Justice - Phil Cunningham - Week 2 - JDTS
Hey there and welcome back to the blog for another update on the Justice Discipleship Training School (JDTS).
Our speaker last week was Phil Cunningham from YWAM San Diego. Here’s a picture of him with all of us:
Not only the theme of this Discipleship School, but the theme of this week was Justice. This week we were challenged in many ways to open our eyes to the injustices in the world. Here are a few things we did to help us understand poverty and injustice were:
- We walked around the neighbourhood, and looked for people to break our hearts like how God’s heart is broken for them. It’s so different out there when you stop to look around. When you’re not headed in a specific direction, you notice things; you notice people.
- We watched videos. Phil used a lot of media in his lecture time, which really gave us a great visual and a better view of what’s going on. We saw a short film about doctors in India operating on children, with a cleft lip and palate, for free. Another video we watched was on a team who dug wells and brought clean water to villages that hadn’t had any before. We also watched Slumdog Millionaire, which really opened our eyes to poverty situations in India.
- On Thursday of last week, Phil decided to do an exercise that would really stretch us. We were split into three groups and something different was taken away from the people in each group. The first group was hunger – food was taken from them for the whole day. In this group was: Michelle, Kathryn and Brenden. The second group was water – they were unable to drink water or use water to wash their hands, flush the toilet, or in any other way. In this group was: Janelle, Jenny and Lindsey. The last group was poverty – their only possessions all day were a cup, a bowl, and what they woke up in. Anything else they had to borrow. In this group was: Jesse, Ashley, Laura, Kim and Phil.
Here was our supper that night:
Another update from last week is… it snowed!! A lot. Here’s a few photo’s of us and the snow!
So I’ll end off by sharing with you a few statistics of how many people do suffer from different injustices. Don’t be afraid to leave a comment at the bottom any time. I hope you enjoyed the blog!
- Africa has 12 million AIDS orphans.
- Approx. 6.4 million abortions occur annually in the U.S.
- 6 million children under the age of 5 die every year from a hunger related cause. Every day, more than 16,000 children die – one child every five seconds.
- 150 million women are victims of Female Genital Mutilation. Every year 2 million girls are added.
- 120,000 women and children are trafficked into Western Europe every year. Many of these women are bought and sold into forced prostitution, beaten, imprisoned, raped, and sometimes killed.
All statistics came from ‘a voice for the voiceless’ 30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I LOVE reading this blog so much every week. You’re doing a great job and it’s so nice to be updating on what you guys are doing. Rock star!!
October 20th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Thanks Carrie, that means a lot