It's time! This is the follow-up to my first Redirecting Christmas post from earlier this week.

I was blown away and totally humbled my the number of people who emailed me and are completely tracking with me on this idea.Turns out that I'm not the only crazy one around here.

If you're one of the many who are desiring for this year's Christmas celebration to be about more than gifts, fun, food and blessing those who are already blessed, then I have a challenge for you. You might even call it a dare. Dare to dream with me that Christmas can be different this year. Details are below.

Straight from the SixtyFeet site, just published this evening...

What if the youngest, most vulnerable, most desperate children at M1 and the other facilities didn’t have to be there? What if they could live in a place filled with hope, where they could grow to know and love God, where they would be deeply cared for, where they could receive an education and have a future? What if…

Since SixtyFeet first began, we’ve dreamed of purchasing land and building a home so we can remove the most vulnerable children who live in the M facilities. We can all agree, these children shouldn’t be in these conditions.

Late last year, we had a matching donation to raise funds so we could acquire land. The land was to be used as the site for a home where the youngest and most vulnerable children at M1 could live in a loving, nurturing family-like environment. Some of you may be wondering what happened to that.


Well, we were blown away by your generosity, as usual, and you sailed past the $10,000 match raising a total of $30,000. That money, unfortunately is still sitting in the bank – set aside and earmarked for the home we so very much want to build.

Various obstacles prevented us from moving forward with our original plans (we’re learning that sometimes we just need to be still and wait on the Lord). So that’s what we’ve been doing. But we never gave up hope. Ever since then, we have been praying that we would be able to raise the remaining funds to start this home.

Recently, several incredible donors have stepped forward to offer a whopping $60,000 as a matching gift in order to make this dream a reality. Yes, that was not a typo and you read it correctly. Every dollar we are able to raise between today and December 31, 2011 – up to $60,000 – will be matched, dollar for dollar.

So what does this mean for SixtyFeet and the children? With the $30,000 that was raised last year, we are hoping and praying that by January we will have $150,000 in order to purchase land, build a home and have a place where we can nurture these precious children. But we’re not just thinking land and a home. We’re thinking bigger… way bigger – as in community. We want to build something sustainable.

Given the size of this gift, we also pray we can use a portion of the funds to expedite our plans to remove and house many of the older children at the M facilities. We hope to establish multiple homes for boys and girls 10 and older where they can live with up to 20 other children and be mentored by young adults, who themselves have been in similar situations but who now have a heart to give back and serve.

So as we enter this holiday season, please dare to dream with us. Dare to dream of the eternal impact this will have in the Kingdom and in the lives of the children of M. Dream of the children who may arise from these homes. The leaders, the doctors, the pastors, the educators. All of whom may ultimately come from M and go on to serve and do amazing things in the name of Christ. Just imagine it.

To donate to this amazing cause, to have your donation matched dollar for dollar, and to make a big difference this Christmas, click HERE.

For Heaven's sake, it's not even Halloween and it's started already. The "Get Ready for Christmas" rush is here.

My mailbox is crammed full of magazines advertising the perfect gift for everyone on my list. The stores already have their isles packed with stockings, trees and ornaments. Today I even saw a giant, candy-cane shapped dog bone at T*rget.

I'm not a Scrooge. I actually happen to love Christmas. I love family traditions and Christmas music and twinkling lights on trees. I love cookie swaps and children's nativity plays and carolers at my front door.

But what I hate is this: the amount of money I feel compelled to spend on Christmas each year. Between the gifts, the decorations, the parties, the party attire, the Christmas cards with the matching outfits, the postage, the Santa breakfasts, the Nutcracker tickets and the travel expenses, Christmas can add up to a pretty obscene amount of money.

According to the Advent Conspiracy, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas in 2009. That's this number: $450,000,000,000. All spent in the name of a holiday intended to celebrate the birth of Christ. The Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor... the One was was sent "to preach the good news to the poor." That one.

I admit, I've not always been so outraged by a little worldly Christmas cheer. There have been plenty of years that I've succumbed to the pressure. This was our family Christmas card picture from 2006:



I would be truly ashamed to disclose how much those matching, custom outfits cost. But dang, we had a cute Christmas card that year. Surely, Jesus would want that for my family, right?

In 2007, after Dan had received a series of raises and promotions at work, I threw our strict Christmas budget out the window and decided to spend "generously" and with reckless abandon. After all, Christmas only comes once a year. (Nevermind that my self-proclaimed generosity was intended only to bless people who were already blessed).

That year, Dan and I stayed up way too late wrapping gifts on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, we woke up way too early to plow through our massive stack of presents.

And afterwards I felt happy and joyful and completely fulfilled, right? WRONG. Less than half-way through the morning, the kids were bored with opening gifts. I was irritated because I felt that the kids were being ungrateful. Dan was irritated because I'd clearly spent too much money. And all I really ended up with was a big pit in my stomach and a serious case of regret.

(By the way, Madeline's favorite gift from that year was a glass paperweight with a small, pressed flower on the inside. A student in my VBS class had given it to me that summer as a teacher's gift and, at the last second,  dropped it into Madeline's stocking. She loves it to this day.)

Anyways, I know I'm stepping all over toes, but I can't help myself. My husband spends several weeks per year in Africa. I've just returned from Africa myself and I can say this with a high degree of confidence: We don't need anything else.

I was introduced to this short video clip back in 2008 and I've never forgotten it:






 If you're one of the few people who is still reading this post and is not completely offended, perhaps it's because you're tracking with me on this subject. Perhaps you're desiring, like Dan and me, not to rid our lives of Christmas, but to celebrate it differently.

Later this week, we'll be announcing a HUGE project from SixtyFeet. It's something that's been a long time in the making and it's very near and dear to my heart. If you desire for your Christmas to be about something different this year, I pray that you and your family will consider redirecting some of your Christmas funds to this opportunity.

If you're a fellow blogger and would like to partner with me on this project, please email me at shellyowens at gmail dot com for "advance" information. I'd love to have others help spread the word.

This project is major. It's going to take a whole lot of redirected Christmas gifts, a great big God and serious dose of faith to make it happen. But I'm believing we can do it.

The Announcement is coming, later this week. Stay tuned...

 At the risk of my reputation as a fun, free-thinking, Africa-orphan loving philanthropist, I thought I’d share this list of our house rules with y’all tonight. I'll warn you in advance -- this list might make me sound a bit stick-in-the-mud-ish, but that’s ok. This is what works for our family.



 

 

 

 

Our house rules are based upon scripture – because, in my opinion, those are the only rules worth following. Worldly wisdom is just that – it’s worldly, it’s empty and it’s destined to fail. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” – 1 Corinthians 1:25

Hi friends! If you love me and you love SixtyFeet, can I ask you a small favor? Please, go to Giving of Life and cast a vote for SixtyFeet to win a grant, for up to $50,000. And if you register on their site, you get extra votes.

It just takes a second and it'll cost you nothing... but it could literally make a world of difference to the children SixtyFeet serves in Uganda.

Please go, vote, register, vote again and share the link. The things we could do in Uganda with a $50,000 grant absolutely blow my mind. I'm dreaming big here, people -- come dream with me!

Here's what I was doing this time last weekend:



That's me, in the royal blue. Just last weekend, Kelsey, Colleen, Kirby and I attended a traditional Ugandan engagement party. And we even wore the traditional, native outfits. It was quite the experience.

Colleen and I pretending to be high fashion models. Posing in the banana leaves. Very classy I think.

We woke up early Saturday morning to travel way, way, way out to the northeastern corner of Uganda. The party took place in a small village nearly 6 hours from the capital city of Kampala.

Along the way we saw monkeys swinging from trees, baboons with their baboon babies and the incredible River Nile.

Colleen's awesome photography capturing God's handiwork.

As we traveled through this remote region, we also saw poverty. Lots of it. Some of the areas we passed through were very, very poor. Poorer than any place I've ever seen before.



This simple structure, and many others similar to it, is home for many people in Uganda. Compared to these people, I'm outrageously wealthy. I'm filthy rich. And so are you.




When I see this kind of poverty, my first inclination is to feel pity. The home in the picture above is so primitive. The lives of these people are so much harder than my own. Surely no one desires to live like this.

And yet, I have no idea if these people would want anything to do with my American way of life. Given the option, I don't know that they'd want to live in my multi-room house with running water and air conditioning and closets full of clothes and shoes and a bunch of stuff I don't really need.

After all, along with my American wealth comes a whole bunch of other problems -- materialism, laziness, isolation and, most importantly, an inability to really, truly understand the concept of God's provision.

We call these people "poor" but in so many ways, they are rich. The Africans that I know cherish community and value their time with friends and family in a way I probably never will. For most of them, stuff is not important -- because they don't have stuff. They joyfully work long, hard hours because hard work is simply a way of life.

And daily, they experience and rejoice over the blessings of the Lord's provision -- for food, water, health, safety and even the air they breathe. He's the provider. They get that in a way we just don't.

It's a privilege to minister in such a place and a piece of my heart will always live in Uganda. The people of that country bless me, challenge me, stretch me, inspire me and pretty often, they put my weak faith to shame.

Dan and I often tell visiting mission teams this: Uganda is not so much a place that we go to tell people about Jesus... as much as it's a place where we go to learn about Jesus.

I'm blessed to know and visit this country and, truly, I thank God for the opportunity.