Archives for August 2011

Backyard Party for Africa Bags

August 31, 2011 by admin

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

As I have been writing this week, I’ve been seriously praying (and fasting) once a week for our Global Bag Projectin Nairobi, Kenya. There a handful of African women are sewing artisan reusable shopping bags, which we are attempting to market and sell in the States.

Mary Ogalo, Project Coordinator of Global Bag Project Kenya, has a vision to employ some 1,000 women. There is no shortage of women-power, mothers who are desperate to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. The tagline for the Global Bag Project is: Buy a Bag. Feed a Family. Preserve the Planet. In just these few words, our mission is made clear.

Global Bag Project

Until website sales kick in, we are dependent upon friends and colleagues to hold small home or office parties and help us find markets for these beautiful products, cloth bags made out of East Africa indigenous fabric, the kanga cloth.

In case you’re wondering if these bags are actually well made, two nights ago, a woman came to me and said, “I teach domestic arts at the local college. These bags are beautifully constructed. I’m impressed.”—There you are!

Last month we received an e-vite to a summer backyard party thrown yearly by some friends. A companion phone call from the husband said,” We would like to have a small table for the Global Bag Project. Would you mind setting the table up in our garage?”

So, at an intimate backyard part for neighbors, work colleagues, and friends, without any presentation, we sold about $400 worth of bags! The Africa bags are beautifully made and, given half a chance, sell themselves.

This, however, has made me think of all the people who have stepped forward, never having met our work colleagues in the slums of Nairobi, to help these women help themselves.

The church I spoke at this week is thinking of holding a November meeting with the women’s ministry and presenting the Global Bag Project.

A church in Wheaton, Wheaton Bible Church, has ordered 50 medium-sized bags for a women’s retreat. A church in Vancouver has taken GBP on as a standing ministry and has sold dozens of bags. A college gal from that church took the bags onto her campus and sent us a surprisingly large check from those sales. One woman bought bags to give as gifts to friends; this was a memorial to her sister who died from cancer.

Countless people have held parties in their homes. Individuals have given gifts to buy the dual- power, commercial-grade sewing machines GBP provides for women who have passed their training and need a home machine in order to continue.

All this makes me think of the quote from the anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

God works through exceptional AND ordinary individuals. But He really, really loves to work through exceptional AND ordinary groups of people.

I spy God!

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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Africa Bags SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

August 30, 2011 by admin

Most small-business startups die because they don’t have enough capitalization. I understand this personally, as we struggle to grow the Global Bag Project. Very simply, we don’t have enough money to do what we would like to do. And, we are at that awkward stage where we are still so immature as an organization that we can’t go after money to help us make money.

Imagine my surprise and relief when we were approached by a small foundation that exists to fill this exact gap—helping new startup charities get beyond their first big blockade. “What is it you need to do next that will help you grow?” they asked us.

Our answer was obvious: “We need to optimize the Internet to drive bag sales to and through our website.” We have some website traffic, but this is mostly our friends and acquaintances who are checking us out. We would like to do at least $1,000 a month in online sales, but there is a whole Internet science that exists to help us do that.

So—a $300 loan per month was given toward this goal. Several donors matched part of this loan and my son, Randall, who owns a new Internet marketing group that also works with 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations, made the total sum stretch as far as possible, using overseas staff, cutting his fee, and choosing four major areas in which they would all work.

“This is not going to happen fast, Mom,” my son explained. “Big companies have big money to throw behind this process. It will probably be as much as seven months or so before we see any results. We’re kind of putt-putting along at 30 miles per hour toward our goal.”

After conducting a strategic keyword search that yielded intensive results—pages and pages—we decided that the niche that would give us the most real estate on the Internet was the term, “Africa bags.” Consequently, these blogs I am writing are filled with that term. I’ve done this so the major search engines like Google and Bing will pick up that term and boost our presence on the first pages for people who are searching for Africa bags.

As of now, because of Randall’s team, the loan from the Alive & Well Foundation, and the help of a handful of donors, the Global Bag Project is now on the first page of Google for anyone searching for Africa bags, and on the first page of Yahoo and Bing for anyone searching for Africa reusable bags.

This loan came to us from out of the blue. Randall Mains has become a master at navigating Internet optimization. Not only are we taking over first pages through the search-engine process, Ma. Gladys P. Nejudne in the Philippines has become our account manager and is placing us on the top 100 Local Internet Listings Directories, is project directing for the monthly Global Bag Project e-newsletter, and holding us all deadline accountable. She is also researching which online marketplaces would be best to feature our reusable Africa bag product line.

I spy God. This is all way beyond my ken or capabilities. I am grateful for His help to help us help women help themselves!

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Eight Africa Bag Makers

August 29, 2011 by admin

Many nights I lay awake reminding myself, “We have some eight women in Nairobi, Kenya who are supporting themselves and their families through the sales of reusable cloth shopping bags.” This is a thought that keeps me praying.

The Global Bag Project began in 2009 with a handful of women making Africa bags. In our first full year of operation, through sales or donations, we raised about $45,000 worth of funds. We are not quite at the place where we take no overhead expenses from the total, but we are working toward the moment when all the earnings from sales go back to the Africa office.

It is at these moments—when I became haunted by the thoughts that we could become like the typical do-gooder Westerners who jump into projects without really understanding the cultural implications or the limitations of their grand ideas and then bail out—that I find myself not sleeping.

It is then I am reminded that this idea to help the poor help themselves was not just our idea, but that God is always the Initiator of many grand schemes that have made a difference in this suffering world.

In his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, Rick Stearns points out that because of the determined, coordinated effort of collaborating organizations and individuals:

Life expectancy in developing nations increased from 46 years in 1960 to 66.1 years in 2005.
The under-five mortality rate has been cut in half since 1970.
Preventable child deaths have fallen 50 percent since 1960 from more than 20 million per year to fewer than 10 million.
The percentage of the world’s people classified as hungry has been reduced from 33 to 18 percent over the past 40 years.
The percentage of people with access to clean water in developing countries went from 35 percent in 1975 to 80 percent in 2007.

Change does happen.

So, I lie abed at night thinking about the eight women in Nairobi who look to us to market their reusable artisan shopping bags in the States—and I think of the thousands of other women who yearn for work so they can feed their children, pay the rent, buy school uniforms, and meet the tuition bills.

That’s when I start praying to the God who declares His concern for the poor, “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done” Proverbs 19:17. I have decided this is a huge project, beyond my abilities. So, I have begun to fast one day a week for our bag-maker friends and for our joint venture, this Africa bag project.

I spoke in a church in West Lafayette, Indiana two nights ago. The topic was on deepening our friendships. I shared that one of the ways I had deepened some of my friendships was by working across oceans and continents with women who have a shared vision. It was one of four points. I showed the video clip of Mary Nduta, our first bag-maker. We sold $545 worth of bags that night!

I spy God. And, I would like to thank Him for answering my prayer. I am fasting again this week.

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Travel Plans and Agents

August 12, 2011 by admin

Oh, life’s little frustrations!

A friend offered to underwrite a trip to Italy by covering the expenses for four of us—he and his wife and my husband and me. That in itself is a wondrous gift. But, the fact that it is our 50th year of marriage and we are still healthy enough to travel makes this a double blessing. The reason he volunteered such generous underwriting is because he received some inheritance money earlier than expected, and the four of us have been talking about taking this trip together for a decade.

Our friends have traveled with us when we took a tour of 36 people to Spain to visit the sites of the Spanish mystics. Our friends traveled with us to France when we took 22 people to discover “God Through the Eyes of the Artist and the Artist in the Eyes of God.” And the four of us ended up in Vienna on the 2nd Sunday of Advent for a week, roaming the Christmas markets and attending free classical concerts in the churches of this historically musical event.

“We want to go to Italy,” said this well-traveled friend, “but we want to go with you. I’ll pay for it if you will plan it.” I suspect the generous underwriting came because there was some suspicion I would never get around to it. The bad world economy had frightened me into not attempting any more risky travel adventures.

I’ve written a book in which I used Michelangelo’s Pietàs as a metaphor for mercy, and my initial plan was to visit the earliest Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica at Rome, the Florentine Pietà in the Duomo Museum in Florence, and the last Pietà, the Rondanini in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. My plan was to use the book Comforting One Another as a major theme for our journey through Italy.

However, none of the travel agents I’d worked with in years past were any longer available. They had either quit the travel industry, moved to other agencies, or were unable to work outside the country where we had enjoyed the benefits of their specialized competencies. I left messages and received no callbacks.

Finally, getting a little panicky (I didn’t want to make a random selection with a company that was not established or without a recommendation from a traveler who had used them—horror stories abound about tourists losing their funds when a company goes under), I turned to one of the members of our small group. His enterprise treks young people all over the world for the purpose of developing leadership through adventurous travel.

“Oh, Kim!” he answered. “We’ve used Kim for decades. She knows what she’s doing. She’s local. We’ve been most satisfied with her. Also, she knows Italy. Her daughter lived there.” He even knew Kim’s phone number by heart.

Not only do we sometimes not ask God for what we need, but we forget to ask the people we know who often love and respect us and want to help in any way they can. God often helps us through our friends. (And, how often we neglect to recognize their help as coming from Him.)

Our Italy trip seems to be in capable hands (with someone who returns my phone calls and e-mails right away!).

I spy God!

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Seeing Caitlyn

August 11, 2011 by admin

Caitlyn, our eldest grandchild, is 18 and starts college at Indiana Wesleyan University. She’s received a soccer and an academic scholarship. And, because she’s so far from home, Phoenix, I have been hoping we would be able to get down from Chicago to see her frequently enough to be a support in that tenuous freshman year of adjustment.

When the daughter of a high-school friend (whom I haven’t seen in ages) called to ask me to speak for a women’s event in her church in Lafayette, Indiana, I was immediately concerned to see whether I could fit this date onto my August calendar.

“Will you drive down or fly?” I was asked. Oh, drive—by the time you get yourself to the airport for these short trips, wait at the gate, fly out, pick up baggage, and drive to your destination, you might as well have taken your own car. The travel time is generally about even, if not shorter.

It was only when I e-mailed my contact that I could accept this invitation, and Map Quested the miles and directions, that I thought, Oh, Caitlyn! Maybe I can pop on to Indianapolis and catch her somewhere in a gap between her soccer practices.

I quickly cell-phone-caught Kit (as her brothers and friends now call her—it used to be Kay-Kay). “When are you arriving at school?” Next week. “Tell me about your roommate (a sister soccer-team member). How are you set for clothes?”

I suddenly realized that Kit (let’s face it: I will probably always call her Katy) would be on campus a full three weeks before classes. With this speaking invitation to Lafayette, about 45 minutes from IWU (learning the lingo here), my expenses would be covered. So, I could visit with my granddaughter (and said roommate). What an unexpected gift! Not only that, but I might even have some money to blow from book sales and a small honorarium for a warm winter wardrobe to help Caitlyn endure our Midwestern winters.

One of the categories we teach people to examine in order to find God is what we call “unusual linkage or timing”—those events in life when we are prone to exclaim, “What an amazing circumstance!” But, there are no such things as “circumstances” when we live within the embrace of a loving God who oversees and participates in the everyday progression of our lives.

I get to see Caitlyn in a couple of weeks because someone in Lafayette, Indiana, thought I would be good to invite to speak to their women’s event.

Yeah God!

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Robins in our Birdbath

August 10, 2011 by admin

Sometimes I forget to practice Mother Teresa’s admonition, “Pray before you do anything.”

I know this to be a truth that works. No matter how mundane the task or how ordinary the need, I need to practice, practice praying before I venture forward, so that this spiritual discipline becomes habitual.

The birdbath in the front patio garden has been defying me. Simply, it is broken again. Two summers back, I removed all the fountain apparatus, caulked cracks and chinks, ran a new plastic tube through the base, and replaced the pump. Voila! I had a functioning fountain that sent up a delightful spray some six inches high and bubbled into the basin below.

The robins immediately took up residence in this moving water. When the pump was on, it was nothing to look out the living-room windows and see five to ten birds vying for their turn in the bath. Their antics were hilarious.

I learned to identify the dominant robins who took over the highest section of the fountain where the water sprayed up. Certain well-worn phrases took on a new currency: “pecking order” came to mind. “Birds of a feather flock together” was another. There were no nuthatches or cardinals fluttering in and out of the water of the fountain. No, this was definitely the robins’ watering-place. They took it over and ruled it as a mass.

Last summer, the fountain died again. Disgusted when it appeared that the pump had died, I didn’t take any time to figure out what had really gone wrong. I bought a new fountain pump at my favorite gardening-supply store, but when I got home, I realized I had purchased a table pump, the configuration of which would not fit in my outside base.

So last summer, I just gave up. We were doing enough projects in the yard. I did order a fountain with a solar pump, which is nice, but it only works in direct sunlight. It went in the backyard garden. Needless to say, we had no robins flying in and out, dive-bombing into the basin, and pecking one another to mark out territorial imperatives. The garden outside my front windows was decidedly lacking without this avian activity.

Two days ago, I bought another pump, but again could not figure out how to thread the thick plug through the plastic line in the base. Oh, God. I breathed that prayer for help at last. Help me to figure this out and get this stupid pump working again.

I decided to check out the porch outlet. It was not working, so I went down to the basement, flipped the switch, came back upstairs, plugged in the new pump, and finally had electricity. Then, I attached an extension cord to the old pump still in my silent fountain and it worked! Aha! Maybe it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe the circuit breaker had simply blown and I hadn’t taken the time to check it. But, did it have enough juice to shoot up a spray of water?

I took the hose, scrubbed off two summers’ worth of debris from the fountain, washed down the front-porch bench, and noticed when I plugged the cord back in that a small shock spit from the outlet. Sure enough, the little motor refused to chug—dead again. I went downstairs to the basement, flicked the circuit breaker, came upstairs, and lo and behold, my little fountain was pumping water again, happily bubbling as though it hadn’t taken a one-year summer hiatus.

This morning I worked early in that garden, and when I’m digging or weeding, raking and deadheading, I love to hear the sound of the fountain. So, I turned it on before I went out the front door. Two hours later, done with my tasks, I took a one-mile walk, came home, greeted my husband, and then looked out the front windows to make sure my temperamental pump apparatus was still working. The robins had returned.

“Oh, David, come here! Watch this.” He had never been home when the flock watered themselves in the moving water. We laughed together at their antics and one of us commented, “It’s nice to provide a happy place like this, isn’t it.”

Pray before you do anything. When I remember to do this, I am often surprised by the amazing results. A “God Hunt Sighting” to be sure!

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Camelot Redux

August 9, 2011 by admin

Our 50th wedding anniversary was celebrated in the Union Hall in the middle of the city of Chicago, where David and I planted a church some 44 years ago in 1967. Back then we were a bunch of young adults, concerned about the state of our society, who believed we could discover ways in which the Gospel of Christ would become the answer to all those ills.

For the ten years that David served as senior pastor, we were framed by the crucial dialogue of idealist young adults who considered the impact of Scripture in relationship to the feminist conversation in secular culture, to the angry demonstrations in the streets and on campuses against the war in Vietnam, to the systemic causes of poverty, and to the civil-rights movement as it turned from a peaceful resistance protest birthed by revival in the black American church to a secular militant insurrection.

This 50th Anniversary/Reunion celebration was wondrous. We met in the Teamster’s Union Hall (Local 705)—which these days was a little shabby around the edges and 44 years ago had been fresh with new paint and a recent renovation. In both cases, however, we were given the hall to use, rent-free, if we would just pay the janitor’s fee. Being in that hall again was evocative and brought forth memories of a time when creativity was uninhibited by tradition, when we were all young and idealistic, when we sang and danced and worshiped together in meaningful and free ways, when because of our dialogue of faith we grew spiritually by leaps and bounds and dared to believe that through the power of the Gospel, the church could be relevant and could make meaningful progress in curing some of society’s ills.

Much to our surprise, some 200 people gathered from all parts of the country—the faces in the a cappella choir were actually the same faces we used to look out on 40 years before—the vaulted, della robia-plastered ceiling reverberated with four-part harmony and we remembered again the days when we had dared to dream. We couldn’t believe that we were seeing people we hadn’t seen in decades, or that we were able to hear about what they had done in the intervening years with the dream we had once shared.

What was missing were the black Americans who had worked with us to create an open church committed to overcoming the racial divides that separates much of society with hatred and prejudice and stereotypical thinking. Once we had been a church with an interracial congregation and staff, but toward the end of David’s tenure as senior pastor, there had been a collapse in our dialogue complicated by confusion in our understanding of one another, and the blacks had separated themselves from the rest of the congregation and that dream died.

We were like the play Camelot, which had been mounted during our Circle Church years and was scooped up by the Kennedy administration, to describe the magic and idealism and beauty of youth that dares to commit itself to a utopian ideal—in our case, one that was driven by what we saw described in the New Testament as the Kingdom of God—and like utopian idealists throughout time, the world over, in our youthful fervor we had not accounted for our own frailties, the fault lines that run through each individual character or through the social systems created by people hoping to make a difference.

How do we respond at the reminder that, as the words from the song say, “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot”?

I have learned to hold these temporary perfect places to my heart and thank God that I lived to be part of them—no matter how brief. They are promises of Eden restored, of a world where harmony and justice rule, where there is no more systemic poverty or rapaciousness, the utopian dream at last come true—Paradise again on earth.

And for one brief shining moment, an earthly Camelot reigned, and it turned my heart and mind and soul to what will one day be again. And I was present. I was there.

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Theatre Days

August 8, 2011 by admin

For the last 37 years, David and I have traveled annually to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. During that time we’ve hauled our kids, extended family members, friends, and work colleagues, hoping they’d enjoy the theatrical treasures of North America’s largest and world-class repertory company.

For some, this has been a “transforming experience” (as one high-school senior reported this summer). A few of those we’ve exposed to the magic of Stratford have returned regularly on their own. Some others are regulars, returning with us every year. Some have thanked us and never come again. Although the performances are always wondrous, we now receive the most joy in exposing others to this rare and remarkable opportunity and having them love it as much as we do.

As we aged and our income potential became limited, we had to consider the fact that we might just not be able to afford Stratford as part of our regular summer routine. However, before ending the tradition, we offered to make arrangements for 22-26 theatre aficionados to meet us annually in Stratford for a dramatic extravaganza—six plays in five days—Shakespeare and musicals, ancient Greek theatre and contemporary classics. This was a way to cover our costs and to share an experience we loved with people who might also enjoy it.

When we first started hosting Shakespeare in Stratford, just the difference on the currency exchange between the American and Canadian dollar underwrote our tickets and bed-and-breakfast expenses. Then, as the two national economies began to reach parity, and we lost the currency-value advantage, the VAT (a return of retail government taxes to non-citizen tourists) covered our administrative overhead. That incentive was lost when the tourist return tax was canceled. So again, we wondered how long we could afford this beloved Mains’ summer tradition.

Last year, David wearied all of the administrative work of reserving B&B’s, ordering tickets, assigning guests, dealing with cancellations and last-minute sign-ups, spending five days being concerned that everyone enjoyed themselves, showing newcomers around town, and designing breakfast questions dealing with the previous day’s plays. “It’s just too much work,” I heard him say. “I think I’m done with this.”

So our daughter and son-in-law (theatre majors in college) took pity on David and picked up the administrative responsibilities for this year. It wasn’t too long before they too were commenting, “Dad, this is really a lot of work!”—music to a parent’s ears.

Despite this reality, Stratford came off again this July. Half our usual group was unable to attend, which left us with a smaller number, no responsibilities to speak of, and not only that, as a gift for our 50th wedding anniversary, Doug and Melissa covered our expenses—a total turnaround after 37 years of saving money all year in order to be able to treat friends who we suspected would be thrilled with the artistic aesthetic of this remarkable repertory company.

We loved being with the smaller group and not having to worry about helping to absorb newcomers. (Everyone who attended this year has been coming for the last 5-7 years and knew the Stratford routine.) The kids who have come up with their parents or grandparents were old enough now to “do” the town on their own. And, after all these years, our way was underwritten without us having to work for it.

Maybe all this was one of the reasons we felt this was “the best year ever at Stratford.” (I suspect it also had something to do with purely exquisite theatricality, with new artistic directors, with sunny gorgeous summer weather, with a happy theatre party, with beautiful gardens all over town at the height of their July bloom, and with the fact that we could completely concentrate on enjoying all this—also, naps in the afternoons.) We experienced unexpected and happy theatre “daze.”

Thank you, Doug and Melissa, for giving us a break and an incredible 50th-anniversary present. Thank you to our friends who throughout the years have shared the love of this experience with us. Thank you to the grandkids who think Stratford is “awesome.” And thank you to God from whom all good gifts are given.

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Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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