope to make a eternal difference.

So after going through all of this i decided on calling it Hope Eternal. All of the proceeds go towards buying medicine, food, clothing and shelter for those in need around the world. In December we printed 2 designs.

All of this to say I have been thinking a lot about living my values. I have this ministry that is trying to help ministries bring change to social injustices around the world. However in my personal life i don't think twice about the products i buy. So in one part of my life I'm trying to raise funds for ministries to stop these injustices, and in the other part of my life I'm totally supporting the injustice.

I started looking at some justice sites. I checked out stopthetraffik.org. It was crazy to see that even chocolate is using slave labor. In Cote D'Ivoire, 12,000 children have been trafficked into picking the cocoa beans for chocolate companies. 

So i know i need to change slowly, but i want to try and change. I know it won't always be convenient, but i want to try.



2 comments:

philter said...

YES.

Chris Whitler said...

All of my clothes come from the thrift store or "justiceclothing.com"

It's been a start for me.