For three weeks in November, we get the chance to participate in Be Rich, a movement to unleash generosity and make a difference in our communities both locally and globally. During Be Rich our goal is to take intentional steps to give, serve, and love in hopes of encouraging others to continue to do so throughout the year.
One of the most exciting parts about Be Rich is Sponsorship Weekend, where we get to hear how our church’s sponsorship communities around the world are impacted through our generosity and desire to show God’s love to others.
As a church, each of our LCBC locations sponsors a community around the world through our Global Initiatives team. In order to build relationships with these communities and see firsthand the vision behind our partnership with them, we offer Sponsorship Trips to our communities throughout the year.
Stacy Martz from LCBC Columbia-Montour and Michael Welgosh from LCBC Hazleton traveled to their sponsorship community in Kenscoff, Haiti this past July, where they partnered with Food for the Hungry. They worked alongside the community there and had the opportunity to meet their sponsored children.
“You’ll never truly grasp what someone else goes through to survive if you don’t go and experience it for yourself,” explains Stacy. “We walked with children as they went to get water for their families; we walked the paths they traverse just to get to church. My first sponsored child, Rosederline, walks over an hour to where she is picked up to go to school. Here in America, there is no way to accurately describe what these people face every day.”
Michael describes his experience as extremely humbling as he took part in a meeting of leaders from several Kenscoff communities on the primary challenges that each community faces. “After listening to several leaders share, common themes developed—broken educational systems, lack of healthcare, no access to clean water...challenges that none of our team members could comprehend or appreciate at any authentic level.”
Traveling to Haiti and being present in the lives of the communities that they’re working to support gave both Stacy and Michael hands-on experience as well as a perspective that they would have never had otherwise.
