Well, we're back from our Passion regional, and it was great. I am directionally challenged in Dallas, Texas apparently (especially when I use I-35W instead of I-35E in the rain), but less that, it was really great. BIG THANKS to Todd for letting us raid his house at midnight, even though he & his wife had to go to work at 5 am. If you look at the Passion website, we're apparently the only regional event to be sold out too, which explains a lot.
One of the things that was so cool was the ways that Passion pushed people to give so much this weekend, and how much people responded. Out of 6,000 people that were there, they donated 3,700 towels and 17,800 pairs of socks to the city of Dallas for people in need. Along with that, they were raising money for Blood:Water Mission, an organization that builds permanent wells for people in Africa. They cost about $3000 a piece. Passion Dallas raised $18,992 for BWM, so 6 wells that will give people water for the rest of their lives.
Oh, and then there was the "world tour" they're doing soon. Passion is going international next fall, and Dallas was directly sponsoring the event in Seoul, Korea, so that they can attend for free. They raised $80,040 for the regional event. "Poor" college students gave $98,000 in 24 hours.
One more thing too: Passion also adopted Union University (not the best story on it, but it's the best I found), that was completely destroyed in a tornado recently. What was so cool about this, is that Louie asked the 6,000 students to donate any extra clothing they might have with them for the students at Union, and they are going to give out the clothing in a "student store" of sorts, because almost all of the students lost EVERYthing in this tornado.
I've still got a lot stewing from the weekend, but I was REALLY impressed by the amazing stuff that happened this weekend. It's so crazy what can happen when 6,000 people who deeply love Jesus band together and give things away to others. It makes me wonder why we don't do that more. It makes me wonder what would happen if we did. We may not have the "latest and greatest" stuff in our churches, our church buildings might not even be all that great or perfect, but, what if we all gave away like that?
If we all were so willing to give away, and people knew that it was from our love of Jesus, the world would be a dramatically different place. I wish we all "got it" like that.
