Celebrating our 2009 Lydia Award Winners

Todd: You can't help but notice throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament, that when God did something great, the people celebrated! We love to celebrate as well in PEER Servants, especially when we see the transformed lives that God is raising up from among the entrepreneurial clients of our microfinance partners.

Every year, we give out what we call "Lydia Awards" within PEER Servants to recognize the very top micro-entrepreneurs. Lydia was a businesswoman mentioned in Acts 16 who supported Paul and his missionary companions as they traveled through her part of Greece. In fact, Bible scholars credit Lydia with being one of the most important people in supporting the growth of the church into Europe. How did she do it? Through her business - selling purple dye and cloth, which was very lucrative at the time.

What we did this year for the first time is expand the process for determining our Lydia Award winners to include both online voting (did you vote? -- if not, make certain to do so next year) and a Lydia Award Celebration evening. We have a group of 5 dedicated volunteers who reviewed all of the nominees and selected 3 semi-finalists (pictured here) -- Victor, a cement block manufacturer and pastor from Moldova; Kikielomo, a chicken breeder and wholesaler from Nigeria; and, Rasanayagam, a chicken breeder and retailer from South Asia. All three semifinalists were really amazing -- Kikielomo subsidizes education for 150 school children through her business, and Rasanayagam has overcome his physical disability (he has one arm) to establish one of the most innovative and profitable chicken businesses in the region. Selecting a first, second, and third place from among these semifinalists wasn't easy. In fact, when all of the votes were tallied, Victor (Moldova) received 14% of the vote, and Kikielomo (Nigeria) and Rasanayagam (South Asia) both had 43% of the vote! Kikielomo received just a vote or two more than Rasanayagam, so she was the very deserving 2009 Lydia Award winner.

Our Lydia Award Celebration was one of our best nights of the year within PEER Servants. 40+ people gathered in the home of one of our donors to celebrate transformation. Cuisine from Moldova, Nigeria, and South Asia -- the countries/regions of our three semifinalists - was served, special music provided, and an opportunity given to praise God for what He had done in our midst. The excitement of such a close vote only added to making it a very special evening.

We wish all clients who are served by our microfinance partners could witness the kind of transformation in their lives that these Lydia Award semifinalists have - unfortunately, that is not the case. But these Lydia Award semifinalists do represent thousands who experience some element of economic, social, and spiritual transformation because of your willingness to support them through your financial and prayerful partnership. Thank you!

2009 Training Camp

Todd: July is the month of our annual Training Camp. It's a weekend dedicated to microfinance training, spiritual challenge, learning to become more cross-culturally effective, and good ol' fellowship! This year 25+ gathered at Gordon College on July 24-26 for Training Camp. Our theme for the Camp was "to the ends of the earth" and it was a refreshing time to step back, assess what it is going to take to reach the ends of the earth with the love of Christ, and become better equipped to do so. Highlights of the weekend include the following:

• Pastor Gideon Achi from Nigeria kicked us off by challenging us in whether we are really committed to follow Christ or too comfortable in enjoying a lavish, by the world's standards, lifestyle.
• Scott Sterner got rave reviews for his Christian Micro-Enterprise Development 101 lecture.
• We looked at a case study of one of the most effective Christian MFIs, the Center for Community Transformation in the Philippines, and what we can learn from them in establishing Christ-centered microfinance programs.
• Abraham Thon, originally from the Sudan, and Leslie Engelsen guided us through a discussion on cross-cultural effectiveness after watching the excellent movie "God Grew Tired of Us".
• Val Boudreau led us through an assessment of our priorities in life and whether we are really living our lives by them.
• Dave Leach hosted his ever-popular annual game of Microfinance Jeopardy!
• We played games from Mexico and Nigeria and had a blast!

It was a weekend of transformation - in our own lives, and eventually the lives we hope to touch through Christian microfinance and the ministry of PEER Servants. Thanks for your support to make it possible!

Five Years (and Counting) Since John Hancock

Todd: June 11, 2009 marked the fifth anniversary of my leaving John Hancock and focusing full-time on PEER Servants responsibilities. It has been a very full and fun five years! The occasion offers an opportunity to reflect back on God's faithfulness and some highlights while looking ahead to where we go from here.

I still get asked if I miss the corporate world. As much as I enjoyed it, the answer is definitely no! I have not for even a second questioned my decision to transition to focusing full-time on empowering the materially poor and doing so in a manner that strengthens the materially rich spiritually and socially. God's timing was perfect.

Since leaving John Hancock, we have been able to grow PEER Servants by adding more volunteers, full-time staff, and committed board members. We have trained our volunteers to better serve our microfinance partners. We have helped more of our microfinance partners become sustainable, thereby enabling them to cover their own expenses of operations, and transformational, being a means through which economic, social, and spiritual transformation can be experienced by a growing number of the materially poor. We have gathered all of our microfinance partners in South Africa (2004) and Peru (2007) for powerful times of training and encouragement. The Walk for Economic Empowerment started in 2006 and has been held annually ever since, raising loan capital for thousands to be blessed. There are many times we wished we could have accomplished more, but we rest in what God has achieved through us and wrestle with new ways we can approach this high calling to more effectively extend His Kingdom.

As excited as we have been with these past five years, we see them just as a springboard for the years to come. This year, our Walk for Economic Empowerment will expand from being just a PEER Servants walk in Boston to a walk representing three organizations involved in Christian microfinance (World Relief, Hope International, and PEER Servants) in four locations (DC/Baltimore, Charlotte, and Columbus (OH), in addition to Boston). Next year we will bring all of our microfinance partners to Boston for Reciprocity 2010 - what could become our largest sponsored event yet! Our goal is to focus on those microfinance partners that have proven their ability to offer sustainable transformation to the materially poor.

I thank God for the 20 years at John Hancock. The income from John Hancock is what provided the savings Les and I have been able to live on these past five wonderful years of ministry. Now we will transition to raising our personal financial support through PEER Servants. Our salary will be a small sliver of what it had been at John Hancock. The same faithful God that has led us this far will certainly meet all of our needs. If you would like to be part of our financial support team, we'd love to hear from you!

Taking a Break

Leslie/Todd: Life rarely slows down for us, and we love it! With the combination of overseeing a growing ministry, running the "Hotel E" (what our friends call our home given the number and frequency of our house guests), and investing in a number of people's lives, we don't get many opportunities to take a break. We thank God that the last week of May offered such an opportunity!


We had the pleasure of taking Todd's parents to southeastern Michigan for the wedding of one their 20+ grandchildren (our nephew). As this picture attests, on the way we made a stop at Niagara Falls. From the wedding we went to Newaygo, Michigan to visit with former next-door-neighbors, Lin and Jack Titus, and their beautiful family. It was a very special trip and one we will long cherish.


We have been tremendously blessed to have been raised by godly Christian parents. Les's parents are also committed followers of Christ. Seeing their examples made it very easy for us to understand the blessings of following Jesus. They are just one of countless ways we are blessed by God. It brings us great joy when we can be the means through which we can pass their blessings on to others.

Microfinance, Missions, Materialism, and Microinsurance

Leslie/Todd: April was a month of speaking engagements! We thank God for the opportunities to be involved in the following…

• Perspectives Course: Speaking at North Shore Community Baptist Church in Beverly, MA and Park Street Church in Boston, MA on Christian Community Development within the course “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.”


• Microfinance and Missions: Speaking at South Baptist Church in Laconia, NH on “Microfinance and Missions” as part of their annual Missions Conference.


• Materialism Sunday School Class: Speaking on two consecutive Sundays at Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA on “Materialism: Rich and Poor” as part of the “World-Sized Issues: Living Christianly” series.


• Gordon College: Speaking at Gordon College in Wenham, MA for two classes - “Global Issues for the Global Church” and “World Religions.”


• Microinsurance: Speaking at the Hope International Directors Retreat in Lancaster, PA on “Microinsurance”.
  

In all of these but the Microinsurance talk, we tag team in the speaking. We enjoy working together to present the material but know how we present - in this case as a mixed race couple — will be more memorable than what we present for the average person in the audience. Our hope and prayer is that will stick with the listener and the Holy Spirit will encourage them to apply it in some way to their own lives long after they have forgotten anything we said.
Preparing for and delivering these different talks in addition to our regular hectic PEER Servants schedules led to a very demanding but rewarding April. We had to be dependent on the Holy Spirit to speak through us, and our hope and prayer is that is what He did.

Reciprocity 2010

Leslie: If you want to make someone in PEER Servants smile, just say, “Kopano” or “Ricchari.” Those are two of our favorite words because they remind us of special gatherings we’ve truly enjoyed with our microfinance partners from all around the world.

In 2004 we gathered in South Africa at a conference we called Kopano (which means unity in a couple of the South African languages). It was a beautiful time of celebrating our oneness in Christ as we taught and learned from each other on how to build micro-finance programs that can have a greater impact for Christ in our world.

In 2007 we gathered in Peru at a conference called Ricchari (which means Awakening in the Quechua language). At that conference we were challenged to awaken to God’s vision for economic empowerment as a means of encouraging spiritual and material transformation in our world.

2010 is right around the corner and the PEER Servants microfinance partners and volunteer partners are already buzzing about Reciprocity, which is the name of the third triennial conference which will be held in the New England area in the summer of 2010. This theme comes from one of the core values of PEER Servants which is “The Reign of Reciprocity.” God has opened our eyes to the fact that He has created us for each other. He has gifted our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world in ways which can strengthen us in our commitment to serve Him; likewise, He has gifted us in different but complementary ways which can strengthen them in their commitment to serve Him. As we all bring to the table those gifts that God has given us, we all go from the table enriched to better accomplish the reason for which we were all created – to glorify Him and enjoy His presence forever!

I am serving as the Reciprocity 2010 conference planning coordinator. There are a host of volunteers that will be working together to make this conference a reality in such areas as helping our partners get visas and plane tickets, arranging for host families, securing a conference venue, inviting speakers, preparing for workshops, seminars, recreation, outreach and worship, organizing technical support, funding, translation, publications, and more.

One of the key speakers for the Reciprocity 2010 conference is a pastor from Nairobi Kenya named Oscar Muriu. God has given him deep insights into how we as a global family can draw from each others strengths to serve Christ more effectively and respond to the unique challenges facing our generation. We will also have workshops led by our microfinance partner in the Philippines as they share lessons learned in running one of the most spiritually, economically and socially transformational micro-finance programs we have ever seen.

At some point during the conference, we are envisioning a special event where people from the greater Boston area will gather to hear our partners share their experiences of following Christ in very challenging circumstances. When PEER Servants volunteers visit our microfinance partners they always come back home amazed by such things as the perseverance and hope of our brothers and sisters from areas affected by civil war such as southern Sudan and south Asia, the joy of the Lord and strong community that we see in our brothers and sisters from the Philippines and Brazil, the eagerness to forgive that we observe in South Africa, and the boldness and generosity of the Nigerians in evangelism and world missions despite economic limitations. The church here in the US has much to receive.

Pray with us that God will use Reciprocity 2010 to equip and empower our micro-finance partners, volunteer partners and all others who participate in the conference to appreciate all that He has invested in each of us to serve one another. Hebrews 10:24 tells us to think of ways to motivate one other to acts of love and good works. I believe there will be a lot of this at Reciprocity 2010 and that as a result we will all see Christ more clearly and serve Him for effectively.

Strategic Times in South Africa

Todd: PEER Servants’ biggest initiative in 2009 is called our “Strategic Training Initiative” (STI). We are working closely with our MP in the Philippines, The Center for Community Transformation, to tell their story and incorporate appropriate training of how they grew to become one of the largest indigenous, autonomous Christian MFIs in the world. Phase 1 of STI was for a team of three CCT staff to visit Aloga Financial Services, PEER Servants’ South African MP, and Good Seed Enterprise Development, PEER Servants’ Nigerian MP, in February 2009. I joined PEER Servants volunteers Joseph Tucker Edmonds (STI Team Leader), Jesse Ratichek, and Patrice Gopo in South Africa; Jesse continued on to Nigeria with the CCT team. The weeks in South Africa and Nigeria were used by God to inspire both MFIs to all they could become in extending God’s Kingdom and to better understand some of the next steps they need to take to become high impact organizations like CCT.

While in South Africa, Aloga Financial Services celebrated their most recent Lydia Award winner, Lilly Storom (next to me). Lilly, an Aloga client, owns and manages an amazing daycare in Mamelodi that provides almost 90 3-6 year olds with a great education. As the children hear that Jesus loves them, their lives and those of their family members are being transformed. Aloga has had many successful clients — joining Lilly at her celebration were 2004 Lydia Award winner Flydah Mdhluli (middle in picture), and 2007 Lydia Award winner, Claudie Mashiane (to the right). Matsha Makena (far right), Aloga Managing Director, was praised by all three award recipients for the level of service his staff and he offer to them. (The Lydia Award is given annually by PEER Servants to recognize the top 2-3 of the thousands of entrepreneurs who receive loans from PEER Servants’ MPs. It is named after Lydia, the entrepreneur selling purple cloth/dye in Acts 16, who supported St. Paul and his missionary companions as they traveled through the area.)

It wasn’t all work and no play while in South Africa (although I am known to keep a pretty tight and demanding schedule for PEER Servants volunteers on these trips!). The entire team took a day retreat to visit the Pilanesberg Game Reserve and saw God’s amazing creatures — a charging bull elephant, a family of rhinos, a pride of twelve playful lions, and this beautiful herd of more than a dozen giraffes. We had been praying that since this may be the only time our brother and sisters from the Philippines would be able to see African game in person, that God would lead the animals to show up. As is so often the case, God answered our prayers in ways that exceeded what we could think or imagine!, God answered our prayers in ways that exceeded what we could think or imagine!