Give Back Introduction: The Bible for Dummies

“Love God. Love your neighbor. That’s it. That’s the Bible for Dummies.” I love this quote from Rich Stearns, the president of World Vision USA. It helps to remind me that the things Jesus taught were not all that difficult, even if we do a good job of making it difficult sometimes.

This past week, Real LIFE Foundation conducted its first ever “Helping Others Tour.” 37 participants from New Zealand, Australia, US, Canada and Singapore served as guinea pigs for our “voluntourism” pilot project. This was no sight-seeing tour, although they did get to do some. Instead, we put our voluntourists to work – in 5 days, they participated in our Real LIFE feeding program, conducted a medical and dental mission, did a Habitat for Humanity build in Calauan, Laguna, and got to meet some of our Real LIFE scholars.

It was a LOT of work (especially 5 days before EN2010). But we believe that it was well worth the effort for several reasons.

First, we wanted to give people an introduction to compassion ministries work and the programs of Real LIFE Foundation. Second, I have always thought it a shame that so many foreigners come to a place like Manila and only see the airport, their hotel, and a mall or two (or three)(and Greenhills). We wanted to show these 37 international guests the “real” Philippines – riding out to Calauan and getting to see the beautiful and lush green mountains outside Manila; riding a jeepney and getting to visit the homes of some of our scholars and take merienda with their families; and learning about the colorful history of the Philippines though a walking tour of Intramuros.

The catchphrase of Real LIFE Foundation is “Helping Others Never Goes Out of Style.” We use this to encourage people to think of creative ways they can practically “love their neighbor.” Plus it makes for a really cool t-shirt for our volunteers. This is how we came up with the idea for the “Helping Others Tour.”

So as our voluntourism experiment comes to a close, one of the youngest participants on the tour summed it up best for me. When asked “How do you feel God is calling you to respond to what you’ve experienced during the Helping Others Tour?” nine year old Dawson wrote, “I think that God is calling me to tell others at home. I can encourage them to do the same thing that we have done. I can show them all of the pictures from this trip, and tell them how hard it was for [the poor] to live their daily life. I will be admiring how much faith that all of these people have even when they have so little… I am hoping that more people will do the same thing that we have done.”

Ditto.