• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Kristen Welch

We are THAT Family

  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Kristen
    • FAQ
      • Privacy/Disclosure Policy
      • Giveaways, Reviews & Sponsored Posts
  • Blog
  • Mercy House Global
    • Learn more
    • Mercy House Global Marketplace
  • Books
    • Raising World Changers in a Changing World
    • Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World
    • Rhinestone Jesus
    • Don’t Make Me Come Up There
  • Podcast
    • Subscribe
  • Contact
  • Nav Social Menu

You are here: Home / Archives for fair trade friday

fair trade friday

Let’s Go Deeper In June (Also Known As the Slowest Month In Retail)

June 20, 2019 by Kristen

Well. Hi.

Today, I shared this heartbreaking USA Today article on social media that boldly said, “…  the leadership of the American church, with its superpastors and megachurches, is whistling through the graveyard. The beast that we have created, which relies on upbeat music and positivity to attract donors to sustain large budgets, leaves little room for pastors to talk about the suffering of global Christians. Like most of the culture, the American church is more concerned about college entrance scandals and “Game of Thrones” than persecution. Inoculated by entertainment and self-absorption, they are completely detached from the experience of the global church. The American church is feeding itself to death while the worldwide church is being murdered.”

I’m going to go there. Okay?

The American Church (as a whole, with a capital C) is swimming in shallow waters. We love comfort. We love easy. We love ourselves.  We are addicted to the baby end of the pool. David Platt says, “We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”

He goes on to say, “This is the unavoidable conclusion of Matthew 10. To everyone wanting a safe, untroubled, comfortable life free from danger, stay away from Jesus. The danger in our lives will always increase in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ.”

If you love your life, your comfort, maybe it’s time to go deeper. To risk, to give, to really live.

Today, on World Refugee Day, I spent the afternoon with a family from Sudan who lost everything. Everything. Last week,  I spent the day with a family who had just arrived in the USA from the Congo just three months ago and another day with a family from Syria who have been here less than a month. I didn’t do it for them as much as I did for me. I’m tired of the shallow end and I long to go deeper with Jesus and this is where I keep finding him…among the poor, persecuted and unwanted in our world.

These women now have dignified jobs at Mercy House Global and they represent countless other in more than 30 countries who make fair trade product. They work. We sell what they make. We work together. We fight incredible battles on a a weekly basis to get product through civil wars and provide jobs in the heart of conflict. We are working in some areas where it is illegal to be a Christian, with women who could be killed for their faith.

But something is missing from this equation. It’s you (or maybe a friends, neighbor, family member)

Did you know that June is the dreaded month of every retailer? It’s the month, retail stores lose money because sales are so low. Last summer, we hit a huge financial cash flow crisis at Mercy House Global. June is the month we ask how many Fair Trade Friday subscriptions we need to fill. Today, the answer is 90.

I’m asking you to go deeper.

Don’t tell me  you don’t need more stuff, please. This isn’t about stuff. It’s about a hand up through dignified work instead of a hand out. It’s about dignity (and trust me, someone you know would LOVE to receive this from you as a gift).

If you join Fair Trade Friday before June 24th, you’ll get our Deeper themed box…. a woven turkish beach towel and a trendy “beach hair don’t care” pouch is made by women in Kolkata set free from trafficking, the wave ring by women in Azerbaijan who are risking their lives to follow Jesus and finally, handy hair ties made my a refugee from Nepal…. ALL of this for $32.99

6 Comments Filed Under: fair trade friday

The Quick Truth About Slow Fashion + A Giveaway + An Invitation

March 17, 2019 by Kristen

Updated: Random winner has been chosen and notified. I don't always wear fair trade, but when I do, I wear it nine ways. Ok. Not really, unless it's the scarf from this month's Fair Trade Friday box. And I've literally been tempted to wear it every day this month, differently, of course. I wore it like a poncho at church. But I wasn't kidding about wearing it a different way for more than a week! I didn't always ask where things were made, but once I started, I couldn't stop. I ... Read More

67 Comments Filed Under: deals, fair trade friday

This Might Not End Global Poverty But It’s Where We Should Start

July 21, 2017 by Kristen

Today we went to Dandora dump. It is one of Africa's largest landfills is a sprawling dumpsite, over 30 acres, at the edge of several Nairobi slums. The massive dump was deemed full in 2001. "Yet it continues to operate, and people at the very bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder come here as their last hope to make a living from scavenging the waste, but in the same time exposing themselves to tremendous pollution. This case is a very accurate example of environmental injustice ... Read More

Leave a Comment Filed Under: fair trade friday, MercyHouse

Turns Out A Little Heart And A Lot of Hope Really Can Change the World

March 19, 2017 by Kristen

I think I've been holding my breath until we returned to the street moms in Mathare Valley that I introduced you to last year. You might remember my desperate plea to help these desperate women. I have been haunted by that day--the one where I met a homeless, grieving young mother, whose 2 year old son, Gideon, had been stolen while they slept on a filthy street and to this day has never been found. And the tragic irony of the very pregnant woman next to her who was planning on selling ... Read More

3 Comments Filed Under: fair trade friday, Faith, MercyHouse

Halfway Home: A Beautiful In-Between

March 12, 2017 by Kristen

I spent the first 35 years of my life looking for a good deal. I've been a bargain shopper since I was a young wife on a youth pastor's salary. Target was my go-to place and I can't tell you how many hours--days-- a week, I would push my cart around looking for something cheap to buy. Some days, I shopped out of need, other days want, but it was the days I shopped to fill emptiness that I remember most. Instead of purpose, I filled my life with a lot of stuff. A few years ago, I realized ... Read More

3 Comments Filed Under: fair trade friday, MercyHouse

Small Is The New Big

March 11, 2017 by Kristen

She put on her "girls can change the world" shirt on our first full day in Kenya because they can. She doesn't remember a life before Mercy House and she thinks this life we live is normal because it is. When my little one was 5 years old, she gave her new kindergarten friend a tour of our house and when they got to the fridge covered in pictures of people we love from around the world, her friend asked who all the people were. "Oh, those are people we love. That's how we change the world. ... Read More

4 Comments Filed Under: fair trade friday, MercyHouse, My Life

Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Need More Stuff

November 1, 2016 by Kristen

I watched her shaky hand move the needle and thread up and down through the felt, making tiny white stitches. She was connecting two hearts together. Still feeling the effects of the glue she had sniffed for years to stifle hunger pains, she was an unlikely artisan, a beggar in the morning and a prostitute at night, with one baby strapped to her back and the other holding onto her leg. It would have been a lot easier to drive past her outstretched hand in traffic, walking from car to ... Read More

18 Comments Filed Under: fair trade friday

Live Wrecked

October 21, 2016 by Kristen

Everything I ever wanted in this life has been shattered and battered into a million pieces. I have been broken. Put back together again and again. I am broken by people in poverty who have nothing and people in wealth who have everything. I am broken when I realize who is really rich and who is really poor. I am wrecked. “God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to produce rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is ... Read More

162 Comments Filed Under: fair trade friday, Giveaways

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

You know the ones …

Order Today:

Subscribe to My Newsletter

Footer

Search

Recent Posts

  • Are We Still In 2020?
  • Surprise! I Wrote A Children’s Book
  • Mercy House Global is a True Story
  • Living a Paradox: The Truth About A Contradictory Life

Categories

Copyright © 2008-2018 Kristen Welch, We are THAT Family · Site by Design by Insight · Family Portrait Artwork by Marry Me in Spring

Copyright © 2021 · Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in