{"id":605,"date":"2007-02-27T15:50:27","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T15:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=38"},"modified":"2007-02-27T15:50:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-27T15:50:27","slug":"22607","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=605","title":{"rendered":"2\/26\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our last day at Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, \u00a0I listened to Mike Grainge give a talk on “Grace.” \u00a0 He said the “greatest act of grace” he’d ever seen was in Milawe, Africa, during a stint in the Peace Corps. \u00a0 (The abject poverty in Milawe is staggering.) \u00a0 Mr. Grainge said a beggar woman with a bowl approached another beggar woman — and gave her some of what she had in her bowl… \u00a0 We then stopped at Habitat for Humanity’s mock Third World Slum Village where we walked through a series of jammed together, tiny \u00a0dwellings made of old wood and \u00a0rusty corrugated tin. \u00a0 There was no glass in the windows, no running water, no electricity. \u00a0 The depiction of poverty here is staggering as well (even without the moans of children dying from malnutrition and no medicine). \u00a0 Coming out the Slum Village is a series of model homes that Habitat builds in different countries to help some people get out of these abysmal slums. \u00a0 One of the first I came across, was a nice, two-room, stone \u00a0home Habitat builds in Milawe. \u00a0 The price: $2,000… \u00a0 We traveled further south to Albany, Georgia, where I gave a talk at St. Therese Church after Mass. \u00a0 The reading during Mass was from the book of Isaiah (58: 1-9). \u00a0 Part of the exhortation was to shelter the oppressed and the homeless. \u00a0 So I tried to connect some 2007 dots for the congregation on this reading. \u00a0 I said we’d just toured the Habitat Slum Village, then saw the new homes being built in Milawe. \u00a0 I then said social justice would \u00a0demand \u00a0that so many of \u00a0us in \u00a0America sacrifice the new Lexus with all the options for a used Volkswagon (bus pass, or bicyle…) and take the savings to finance homes in Milawe. \u00a0 I mean if you nix, say, the $30,000 car and go with a used $3,000 car (minus repairs, etc.), you’d still have enough money to \u00a0finance some 10 to 14 homes for families in Milawe, Africa. \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 There is an ongoing debate about reparations to African Americans. \u00a0 My wife Liz just posed to me: \u00a0 “What about reparations to Africa as well?” \u00a0 That is, we stole part of their population, which has had major cultural, emotional and financial repercussions through the generations there. \u00a0 Wouldn’t building these Habitat African homes at least be a step in starting to make financial restitution… We say we are a country rooted in spiritual principle. \u00a0 Wouldn’t this demonstrate the acting out of some of that spiritual principle? \u00a0 I think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our last day at Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, \u00a0I listened to Mike Grainge give a talk on “Grace.” \u00a0 He said the “greatest act of grace” he’d ever seen was in Milawe, Africa, during a stint in the Peace …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}