After I did a Perspectives lecture last week in Sacramento, Jeff and I met up with a young couple who had recently been inspired to move into an impoverished neighborhood. They had read my book SOUL GRAFFITI and IRRESISTABLE REVOLUTION by my friend Shane Claiborne and thought, “these guys are saying what we’ve been feeling.” As they told their story they inspired me! Two years ago they heard that children in Nigeria were dying every day because of unclean water and they found out that wells could be built for one thousand dollars. They started buying a well each month and after a year they made a trip to Africa to visit a village where they had paid for a well to be built. As they held the children of that village in their arms they were inspired to do something even more radical. They sold the house they had just built and moved in temporarily with family so that they could build more wells. This couple, who are only 22 and 25 years old, have funded the building of wells in more than twenty villages in Nigeria. They told me, “We think God wants us to make as much money as we can and spend as little as we can—so that we can give away as much as we can. We want to care about the things that God cares about in our at-risk neighborhood and care about the needs of people in Africa at the same time.”
May we be good soil for the seeds of our maker’s dreams for our world!
