Featured Story

March 2007

A Global Challenge

Arms of Love brings together hundreds of churches and ministries for an unprecedented international symposium.

Four of the Arms of Love Children's Home directors attended the conference.
Back Row, left to right:  Noemih Baladjay (Philippines), Steve Bagley (AoL U.S.),
Gladys and Emilio Padilla (Nicaragua), and Scott Joellenbeck (Brazil).
Front Row:  Kim Fisher (AoL U.S.), Sue Leak (Mexico) and Becky Joellenbeck (Brazil)

On March 9-10, 2007, more than 400 people from over 200 churches and organizations from 14 countries came together in Anaheim, California for a time of fellowship, training and networking at the first Children-at-Risk Conference organized by Arms of Love. With more than 40 speakers presenting seven keynote addresses and conducting another 28 workshops, this unprecedented event exceeded all expectations, and will have a far-reaching impact on reaching children in need around the world.

Debi Groves speaks with Gladys Padilla (Nicaragua) and Becky Joellenbeck (Brazil) at the conference, while Scot Joellenbeck speaks with an interested volunteer at the Arms of Love table

In the article below, Emilio Padilla (Arms of Love Children's Home Director in Nicaragua) and Robert Benson (founder and CEO of Arms of Love) share their collective thoughts and reflections from the conference.

 

Rebuilding the Wall - Together

As hundreds of people checked in for the conference on Friday morning, our volunteers and logistical systems were immediately challenged.   Programs, nametags, and goodie bags were quickly shuffled to each conference participant.   But among the other items distributed was one that was particularly symbolic – a piece to a 300 piece puzzle that bore the logo of the conference.

During the first plenary session, Pastor Tri Robinson asked each person to hold up their piece to the puzzle.   Tri then asked each person, upon leaving, to assemble their piece back into the puzzle.   Similarly, at the closing keynote session, Johan Lukasse from Brazil spoke of how we are called to rebuild the wall of protection in the lives of children-at-risk, in the way of Nehemiah, each of us filling a unique hole and laying a unique brick in the wall.   Throughout the conference, these illustrations represented a dominant theme.

There are over a billion children in the world who are facing some form of crisis.   No one person, church or group can even begin to tackle these global challenges by themselves.   Only when we partner with one another - when we each respond to our unique calling and then work collaboratively with everyone else - can we effectively impact the needs of children-at-risk in the world today.   And even then, we need to strategize collectively if we are to win the battle.  

Therein lay one of the central purposes of the conference.   People from hundreds of different churches and ministries attended the event, connecting their hearts in fellowship and sharing their respective experiences and knowledge.   We learned to appreciate how we are each a piece to the global puzzle, which if rightly placed, becomes part of the solution.   Each part is indispensable, and every other part is equally valuable.

The Heart and the Mind

The Children-at-Risk Conference was launched with a moving address by Dr. Phyllis Kilbourn, who spoke of the need to root our ministries in the compassionate heart of God, and how to keep our hearts fresh over years of service.   That was followed by another 33 sessions presenting a depth of knowledge concerning the plight of the world's children, strategic thinking, and decades of experience from those who have devoted their lives to such calling.

These sessions brought an important question into sharp relief.   Which is of foremost importance when we engage in helping children in need – our hearts or our minds?   The compassion and love that comes from an untiring heart … or a depth of knowledge and expertise as to “how” we can best help children facing such a varied range of crises?

Perhaps the answer seems obvious.   But sometimes we devote so much focus to formal training and knowledge that we neglect the importance of the heart – while on other occasions, we may follow our hearts without having the benefit of adequate training and experience.  

If we have but a fraction of God's heart imbedded in ours, we cannot help but jump into action because of His love for the oppressed children of the world!    Filled with compassion, we feel the pain of others, learn to walk with them, and become a part of their lives – which creates the opportunity to bring healing and restoration.  

And yet – led only by the heart, we can become consumed by the needs of the children we are trying to serve, which seem never-ending.   Good intentions can lead to practical mistakes and personal burnout, even as we passionately pursue our calling and as we pour ourselves out to help so many children who are so desperately in need.

And so it is that we cannot ignore the importance of connecting our hearts with our minds.   We need good strategic thinking and training in order to adopt the most effective approaches to ministry - and to avoid taking on too much.   By learning from the experiences of others, we can avoid many possible mistakes and failures.   Only with training can we discover the most effective and coordinated ways to tackle the enormous and seemingly insurmountable task of bringing love, mercy, compassion, healing, protection, leading, guidance and leadership to the next generation, so we can bring change to this world!

Amidst the Needs – There is Hope

Throughout the conference we were exposed to the needs and the challenges, but it was always in contrast with success and hope.   20 years of war in Uganda!   Generational genocide!   But Olara Otunnu, who showed us the depth of his country's suffering, became an international leader after someone in his family, led by the Lord, became a revival evangelist, while another became an archbishop and a martyr.

It was such a joy seeing him jumping up spontaneously and joining the WATOTO Children's Choir from his home country of Uganda, in such a moving testimony of the presence of the Lord!   Children who were orphaned, but were present among us as a powerful testimony that lives can be rescued and changed, joined by a leader who himself has effected change around the world as a U.N. advocate for children of war.

Children soldiers!   But during the conference, we saw the film of a former child soldier, taught to rape and to kill, who emerged from this consuming hopelessness because of a loving Christian that crossed his path while he was in his deepest state of anguish and despair!

Street children!   Prostitution!   Slavery and hunger!   Dr. Myers presented a global perspective of the crisis and Dr. Guinness described how forces of globalization have contributed to today's state of affairs.   Yet present among us were so many churches and organizations who had been able to reach these children and raise them to higher levels of life expectations, working to provide a safer and healthier environment for their families and friends.  

There are those people and institutions who see us as the useful fools in charge of collecting, sorting, and taking away all the human debris and destruction that they keep piling upon our shoulders.   But not everything is pain and hopelessness in this world.   When we see the life of a child touched and transformed by love … we know that our work is not in vain.   Restoration is possible.   As Bert Waggoner said – in the lives of children, His kingdom comes.

Above All Else:   Love

This brings us to a central theme:   the subject of love.   The deepest need of children, and I would dare to say of all adults as well, is to love and to be loved.   When this one factor is missing, everything else in life goes to pieces.   Especially when the mother and father figures of love and protection somehow end up missing, thereby contributing to the disintegration of the family and the fabric of society!

Restoration of broken lives depends on this:   the capacity of giving love, sacrificial love, and wholesome love, as God first showed toward us.

This is easily seen in the eyes and the faces of the children who live at our children's homes.   More and more, as they recover the joy of their lost innocence and trust, their deep hurts start to heal and their memories and feelings become infused with a new reality of love and of hope.

What is the measure of our ministries?   Bystanders will readily compare the quality and expense of facilities and installations.   Facts and figures can be objectively compared and analyzed.   Operating budgets, costs, dollars spent, children served.   Experts compare various approaches and strategies to providing different types of care and counseling.   There is such a diversity of programs and approaches, churches and organizations, finances and management, that there is an immediate tendency to examine objective criteria when evaluating ministries.

Yet after visitors stay with us for a while, they leave with a singular impression:   that our ministry has potential for restoring children's lives because they see how the children are loved.   It cannot be objectively quantified, but the greatest measure of long-term success and effectiveness of any ministry to children-at-risk is the depth to which the children are truly loved.

A Message to the Future

As Dr. Myers eloquently quoted another, “Children are the living messages we send to a future we will not see.”   What kind of message are we going to send?

The children who are thrown away, whom we love and nurture, educate and product, have a special potential as adults to challenge and change the world – because as they grow up, they will be less likely to accept and become a part of existing systems of oppression and injustice.   Saved by grace and knowing the restorative power of love, they owe nothing to the world, but are indebted to the grace of God and the compassion shown to them by others.   And therein lay the roots of future change and our global hope.   They are the leaders this world so desperately needs!

Yes - there are future leaders among those children we are trying to heal and protect!   It is our task, while we are bringing protection and healing, to nurture and equip the children in our care so they will continue God's work of love and mercy long after we fade out to rest in His arms!

Children of crisis come to us with their toughness, their distrusting stares, their stubbornness.   But these are the signs not of victims but of survivors – and if we are patient and loving enough, the victors of the future.

I had the blessing of meeting one of them while traveling to and from the conference.    When my wife and I took a taxi from the airport, the driver curiously asked us what we were doing in the USA.   When we told him about the conference, he exulted with joy.   He shared that he was the second of 13 brothers and sisters in Uganda, and that mother sent him to the USA to work so he could help her educate his brothers and sisters.   He had only been in the USA for seven years, but he already had a 10-vehicle taxi company of his own, after going homeless and hungry for some time.   And all his brothers and sister, as well as himself, has been able to go to college.

And how he was able to do all this?   Motivated and strengthened by his faith, he married a Christian woman who worked side by side with him, driving their first taxicab to be able to provide 24 hour service.   He could have been another victim of the world!   But instead, he became an unheralded leader, who started his “ministry” by caring for his own family back in Uganda, and now he is continuing that ministry by caring for his new family here in the USA.

The Time Is Now

This is the time of the times!   This is the time to restore what has been corrupted.   Let's remember that corruption can occur by commission and omission, by evilness and by laziness, by violence and by indifference.   Let us not contribute to oppression and injustice by our inaction, but become part of the solution by our action.

This is the time to transcend the mediocrity of our times, which is the real cause for the easy success of the violent, the corrupters and the oppressors of this world!   It is the lack of courage and of principle that allows injustice to spread and prevail.   It is time to stand against those people, institutions and systems that would victimize our children and our future rather than restoring it.

Let's have in mind that our destiny is to be like trees with our roots in the living waters of God's love and wisdom, full of branches and leaves where the tired birds and the thirsty and exhausted deer of this world can come to rest under our loving shade, which we became by the grace of the Lord.

Above all, what is the most basic lesson I learnt in the company of so many precious people during the just ended conference?   Be dependent on the Lord!   The problems are immense, but God knows what is going on!   He is calling us to action, but in His time and within His plans!   We must be ready to answer his call, individually and collectively, that we might play our part to bringing healing to our children and restoration to our future.

And if we ever become tired, lonely, depressed, overwhelmed, and we despair, let's remember Isaiah 40:31:   “Those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.”

After attending the conference, the Arms of Love directors attended some further training and then spent their last day relaxing and having fun at Disneyland ... the "Happiest Place on Earth!"