Jeans Offering

This blog is far overdue, and a bit longwinded, but I assure you, I'm giving you the reader's digest version! To get a better grasp, you might want to go the blogs I have highlighted. They offer more insight. You're also reading my perspective of the story; so let me assure you that there are many better versions and back-stories. Anyway, I promise to get another blog out next week (a much shorter one!) about the Ukrainian trip last week in which God allowed history-making things to happen for His namesake. But now: an overdue story that I can't wait to tell you all about.


It all started back in November when Jennifer was told through an adoption agency about a group of siblings from Ethiopia who desperately needed a home. Due to their older ages, for these kids to be adopted would be no small miracle. As always, Jenn wants to save the entire world by inviting everyone in it to live with us, so her first response was to adopt them immediately. I had to be the heavy who pushed the pause button. By the way, this happens all the time in our home. If Jenn had her way, our home would look like the United Nations, filled with children from all across the world. As for me, I’m a little slower to act on every adoption need that comes our way. Anyway, back to the Kinfe siblings’ story...


The two sisters and one brother had been blogged about because of their two-week visit to the United States last summer. Through a program that allows orphans to visit the U.S., these 17-, 16-, and 15-year old teenagers had captured the heart of their host family in a powerful way. Although the host family was not led to adopt the siblings since they had just finished their own adoption of a little girl, they were heralding the Kinfe's need for a home by writing about their visit. It was obvious that God had placed these beautiful Ethiopian children with a Christ-centered family that had a broken heart for the 200 million orphans of the world. Especially them. (Click here to read Paige's endearing blog not only about the Kinfe kids, but the adoption of their own little girl from Ethiopia)


Jennifer had been reading the blog and keeping up with the situation of the Knife siblings for several months. Jennifer's concern was backed with the urgent need to have Aschalo (the 17 year old boy) adopted before his 18th birthday. After that, he would not be eligible to be adopted. If he were adopted, Jenn told me on several occasions, then maybe Aschalo can get some assistance to go to college. Aschalo had shown interest in wanting to be a chemist one day. The blogs about him gave Jennifer insight that that dream was impossible in his present condition.


Then came Christmas, and our trip to Rome and Paris. During that trip, my dad generously gave five crisp, 100 dollar bills to each person in the family as a Christmas gift. A few days later, while in a cab in Paris, Jennifer informed me that she and the kids felt as though God wanted them to give their Christmas gift money to start a scholarship fund for Aschalo’s college dreams. After some discussion, I agreed and pledged to match any funds they gave with a gift from D. Nasser Outreach as well. The goal was to raise funds to allow Aschalo to go to college, even if he were never adopted. All that said, this was much more on the front burner for Jenn and the kids than for me. The Kinfes’ were Jenn's passion, and I was there as backseat support.


Fast forward a few weeks later, to Martin Luther King holiday weekend. What a tragic weekend that turned out to be. A friend of mine lost his 2-year old son in a drowning accident. I had only met little Bronner Burgess once, but it didn't matter. It felt as though we had lost one of our own. We all mourned this loss with the Burgess family. Rick, Sherry, and the rest of the Burgesses allowed their loss to be used in such a powerful way. What Satan meant for evil, God used for good. The goodness and grace of God in the midst of sorrow was so evident as the Burgess family used their very public lives to minister to people in the midst of their loss.


On Tuesday, January 22, Jennifer and I, along with thousands of others, gathered together for the memorial service. What an anointed time. The presence of God filled the room as we worshiped the Lord in the midst of such a storm. As Rick spoke at the memorial about the Gospel, priorities, and the gift of children, my heart was both filled and retuned. (Click here to see Rick speak at the memorial) Sadly, I had a flight to catch and had to walk out of the memorial service early to head to the airport. I was flying to Lynchburg, Virginia, to speak for Liberty University's Spiritual Emphasis Week. I sat on the plane with my heart filled to overflowing from what I had experienced at Bronner's memorial service. I got out my Bible, a note pad, and began to write new revelations for a neglected message I had written years before out of James 1:27. This was a message that I had never really embraced or preached a lot. But for some reason, the loss of Bronner, our time of worship at the memorial service, and Rick's sermon had rekindled the passage and this old message back to my heart.


On the second night of Spiritual Emphasis Week in Lynchburg, I decided to preach my newly resurrected sermon out of James 1:27. In the middle of the message the Lord gave me a mandate. I sensed the Holy Spirit urging me to call the 3,500 students in the audience to something practical and applicable about God’s call in James 1:27. The passage basically tells us to care for the widows and orphans in the world. I have to admit, stuff like this doesn't happen to me often, but I was sure that the Lord was speaking to me as clear as day. "Take an offering and give it to orphans and widows," God told me. In obedience, I told the students what God was calling us to do corporately. We called it the "Jeans Offering." I asked the students to come back the next night and to bring the financial equivalence to the pair of jeans that they were wearing that night. That way everyone was called to equal sacrifice, not equal amount. I told them the funds given would be divided to go three ways: locally to widows, domestically to strangers, and internationally to orphans. At that moment, the Kinfe kids where nowhere in my mind, but after the service, when the Liberty University leadership and I began to strategize about what we wanted to see happen with the offering, it quickly hit me that the Kinfe kids were orphans who possibly could receive help. “Maybe this is one of the reasons God had placed them in our path for the last few months,” I thought and prayed.


The next morning after much prayer and consideration, the Liberty leadership team decided unanimously that 1/3 of whatever was given would be allocated to help in funding the adoption of the Kinfe siblings. That night, right before the offering, I showed the children's picture to the audience, explained their situation, and after praying for them, we asked the students to not only give graciously for them, but also for the other 2/3 of the offering that would go to widows and strangers in the world. Our goal was so much bigger than physical needs being met. We wanted to see the redemptive work of Christ done through these funds, not just charitable social work.


In the next day and a half, the students at Liberty generously gave, and gave, and gave, and gave, and gave... an amazing offering that totaled $85,000 at first and then neared $93,000! The offering buckets were filled with actual currency from not only the U.S, but also the Ukraine, China, Canada, and even Ethiopia. Some gave their checks from work, some their Starbucks cards, some their own Christmas money. That night I put in our Nasser family's Christmas gift money as well. There were literally hundreds of letters and cards attached to many of the offerings. Most were for the Kinfe kids. Some students burned Ethiopian worship CDs they wanted delivered to the Kinfes. I even saw a few handmade necklaces as gifts for the two Kinfe sisters. I had never seen James 1:27 brought to life like this.


Best of all, thousands of us began to pray for "big" things to happen through the "big" offering. (Click here to read the Liberty article about the offering)


Then came the calm before the storm. In the next few weeks, the Nasser's sat and prayed about discernment and wisdom about the Kinfes. The adoption agency had a few signs of interest, but none that looked promising. We had begun to pray about adopting them ourselves, but due to different circumstances, we could not get a peace about it no matter how much we tried to convince ourselves. A few more weeks passed and then on the 23rd of February, I was in Inman, South Carolina speaking at an event, when afterwards several different Liberty University students approached me, curious about the latest news on the Kinfes. After the event, Jenn and I were riding in the hotel elevator and I told her about my conversations with the inquiring students. As we were walking down the hallway to our room, we both agreed that if the Kinfe's were not being adopted by summer, we would go ahead and pursue them ourselves (fyi: we weren't planning on taking the money given if we adopted them—we would have given it toward someone else's adoption.) I walked in the hotel room, and ten minutes later checked my email and read the amazing news. The Kinfes had found a home! Not just any home, but an amazing one at that!


In the audience at Liberty the night we took the offering sat Kristin Wolfe. She and her family had been praying about adopting older children, and Kristin knew that these three might be the ones. In the next month, God began to confirm in the Wolfe family that these were the children for them. I am thrilled to announce that the Wolfe family has officially begun their paper work to adopt the Kinfe kids. The email was a link to their site, letting us know that they were called by God to adopt these precious teenagers. (Click here to read their journey so far. Warning, tear-jerker alert!)


The remainder of the "jeans" offering has now been designated as well. Outside of local ministry in Lynchburg, the funds are being spent to assist a couple of medical teams in upcoming trips to the Amazon and to the Andes mountains. There are also funds going to India in efforts to help with widows and orphans in that nation. Last, but certainly not least, some of the funds will be used to build a hope center in Uganda.


I write all this to testify that the God of this universe is sovereign over all things. He orchestrates His plan in ways that reveal to us His glory in magnificent ways. God uses all things for good, and I am just so thankful that we got to play a tiny, tiny, role in His “big” story. Sole de Gloria.