Archive for the 'Your Perspective' Category

LONGVIEW, Texas — Defining moments, you know, those small instances in the day that seem to make everything right; that make every effort worthwhile. I experienced one of these instances just recently during our STARS After-School Program.Â
In between discussing math problems, reminding the students to use encouraging words instead of negative, and keeping them focused [...]

On Saturday I saw poverty. They didn’t warn us.Â
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Saturday morning after a much needed deep sleep after a busy day of travel, we woke up and joined the rest of the group for breakfast. We then started sorting all of the supplies and bags.
We went out to lunch at a place called Rustica. Live [...]

 

By Rachael Brown
A few blocks away from the Buckner Office in Guatemala City is a house with a plastic grass yard, a living room with tile floors and bean bag chairs, and four bedrooms filled with thirteen tiny beds. If you’ve been to Guatemala on a Buckner trip, you probably know the place. It’s the [...]

By Janet Gerow
At first I thought the hardest thing was actually going to Vietnam. The trip was originally planned to go to China, and when we were re-routed for Vietnam due to a swine-flu fear in the other country, I felt rushed and not sure if I was spiritually ready to give my all to [...]

By Jenny Pope
About 100 kilometers east of Addis Ababa is the city of Nazaret, the third largest city in Ethiopia. More than 1 million citizens live here, including an estimated 7,000 teenage prostitutes. This is the reason Buckner/Bright Hope started a job training program here three years ago, and the reason why so many young [...]

By Ashley Green
Buckner Shoes for Orphan Souls Trip Participant
(El Paso, TEXAS) — We were in border towns, known locally as colonias, meaning poor neighborhoods. Poor. A colonia begins as nearly nothing. Homes are made of wooden palettes and cardboard. Again, no exaggeration.
The people construct their homes from anything they can find and slowly build them. [...]

By Suzy Hemming
For the past few years I’ve been putting together Christmas gift boxes for orphans in Peru. It’s a shoebox that I would fill with pens, markers, notebook, hair bows (for the girls), games, deodorant, toothpaste, etc. But probably the most important thing in the box was a letter to the child and a [...]

By Lindsey Rattan
My freshman year in high school, I wrote an essay regarding adoption and the affect adoption can have on a child. The essay covered the specific topic of when to tell a child they are adopted. My conclusion from that particular essay? The earlier, the better. Little did I know then how greatly [...]

By Carla A. Robertson
Buckner Volunteer Missionary to Kenya
On our first day at the Baptist Children’s Center and at the Technical Education Center, we discovered that the sewing center was about more than just sewing.
I realized that Zibora, the sewing instructor, and Agnes, the embroidery teacher, also served as counselors to the women in the [...]

By Jarred Schremmer
Impact, transform, bless, inspire. I was prepared to live out those words when I first walked into the Buckner-run Vickery Wellness Center three years ago. I just didn’t realize that I would be the recipient of them.
Vickery is a community center defined by relationships and, in my mind; it is the embodiment of [...]