*** IMPORTANT UPDATE ***

Since returning from this amazing trip, I have been sharing my journals and other thoughts in a new series called the africa diaries. Check it out and share your thoughts!

Over a year ago, God starting doing some amazing work in my heart. Through some studies with the young adults ministry that I used to lead, and some other personal experiences while blogging, my heart has started to break more and more for those living in extreme poverty around the world.

Somewhere in this work that God has been doing in me, I came across an incredible ministry and group of people called Five Talents International. These guys specialize in microfinance as a solution to poverty. The really cool thing about them is that they not only provide the loans to people, but also the training that they need in order to be successful with it!

The Five Talents team will occasionally lead missions trips to poverty-stricken nations to hold classes on things like Christian entrepreneurship, business planning, marketing, and record keeping. These are all important skills for anyone who is starting a business. And the impact of a program like this is staggering…   loan repayments rates are nearly 100%…   and the impact of a single loan averages at around nine people!

During the last two weeks of May, I will be joining a team from Five Talents on one of these missions trips to Africa! We will be in Kenya for a week teaching these classes to loan recipients, and then we will do the same thing the following week in Uganda. Check out this short video that I put together about what we are doing and why…

[youtube HsIQrHxQZl4 Video :: poverty mission to africa ’09]

While I am there, I plan to share as much as I possibly can about this experience here at bibledude.net. If everything works out okay, I hope to have lots of photos, videos, and personal ‘diary’ notes to share with you all. Even leading up to this trip, I will be focusing a great deal of my content efforts on this topic.

So if this interests you at all, then I encourage you to subscribe now so that you don’t miss a thing! If you have a blog, then you can even get the sidebar widget so that you can share this with all of your readers. Keeping current with the updates is a great way to know how you can pray for this trip and our team.

But I am also asking for financial support. If you would like the opportunity to invest in the fight against poverty, then I encourage you to consider making a donation to support me on this trip. I am doing fundraising primarily to support the large part of my cost of the trip, but any excess proceeds will be donated to the overall mission of Five Talents (likely resulting in funding for more microloans). To make it easy, you can donate online (and even $10 will go a long way)…

.
Or if you prefer to send a check (in order for it to be a tax-deductible donation), then you can send donations (with checks payable to Fellowship of Believers) to:

Fellowship of Believers Church
Attn: Cindy Vandergouw (Dan King trip)
3333 12th Street
Sarasota, FL 34237

Please consider joining us in this mission of fighting extreme poverty. This is exactly the kind of Christian service that I believe brings a smile to God’s face. And whether it is prayer support or financial support, you can be a part of something great that is impacting many lives….

Thank you, and may the Lord bless you!