standing up, speaking out...

Questions...

Posted by Amanda , Sunday, February 28, 2010 3:02 PM

Speaker: Dave Swann

Topic: Project Planning and Development

This week was full of hard questions and inspiring ideas. We were probed to dig deeper inside ourselves. We learned how to ask the right questions and conduct research that will help us develop projects and create change. One of my favorite things about this week was that our speaker came from South Africa and brought me five of my favorite South African candy bars! He was also an amazing speaker, super down-to-earth and full of lots of great insight!

Last September, I took a school for Community Development here in San Jose. I learned a great deal from it and could really see myself using it in the future. This week totally reinforced that idea. I find myself always coming up with different ideas for projects or building on projects that I’ve had in my head for awhile. We were able to see how to use those ideas, write them down, present them and expand on them.

One thing I really loved is that Dave asked questions. Like, “How do you know where God wants you to be?” and “What is worship?” and “How are we going to open people’s eyes?” What does it mean to do these things, to really be a missionary? They might seem like easy questions on the surface, but once you get into them they are tough. I’ve seriously had to evaluate and consider why I do and say many things in my life. But I think it’s such a great approach to things. Each of us have answers to just about everything deep down inside of us, but most of us like to be fed the answers from other people instead of taking the time to pull those answers out of us. We are all “resources” and have tons of knowledge and wisdom about things stored up inside of us. Let’s take the time to ask ourselves questions and really look hard at our answers. Let’s not be apathetic.

Something Dave said this week was that the excuse “I don’t have any personal responsibility,” has killed millions of people. When we look around at issues in the world and hear the stories, but simply say that it doesn’t affect us and not do anything about it…we are killing people. People are dying, because we just aren’t doing anything about it. “It’s not my responsibility,” or “I have my own life to worry about,” or “I’ve made a way for myself, why can’t they do the same?” When we don’t do anything about child prostitution, human trafficking, poverty, child soldiers, violence, racism, gangs…people are dying. This is our responsibility, our call as Christians and as people, really. We are hypocrites if we say we will love our neighbors, but don’t help the ones that are starving to death in Africa or being sold in India.

Another quote from Dave was, “If you’re not pissed off with the state of the world, you’re not paying attention.” If you aren’t seeing what’s happening in the world, you aren’t looking. Things are happening even in our own backyards, but we don’t see it because we are only concerned about our own little worlds. The world is in chaos right now. How do you feel about that? Are your eyes open?

I realize this blog had little to do with development and planning projects, which we actually talked about quite a bit throughout the week. It was all great stuff and we even started planning a bit of the projects we might do in Jaco, but these are some of the things that really hit me this week. I left asking more questions and learning more about my character, God’s character and the world. I think that’s a good thing…