Stationery for Missions!

This past Sunday we attended our cutie-pie nephew Cooper's dedication at Chris and Ann's church, and their fantastic pastor Jeff is doing an interesting series to the Christian response to world problems. Sunday's sermon was on poverty. Jeff put a website up on the big screen (very big---they meet in a movie theater!) that I believe was called "How rich are you?"; you can type in your yearly income and it tells you how you compare to the world population in terms of wealth. He typed in various amounts to see how they compared to the world; when he typed in $50,000/year, it came up as the top 1% in the world. Whoa. That means that most of us around here have more wealth than 99% of the rest of the world. It made my whining about not having a bonus room seem pretty trivial. The one thing Jeff said that really stuck out to me was this: "Wouldn't it be great if when God increases your income, instead of increasing your lifestyle, you increase your giving."

Then later this week, my friend Suzanne and I had a great convo at the park while the kiddos played about our perspectives on money, and how they are changing. I told her about Jeff's sermon, and she said she and her husband had recently been talking along those same lines. We both felt that God seemed to be putting it on our hearts to approach our incomes in a different way---to not always focus on making more money so we can get more "stuff". Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my "stuff" and I don't think this means selling all your belongings; it's really more of a change of attitude and perspective I'd like to take on. Looking for ways to do more meaningful things with our money, which really belongs to God anyway, right?

So here's my little step in that direction. A few years ago Stephen met a man named Adam from Poland who works for Campus Crusade there and was here raising support. Stephen had lunch with him, and was very impressed with Adam's sincere heart for the Polish people and his ministry there. So we decided to send him a little bit of support each month. He and his wife have three precious children and can always use more help. Last month, Adam sent a letter to all his U.S. supporters saying that since the American dollar has become so weak in Europe, his support from here is not stretching quite as far. So I've decided to start sending Adam 50% of all profits from my stationery site, Hard Candy Papers. I just started doing stationery for fun, just to have a little hobby because I really enjoy designing that kind of stuff. And now I'm really excited that God can allow me to use this little hobby to hopefully further Adam's ministry. Crafts and missions----who knew it could be such a great combo! It makes my little heart happy.

I've re-vamped the site a bit to make it a little more user-friendly, and hope to be adding more items as I get them time to design them. With Back-to-School and Christmas coming up in the not-too-far future (my two favorite times of the year!!), I'm getting excited about making some new stuff. Yes, Hobby Lobby already has some Christmas decorations out. It's crazy. But I love it!