My Addiction

Forty year ago I developed an addiction which I have been unable to break, nor have I tried. I became addicted to the idea and work of gathering from the resources of the affluent USA and delivering those resources to persons in dire poverty in what we call the "Third World," where some 2 billion souls live on less than $2 a day, and half of them on less than $1 a day.
My mentors in that work have been Jesus Christ, John Wesley, and host of more contemporary peers.
My addiction started when, in 1968, I raised the money, purchased and delivered 25 bred dairy heifers to Costa Rica, a project for Heifer International. The heifers were delivered to a Catholic high school near Ciudad Quesada. The youth were taught how to care for dairy animals, and, if they passed the course, were given a heifer for their own. They passed the first female offspring on to another youth, and the chain went on. When I saw what the proct meant to the youth the idea became and addiction. I was hooked for life. http://www.heifer.org/
Since then my life has focused around that lifestyle in one way or another. In 1986, gleaning money from friends, I made a 1,000 mile walk for Habitat for Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/) from Americus, GA to Kansas City, MO. Baraba and I took the $70,000 raised to Costa Rica and started Habitat there. We started the Festival of Sharing which meets at Sedalia, MO, in October each year and provides around $1 million in mission resrouces for Missouri and the world. Six other states picked up the idea.
In a really fun project, we gathered 16,500 stuffed animbals and sent them to Russia for children in hospitals suffering from the effects of the Chernobyl fallout.
My training and experience in agriculture enabled me to purcahse and ship for Hiefer International well over 1,000 beef and dairy heifers, goats, jacks, fillies and hogs.
Working with ACTS container after container of used hospital equipment was gathered and shipped to the Republic of Georgia to rebuild their devastated hospital system. I was priveleged to fly there with a load of iodized salt and medications and see the equipment in use.
Some 1,500 good used and new sewing machines have been donated, inspected and sent to missions. An equal number of used typewriters went around the world. More than 100 new bicycles went to Zaire for rural pastors, paid for by local men's groups. Hundreds of tons of good used clothing and shoes have gone across the sea, with that now focused in the rural areas of Nicaragua.
This list could go on and on. Now my current project is PET (http://www.giftofmobility.org/), in addition to some of those mentioned above. I am addicted, and I praise God for that. It is a lifestyle I commend to you.