{"id":2342,"date":"2012-12-22T09:21:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-22T14:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/?p=2342"},"modified":"2012-12-20T09:22:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T14:22:00","slug":"all-i-want-for-christmas-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2012\/12\/all-i-want-for-christmas-3.html","title":{"rendered":"All I Want for Christmas…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many of you enjoyed yesterday’s post from Dan King<\/a>, co-founder of ActivistFaith.org<\/a>. Here is the rest of the story of what his family is doing to highlight their faith in practical ways this Christmas season.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>My seven (and a half) year old son picked up the gift catalog from Heifer International<\/a>
\nand asked me what it was for. So I explained to him that people like us
\ncould buy things that people in very poor places need as a Christmas
\ngift. And because they don’t have much, then buying a goat, a chicken,
\nor a cow would help them more than games or toys.<\/p>\n

It was an amazing conversation that resulted in both of us wanting to do something for somebody else<\/strong> this year for Christmas.<\/p>\n

Deciding what to do wasn’t difficult either. We’ve both been praying
\nfor Haiti since the earthquakes, and he’s specifically prayed for the
\norphans there. I even made a trip<\/a> there this summer, and lived in an orphanage during my stay.<\/p>\n

So I told him about a friend that I recently made at The Idea Camp conference. Chris Marlow runs an organization called\u00a0HELP<\/a> (Help End Local Poverty) and an initiative called\u00a0Garage Sale for Orphans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the current Garage Sale projects is to\u00a0build a playground for orphans in Haiti<\/strong><\/a>. The website describes it this way:<\/p>\n

Extreme poverty not only robs children of food,
\neducation and proper medical care, but it often keeps kids from just
\nbeing kids. We want to help meet more than just their basic needs. We
\nwant to see them HAVE FUN and just play and be kids!!!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So we’re taking this project on for Christmas this year<\/strong>,
\nand we wanted to invite others to join us. We live in Florida, so it’s
\nreasonable for us to hold an actual garage sale this time of year. But
\nthere are many other ways that you can help raise money so that we can
\nmeet the goal of $3,500 to give this playground to some Haitian kids for
\nChristmas.<\/p>\n

I’ll be sharing about this project over the coming weeks both here and at Christmas Change<\/a>
\n(I’ll be a guest blogger there this year). And I’d love to offer a
\ncouple of guest post posts to anyone crazy enough to take this project
\non with Samuel and I (no matter where you live).<\/p>\n

Here are the posts that I plan on sharing…<\/p>\n

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