Depth of field...

   Some of you may not like this blog post, but it has been heavy on my heart lately. I hope you read it with an open mind and consider the heart behind it.

   As you know, I am a Christian and II believe very strongly that we are called to pray for the sick, the hurting and the lost. So here is my simple question. As Christian's, do we have our depth of field too shallow?

  In the photography and video world, depth of field  is the amount of distance between the nearest and farthest objects that appear in acceptably sharp focus. Meaning that a shallow depth of field would have a close up object in focus with the background blurred out. I think sometimes that is how we walk around as Christian's. We see the picture, but past a short distance from us is gets burry and not in our focus.

   The past several weeks, my FaceBook page has lit up with people sharing stories and asking for prayer for a good Christian person who was very sick and indeed needed lots of prayers. What is interesting to me is that everyone sharing these posts seemed as concerned as they would if it was a family member. I agree that with this person being in the spotlight, we do begin to feel like we have a relationship with them even if we don't. I am not suggesting any of this is wrong, but what began to way very heavy on me was that FaceBook and social media were lit up asking for prayers for this person... Yet there was no posts asking for urgent prayer for that person that may live across the street that does not know Christ... No cry for help on behalf of the millions on children around the world who do not have a family... No grass roots movement to help the 21,000 people around the world who will die from starvation today... No prayer services for the estimated 2.87 billion people who have never heard the gospel. Instead, there was almost a national movement of Christians praying and mourning over an individual who knew where they were going when they passed from this life.

   Again, I will state that we are called to pray for other believers. We are called to pray for the sick. We are called to lift up the hurting. But, we are also called to pray for the world. We seem to get so focused on ourselves (meaning Christians) that we forget the rest. We are quick to share a post asking for prayer for this situation, but forget to pray for the lost soles right beside us. We glue ourselves to news stories about someone we have never met and forget to support the missionaries around the world.

   As my family gets ready to head back to Guatemala to serve the impoverished and the hurting, it weighs very heavy on my heart that we not only need to go help... We must pray daily! We must lift up the hurting and the lost. We must share our Faith with those around us. We must get out of our comfort zone and follow Christ.

   How do we do that? We have to adjust our depth of field. We have to adjust until everything is in focus. If we adjust to much, the hurting believers in front of us become blurry and all we see is the long distance objects. We must constantly adjust so everything is in focus all the time. I am glad for everyone asking for prayer for this dear person. We just cannot focus on that and forget the rest of the people we are called to pray for and to support.

Continuing a legacy...

The name of this blog continues to ring true in my life. I am constantly amazed to look back and see the orchestrated events that have lead me to where I am today!

My family, or I should say my wife's family, has long been linked with Guatemala. It started after the earthquake of 1976 that rocked the country and some 23,000 people in Guatemala City alone lost their lives. At that time, someone in the little town of Perryton, Texas some 2000 miles from Guatemala had an idea. They wanted to bless the people of Guatemala, and the missionaries they supported, by donating supplies to help rebuild.  They loaded semi trucks with building supplies and headed south. My Father-in-law was one of the men that drove a truck down. It was not an easy trip as they drove all the way from both to south Texas and continued all the way through Mexico and in to Guatemala.

Who would have guess that 30 years after that event, Heather and I would make a trip of a different kind to Guatemala... This time to bring home our baby boy! As we made three different trips to Guatemala, my heart quickly fell in love with the country. We were so happy to bring our son home after two years of roadblocks and waiting, but what about all the other children? Some after we returned home, Guatemala shut down international adoptions. My heart broke for all the kids that would be left in orphanages across the country with no family to call their own.

As our lives went on, most of you know, we adopted our little girl from China. Another glorious occasion and an amazing adventure all in its self. All the while though, our hearts longed to one day do more... To one day be involved in mission like both Heather and I had been as teen agers... Only this time we would get to do it as a family!

Fast forward to 2014 when we first got to return to Guatemala with our son to give back and help support children and families there. After a great trip, we decided that we wanted to do more, so in 2015 we lead a team from our church back to Guatemala and continued to help in any way we could. All the while, our hearts were breaking and creating a desire to continue to do more.

In April of 2015, we felt like God was telling us it is time to jump... What does that mean? What will we do? How will this work? All questions we had, and still do to some extent, but we knew it was time. So we launched Karter's Dream Inc. to share God's love with the world. We returned to Guatemala as a family in June and began to dream how one day Karter's Dream would be able to make a difference. We did not know how or when, but we knew it is what we were being called to do.

After working on Karter's Dream for around eight months, we were approved by the IRS as a 501c3 tax exempt non profit public charity! That meant for us, that we could begin spreading the word and asking others to partner with us to help more children and families.

In the midst of all of that, we began planning another trip to take another team to Guatemala. We will be leaving here in just a couple weeks to take 20 people to go connect with Guatemala, and to make a difference.

While planning, we received a message about a precious little girl named Ana at the orphanage in Guatemala who was very sick and needed help.  My heart again began to break and I knew that we needed to get involved. I simply sent a message and asked "what can we do?" this little girl had been sick for months and the orphanage was taking care of her, but I knew in my heart that this was probably putting a strain in how well they could also take care of all the other kids with all of the added expense. We were able to find out what her medical and special formula expenses were, and I thought...

OK God, I believe you have put this in my heart, but we do not have all of the money we need to help...

I felt Him saying... "Just trust me".  I decided that I would launch an online campaign to see if we could raise some of the money to help out and then we could cover the rest from Karter's Dream. I was shocked when we received our 1st donation within minutes of going live. I thought "Could it be that we might actually be able to collect enough to cover what we could not?"... Oh me of little faith... A few days later I received a phone call that would nearly bring me to tears. As the person on the other end simply said... "What do you need?" I replied "We have raised $100 so far so anything will help" the reply was "I am sending you a check to cover the rest" I did not know what to say! Not only did God help us... He took care of the whole need! 

Three days before I received that phone call, I received another message that broke my heart. 

Last year while we were in Guatemala, we met a 15 year old boy named Jason. We had taken a bunk bed to his house because his mom, himself, and three other siblings shared a tiny house with no where to sleep. When we delivered the bed, we gave each of the kids backpacks filled with toys and supplies. During a conversation, we learned that he was not attending school. It wasn't because he didn't want to attend school, but because his family could not afford to pay for his uniform and tution. We decided that we had extra money and that we could take care of it. He left that day to register and he started school the next day. 

Now, the message we received was that his mom had died the previous week, leaving Jason and his
three siblings all alone. They were not able to go to school because they did not have enough money to pay for their uniforms and it looked like they had very little hope. We wanted to help, but we knew we would not be able to since we had already said we would help with Ana's medical costs. Little did we know that God was already taking care of the medical needs! When I received the phone call that a check was on the way, we were excited that we could now help out with Jason and his family. We started trying to check on costs and how we could help. We shared this story with our mission team and it got mentioned on our Facebook group. Without us asking for help... Someone contacted us and donated enough money to cover the school needs as well as allow us to look into ways to help this family even more! 

Again, God provided! Not only what we needed, but above and beyond! Again, this need was met without us spending money out of Karter's Dream which again allows us to look forward to other projects that we can help with. If you want to be a part of what God is doing, consider partnering with Karter's Dream. You can make tax deductabile donations to us or on our web site at www.KartersDream.com. Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way to make Karter's Dream a reaility and who helped meet these needs. Your prayers and support are making an impact around the world.