Ruminating

Tonight was my first night back to my Perspectives class after a 3 week hiatus. The topic was poverty. We talked about a variety of things: what's the real problem, what's the real solution, how does eradicating poverty involve the Gospel, how should we involve ourselves?

I really enjoyed the lesson tonight, even though it was a mix of devastating facts and stories, and discussion on how we often hurt more than we help. I found myself very interested in this topic. On the way home I realized I think I was so interested because much of the night was spent talking about strategy and economics, and how they are involved in developing potential solutions to a problem that is at times hard to define and understand.

I want to ruminate (is that the right word?) on some things before I post more- but I do have to mention that one of the examples tonight that the speaker used to showcase helping people help themselves is the concept of micro financing. I thought it was a brilliant concept, one I hadn't really heard of before but want to learn more about. It took me awhile to find some Christian micro financing organizations, but finally I discovered the website for Hope International. We had a guest speaker at church on Sunday, who talked about this organization at length, as his wife is involved in it (also hoping to write a quick post about the sermon a little later this week).

Speaking of quick posts, this is turning out to be rather lengthy. And I have to get up in 7 hours...so I will sign off!