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These are real lives.

These are real humans.

These are real people.

These are more than faces.

These are more than stories.

These are more than charity.

They are like you, but orphaned.

They are like you, but poor.

They are like you, but unschooled

Imagine yourself stripped of your parents, stripped of a good role model. Imagine yourself to live as an adult from an early age, taking care of your younger siblings and perhaps even your sick, bed-ridden mother, aunt, or grandmother.

Imagine yourself living with four other people in the space of the average, middle-class family's living room. Imagine yourself owning only two other shirts, one other pants, and one pair of shoes.

Imagine yourself in the midst of all that, and yet maintain humanity's rich characteristics of hope, dreams, ambition, zeal, happiness, love, joy. These families have poverty spiritually and physically thrust upon them, but when squeezed produce sweet nectar of spiritual richness.

It is very easy to see pictures of people in Africa, Russia, China, Argentina, Honduras and see faces of poverty, pain, and sorrow. That very well be what those pictures are of. They may truly be of a child or adult that is impoverished and is in horrible living conditions. Those pictures, though, depict more than poverty. They represent in an image the soul of another human. Despite the fact they are poor, they are humans. Despite their being yet another story in charity's call for love-actions, they are souls that need love. Not tangible love like gifts and money, but intangible like spending time with an individual and allow the bonds of the heart to reach out and attach to their heart.  

I find it hard for myself to see missions photos, sometimes even my own photos, and detach myself from the norm of "Oh, it's just a photo." These are more than photos of kids and people. These are true humans, living just as you are under different circumstances. We share the same hopes, dreams, and goals. Just different experiences.

And that's what we need to realize. A picture is not a sob-story. Big organizations might be like that, striving to better the human race, to fulfill a need of, well, humane deeds. Missionaries on the other hand ((and I'm not bashing organizations at all. They're good, and they're helpful. But the missionary [ought to, at least] has a different mindset.)) aren't all about sob-stories. Are stories sad? Yes. Are they desperate for help? Sure. But they're not about you feeding into your satisfaction as a human or as a "Christian" by 'doing good deeds'.

Missionaries present stories, lives, people to those who are better off circumstantially that are able to help. We as Christians are commanded to help the poor, minister to the "least of these." Missionaries simply present you a means of obeying God. They bring back stories from their world into your world so you can hear, understand, and know how to help. If it's by giving, going, or praying, you ought to be obeying God by doing what you can do help the poor and the 'least of these'.


More than faces. These are lives.