MARCH NEWSLETTER

In this News Letter 1. Happy New Year 2. Thankyou for your support 3 The Harrisons are here 4. A quick picture of the last few months 5. Chinese New Year 6. A Shipping milestone 7. Peace in Uganda? 8 Slum Life 9. Slum Survivor

“Kung Hai Fat Choi” (traditional greeting for Chinese New Year)

It has been so long since we sent a Newsletter, some of you may have been wondering if we still exist. But as I said in my short note last week, our reliance on technology has a price to pay, especially when you don’t back up.

2. THANK YOU FOR YOUR AMAZING SUPPORT
Just this morning we were reviewing the amazing support that we have received from so many over the time we have been at Crossroads. You continue to support us faithfully with regular contributions. Others with encouraging notes and emails. Others by lifting us up to the MD who keeps us sustained.

We could not be here without you. Your partnership in our work is vital. But it is the fact that you remember us so faithfully that is the most encouraging aspect of your friendship.

3. THE HARRISONS ARE HERE
Since we last wrote the Neville and Vivian Harrison, friends from our Australian Club arrived to work here for a year, with their three kids, Edward, Samuel and Felicity. They have fitted into the team seamlessly and have adapted to Crossroads and Hong Kong lifestyle extremely well. Viv is working closely with Sue helping to deal with the many applications that come to us for support, while Neville has become a vital cog in the GH team. Please keep upholding them as they settle in and face the many challenges of looking after a family while living on support.

4. A QUICK PICTURE OF THE LAST FEW MONTHS
Christmas started with the visit of Mem (Phil’s mum and Ricky (nephew) to Crossroads. It was in the middle of an extremely busy time, but we still managed to get plenty of quality time with them. Ricky seemed to love his time here. I hope we can persuade him to return some time. We also managed to squeeze in a trip to Xian for a few days. Christmas week saw us travel North to visit some of the organisations that Crossroads has supported to see first hand the goods we have sent in Situ, actually spending Christmas day with them. Then we took a few days break in Beijing, which we passed through on the way.

We then had a day back in Hong Kong to wash, pack the bags and head to North America to visit some of the organisations we partner with there and to see what we could bring back to assist our work at Crossroads. On the way we managed to squeeze in some time in with friends who had been either part of Crossroads or our HK Club.

5. CHINESE NEW YEAR
The biggest event in Hong Kong, indeed in the Chinese calendar is Chinese New Year, so this year we thought it would be a great opportunity to experience it all. In previous years we have laid low or limited ourselves to the fireworks, but this year we got involved, On New Year’s Eve, we were invited to a traditional Chinese meal with a friend from club. I have to tell you the meal was delicious!. Which was followed by a visit to the Flower Markets. With all the crush of the Easter Show and the flowers often ignored for inflatable plastic toys! Followed by Molten Chocolate Cake at Dan Ryan’s! Not very Chinese I admit but delicious.

The next night we went to the colourful street parade and that was amazing. Our friends gave us grandstand tickets so we had a wonderful view. Chinese New Year finished last week and this week everyone is back at work (we mostly worked through). Now the overcrowded airports, stations and border crossings can get back to normal.

6 A SHIPPING MILESTONE HAS BEEN REACHED
For a while now we have been telling you about some important changes to the way we accept applications for shipment and choose those to whom we will ship. We began the new Application process in earnest in the 2nd half of last year and last week we loaded the first container to be shipped to an organisation who applied under our new process (see India story below). Please continue to uphold this process as we work toward further streamlining the process of shipping and processing.

7. PEACE IN UGANDA
On February 28th a ceasefire in the 20-year civil war between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army expired, with no new agreement in sight. One of our friends and recipients there told us the people have been enjoying relative peace for the first time in 20 years.

In the midst of one of the most savage and deadly civil wars, Childcare International (now called Childcare Kitgum Servants) has expanded their realm of influence and care providing schooling, vocational training, medical care, mentorship and discipling, as well as food, clothing and blankets for 7000 children.

“Honestly, it is very difficult to say something about the containers you have sent us”, said John Paul. “Not because there is nothing to say, but because the value of goods cannot be explained, because every corner of the centre - from the hospice, to radio station, to the classrooms to the offices, vocational schools, church…. It’s full of the goods you have sent. They are everywhere, helping everybody. The materials, if we were to value it would be a huge amount of money, but the benefit to the community is what I say is difficult to describe. The best thing that has happened to the primary school children is the playground equipment you sent. We have been thinking about connecting a generator to the swings because they swings non stop….it could generate enough power for our community”, joked John Paul.

8. INDIA, JOY IN SIMPLE THINGS
Clean drinking water, having a job, deciding what to wear, going to the shops when you run out of milk or have no food in the fridge: we can so easily take these for granted. Yet these simple things would be pure joy to millions of poor people around the world who do not know such wealth and convenience but are mere spectators as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Our consignee in India is working towards bridging this gap through education and community development programmes including housing, health care, day care, old age homes, orphanages and job creation. They are attuned to the Fathers heart and are not only looking out for the physical needs of those in their communities, but also their deepest, and often, unmet needs.

We will be loading a container for this group in mid February and we are very excited to be able to contribute to what the Father is doing there. Some of the things we will be sending include building materials, clothes, computers, refrigerators, fans, washing machines, food, office and home furnishings, sports equipment, toys, fabric, books and stationery.

8. SLUM LIFE
You can smell Africa’s largest slum before you see it. It’s the dizzying stench of 800,000 people living on top of each other, with no toilets, no running water, and no rubbish removal service.

Milton, aged 28, is one of those 800,000. He arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, dreaming of an easier life in the city. He left behind a small plot of farmland, a young family, and crippling debt. Local policies, unfair trading, and increased globalisation, meant that Milton’s land no longer earned enough to sustain his wife and three children. Like millions of other rural Africans, he was drawn to the city, desperately hoping to find a job. He soon discovered that the best way to save money is to live in the cheapest accommodation possible: the slum.

One by one, the dreams Milton brought with him to the big city were torn away. He quickly realised the difficulty of finding a respectable job when your address is a well-known slum, so he turned to one of the many informal industries within the community – selling coal by the roadside. It now brings him just enough money to pay his rent and to buy one meal a day, but no more than that. He recently fell deeper into debt when a bad burn forced him to borrow from one of the unscrupulous money lenders that swarm the slums.

Milton thinks daily of his family who trust that he will visit soon with the money he has been able to save. He dreads having somehow to send the news that there is no money, and indeed that he is now in greater debt than ever.

Milton knows the reality of what we call the poverty cycle. Slum life is cruel, dangerous, and extremely difficult to escape, and it’s the life known by 1 billion of the world’s population today.

9. SLUM SURVIVOR
Meanwhile, in the shadow of comfortable high-rise apartments of Hong Kong, lies our own small makeshift slum: four houses made of scrap metal and thin boards with leaky roofs, in which, week by week, members of the Hong Kong community are led through a deep, rich journey of experiences that helps them enter the lives of people living in poverty.

A traditional Chinese proverb says, ‘what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.’ We might take it a step further and say, ‘what I experience, I take to heart’. Since the beginning of our Life X-perience program in 2005, we have seen profound change in the lives of 5000 participants from the Hong Kong community as they stepped, through simulation activities, into the shoes of an Indian child labourer, an Afghan refugee, or an impoverished Kenyan – like, indeed, Milton - who sleeps on a dirt floor.

These immersive experiences bring about the kind of compassion that motivates, the kind you can’t manufacture simply by reading statistics or news reports. It’s a compassion that moves people to change their daily behaviour, the way they spend their money, and even, in some cases we’ve seen, their career paths.

In early March we will welcome 25 people from Hong Kong’s press and corporate world to spend a night in our own shanty town. They will sleep there and then spend the next 24 hours living under intense slum and refugee conditions. This will be our annual fund raiser. Would you please join us in asking that the MD will participate in a tangible way? It will be a tough 24 hours, and one certainly not for the faint of heart. Our longing is that the hearts of those willing to participate will be broken for the hurting of this world, and directed to action on behalf of those who are suffering.

We do think of you and chat to our Father about you often.

Every blessing


PHIL & SUE