Engelsen AdVentures: July 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Lydia Award Celebration

Leslie/Todd; Once a year, PEER Servants gives out the Lydia Awards to recognize the very best micro-entrepreneurs among the thousands served by our microfinance partners. Who is Lydia, you may ask? You can read about her in Acts 16 -- she was a businesswoman who sold purple dye and cloth and from her profits supported Paul and his missionary companions. She is credited by church historians as being an important person in the spread of the church to Europe.

Each of our microfinance partners can nominate up to two of their very best clients based on six factors: growth in the business, being a good MFI client, innovation, perseverance, church/community impact, and business growth potential. A Lydia Awards Committee of PEER Servants volunteers and board members then picks three semifinalists. From there we post the three semifinalists online and allow online voting and then have a Lydia Awards Celebration wherein we serve food from the countries of the three semifinalists and have in-person voting after passionate presentations by those supporting the respective candidates. At the end of the Lydia Awards Celebration, the Lydia Award winner is announced. The whole process is a lot of fun, very inspiring, and very helpful to our microfinance partners and volunteers in learning how to effectively tell the story of the transformation they are witnessing.

Our three 2010 semifinalists (pictured right) were Emily (a curtain/pillowcase maker from the Philippines), Victor and Lilea Chifeac (vegetable/fruit farmers from Moldova, with just Victor pictured) and Arul Rathi Rajendram (a livestock breeder/retailer from Sout

h Asia). All three were amazing in the transformation they had experienced in their own lives, but also the transformation they were effecting in the lives of their families, churches, and communities around them. Emily grew her business to employ 16+ seamstresses; Victor and Lilea used profits from their business to give their four oldest children a university education and help build the first evangelical church in their village; Arul Rathi overcame widowhood in a war-torn country and made it possible for her children to get a good education while helping other women in her community. All three semifinalists were very deserving and the overall voting was very tight, but in the end, Arul Rathi took 1st place with 36% of the vote, Victor & Lilea took 2nd place with 33% of the vote, and Emily took third with 31% of the vote.

Transformation in the lives of the materially poor is a major part of our mission at PEER Servants, and the Lydia Awards is a great opportunity to celebrate that part of our mission. But our overall mission goes well beyond that. We are ultimately focused on transformation among the materially non-poor (that's us!) as well. May we be open and eager to learn from and be enriched by the Emily's, Victor and Lilea's, and Arul Rathi's of the world in areas like being very generous to God before we spend so much on ourselves and overcoming adversity. May God use them to help us see beyond the confines of our culture to what it really means to follow Jesus, and to experience more of the abundant life as a result. Lord, make it so!

Meet the Engelsens!

We (Todd and Leslie Engelsen) lead PEER Servants — an organization of committed and gifted volunteers and staff dedicated to serving indigenous, autonomous microfinance institutions in the materially poor world. Todd is the President of PEER Servants while Leslie assumes many key responsibilities within the organization.

We met in Nigeria in 1998. Leslie had been in Nigeria for over 12 years at the time working in urban ministry — especially in helping materially poor women caught up in prostitution find new life in Jesus Christ. Todd had been working for almost 15 years at John Hancock as an actuary and senior officer and used his vacation time to come to Nigeria as a microfinance consultant to Rescue Fellowship Nigeria, PEER Servants’ new Nigerian microfinance partner. It was a match made in heaven — we married in 2002. Todd left John Hancock in 2004 to focus full-time in his responsibilities as PEER Servants President.

Living Simply

"Labor hard, consume little, give much to others and all to Christ." William Okoye, Pastor in Abuja, Nigeria

"Poverty is freedom. It is a freedom so that what I possess doesn’t own me, so that what I possess doesn’t hold me down, so that my possessions don’t keep me from sharing or giving of myself." Mother Teresa, No Greater Love, p.96

"The Lord owns the world and everything in it—the heavens, even the highest heavens are his." Moses, Deuteronomy 10:14 (NLT)

"To live a simple lifestyle means to live intentionally beneath your potential standard of living for the purpose of sharing your excess with others." Jeff and Judy Heath, Wycliffe missionaries in Chad (quoted in Simplify by P. Borthwick, p.148)

"We are not accustomed to denying ourselves in order to serve others. But Jesus insisted that discipleship is impossible without self denial. Instant gratification is at the core of modern life. Costly self-denial is at the center of Jesus’ way. We must choose." Ron Sider, Living Like Jesus, p.34

"If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it." Jesus, Mark 8:34-35 (NLT)

"The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen. In 1960, the richest 20 percent of the world’s countries had thirty times more income than the poorest 20 percent. By 1990 the richest 20 percent had 60 times more! Since Christians own two-thirds of the world’s wealth, the majority of that top 20 percent were “Christians.” While we get richer, one billion desperately poor people live at the edge of survival. Millions starve every year. Tens of millions of these desperate people are brothers and sisters in Christ. That we tolerate their anguish is a sinful rending of Christ’s one body." Ron Sider, Living Like Jesus, p.79

"Nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.180

"But who am I, and who are my people, that we could give anything to you? Everything we have has come from you, and we give you only what you gave us first." David, 1 Chronicles 29:14 (NLT)

"My parents and their colleagues were caught up in the kingdom where God was the center. . . . This released them from self centered preoccupation with their own survival. Personal fulfillment and safety was a by product, not a goal in their vision. . . . They had a fierce joy in knowing that they were doing the right thing and that God was pleased. . . . Suffering was taking for granted and not something to avoid at all cost. . . . Simpler lifestyle was not something God had inflicted on us but something they had chosen for the sake of the kingdom." Kari Torjesen Malcolm, We Signed Away Our Lives, writing about missionaries in China in the early part of the 20th century

"Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength." Apostle Paul, Philippians 4:11-13

"With forgiveness, and the justice that flows from Christ’s compassion, the economic divisions that condemn some to deadly starvation and others to suffocating affluence can give way to wholeness for all." Ron Sider, Living Like Jesus, p.27

"Give me eagerness for your laws rather than love for money! Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word." Psalm 119:36-37

Suggestions for Simple Living
* Cultivate contentment, desire less.
* Resist covetousness and consumerism.
* Buy things for their usefulness, not their status.
* Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Benefit from places of “common ownership” (parks, museums, libraries, rivers).
* De-accumulate. Develop the habit of giving things away.
* Offer others the use of your possessions.
* Develop a network of exchange.
* Avoid impulse buying.
* Don’t buy now pay later.
* Avoid credit cards if they are a problem.
* De-emphasize respectability.
* Simplify your wardrobe–give away excess.
* Learn how to make do with a lower income instead of needing a higher one.
* Be grateful for things large and small.
* Emphasize a joyful life.
Scott Bessenecker, The New Friars, p.182

"Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be." Jesus, Matt.6:19-21

"We must learn to give until it hurts and not hold on to our earthly possessions too tightly because we will always meet people who need our clothes, furniture, food & money more than we do. . . . We must make decisions every day about our lives and priorities, decisions not for ourselves but for others, decisions in agreement with God’s heart for the needy." Dave Andrews, Can You Hear the Heartbeat?

Engelsen AdVentures

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Lydia Award Celebration

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