A little while back, we blogged about our partnership with INHERITANCE Magazine, and we’re happy to announce: the first official INHERITANCE shirt has been released!  We worked closely with the amazing team to put together the shirt, and it’s now available on their site.

Check out the design and support their ministry by getting one (or split the shipping with your friend by getting two)!

INHERITANCE Magazine brings together Asian American Christians in thought-provoking discussion about issues in our communities and churches today.  Browse out their latest issue online and see what they’re all about!

(Also look out for their upcoming issue which I hear features an article about a certain inspirational apparel company..)

Tony Dungy is the former NFL head coach who lead the Indianapolis Colts to win Super Bowl XLI, the first coach to beat all 32 NFL teams, and record-holder for most consecutive playoff appearances by a head coach.  He is also a best-selling author, and an inspiring example of what it means to live a life of faith and purpose.

In his book Quiet Strength: Men’s Bible Study, he poses six challenges to his readers. Ask yourself these same questions, and see what answers you come up with:

• What’s my game plan?
• What’s my strength?
• What’s success?
• Where’s my security?
• What is my significance?
• What’s my legacy?

I heard Celestine perform live on Sunday, and his passion for righting the injustices of this world was incredibly apparent. How inspiring that Celestine is able to use his musical gifts to so powerfully not to make a career for himself, but to give a voice to the oppressed in India’s Red Light District – and this is only the beginning!

Celestine and his wife are starting a nonprofit whose mission is to “CRY OUT for those that can’t cry out for themselves and to make a change partnering with others who have the resources and the passion to free kids and women around the world from the oppression they face on a daily basis.”

By hope and by grace, this won’t be the last time we hear from Celestine.

Proverbs 31:8-9

You will find a common dichotomy in life.  Those who don’t have vision or determination, and refuse to dream the impossible, are always in the majority.

Therefore they will always take the vote.  They will always outshout and outnumber those who walk by faith and not by sight, those who are seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness.  Those who choose to live by sight will always outnumber those who live by faith.

To walk by faith requires courage.  It requires the audacity to stand alone and challenge the majority to trust God.

- Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity

How often in life do we we shy away from the risky path, the road less traveled in exchange for the comfortable and familiar?

Whatever happened to taking a bold step into the unknown, and embarking on the adventure of a lifetime?

A little while ago, I read the powerful account Banker to the Poor by the founder of the micro-lending system, Professor Muhammad Yunus.

His idea is pretty ingenious – the idea that you can loan one person a couple dollars (or less) and change their life forever.   It makes sense though.  After all, 40% of the world lives on $2 a day or less.  A good many of them have the determination, skills and smarts to succeed but what they are never given is the opportunity to do so.  They’re stuck in a cycle of making just enough money to survive, unable to save and invest for next year, or even next week.

Straight out of Yunus’s account is the story of how he stumbled across the potential this miniature loan in the Bangaladesh countryside and began a journey that at the time, no one believed would succeed:

Sufiya Begum earned two cents a day [in profit after borrowing money from loan sharks to purchase raw materials and produce ]. It was this knowledge that shocked me. In my university courses, I theorized about sums in the millions of dollars, but here before my eyes the problems of life and death were posed in terms of pennies. Something was wrong. Why did my university courses not reflect the reality of Sufiya’s life? … Her children were condemned to live a life of penury, of hand-to-mouth survival, just as she had lived it before them, and as her parents did before her. I had never heard of anyone suffering for the lack of twenty-two cents…

Yunus goes on to talk about how he loans the twenty-two cents himself to Sufiya and forty others, sees the dramatic change that takes place, and eventually establishes the Grameen Bank (literally, “of the village”) to provide micro-loans all over the world.  A very powerful story about one man who sees something wrong with the world around him, and has the imagination and perseverance to do something about it.

I spent this past Christmas in the Philippines paying respects to my grandma who passed away after a long battle with cancer. Thankfully while we were there, Grandpa seemed his usual self. We stayed at his house to keep him company, and he seemed to be taking the news well.

One afternoon, I walked downstairs into the living room and saw Grandpa watching TV. He beckoned me over to watch with him. The date on the ancient VCR recording flickered 1995. On screen, a chorus of young children no more than ten years old were singing what sounded to my unfamiliar ears like traditional Chinese opera. As I patiently watched the children recite verse after verse, I could only imagine how many times Grandpa must have watched this same recording over and over through the years. Interrupting my thoughts, Grandpa informed me in broken English that these children were all part of a nonprofit established in his home village – a nonprofit he had funded in its entirety for seven years.

The delight in his voice couldn’t be masked by his halting speech. This was my grandfather’s pride and joy – establishing a nonprofit that would preserve culture and tradition to his village in Fujian, China for years to come. Never did he tell me how he came about the money to support this charity. It was only hearing from my mom (who heard from my dad) that he had owned a very successful export business many years back. Yet Grandpa didn’t brag to me about the sales he generated over the years, or the profitable contracts he landed. At the end of the day, this charity was his greatest accomplishment, and it was this charity he wanted to share with his grandson.

“Look! Look!”

Grandpa nearly jumped out of his seat as he motioned at the screen. On screen, the camera had panned away from the performers to focus on one dignified member of the audience. She sat pristinely watching the performance unfold before her. The image flickered with years of wear, but the figure was still recognizable.

“That’s your grandma! .. That’s my wife!”

I looked from the screen back to Grandpa. There was a sparkle in his normally sleepy-looking eyes, a bright smile filled his weary face. As he settled back into his seat, his bright smile faded slowly into a peaceful, meditative one, the sparkle never leaving his eyes.

What are you doing today that will bring a smile to your face years from now? What part of your life will you jump up to show your grandchildren decades from now?

One such person is Dr. Paul Farmer. Many people living in the US grew up with more than Paul had in his childhood. He spent much of his childhood living in a bus with his six other siblings and mother and father. In spite of his upbringing (or perhaps because of it), Farmer dedicated his life to the fight against poverty. After working his way through Harvard Medical School, he founded Partners in Health and helped raise the money to build the Zanmi Lasante Clinic in Haiti. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and its people live in fear of crime and oppression. Farmer spent the next several years splitting his time between working in the States to pay his bills and building up the Zanmi Lasante Clinic from scratch. Since its inception in 1987, the Zanmi Lasante Clinic has reduced infant mortality and malnutrition dramatically, vaccinated all the children in its area, and built schools, houses, and water/sanitation systems in the neighborhood. The most amazing thing is that Partners in Health has brought tuberculosis infection to a standstill on the island.

Fmr. President Bill Clinton wrote about Dr. Farmer in his book Giving and asked him why he didn’t simply volunteer a couple weeks out of the year and spend the rest of his time working for his own benefit. Paul’s answer was that even while he grew up in hard conditions, his parents were always concerned about those who were even worse off than they were and showed as much generosity as they could afford. The families he met in Haiti lived in conditions that made his bus look like a palace. Paul wanted to empower the people he met in Haiti with the same medical conditions available in America, and his vision resulted in changing the way health care works in an entire country. That is the kind of legacy that one person with a vision can leave on the world.

Dr. Paul Farmer is now in Rwanda implementing his Partners in Health model and leaving a legacy there.