Archive for the 'Your Perspective' Category

By Dave Atkins
As I hop out of the white van, I pretend not to see her. I’ve been here before; I know her name and she knows mine. It’s a game we play.
So I look about, calling for her, “Sharon?  Sharon?” Of course I see her. She’s standing 10 feet in front of me, grinning, [...]

Twenty-five years ago I was adopted by my parents. Little did I know that from that moment on the Lord was molding and teaching me for my first ‘real’ job. I use the term job very loosely because it really has become my heart and life mission helping at-risk children and orphans who aren’t as [...]

A Mother and Daughter’s Perspective on Serving Together

We’re all a piece of the quilt
A year ago last spring, my daughter Jenny asked me to go with her to Guatemala on the mother-daughter mission trip. She wanted me to see first-hand the reason she is so passionate about her work with Buckner. Of course, I had read [...]

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. 
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. 
 
 
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 [...]