Whenever I go to Jordan, one of my main objectives is to help the poor – like this man above.

On this trip, I was privileged to meet a sheikh – a Muslim leader that I quickly established friendship with. In spite of the language barrier (I sure need to learn Arabic!), we communicated well. He is a beautiful man – sparkling and kind eyes, a happy laugh, a humble spirit, an obvious concern for the poor, and the usual Middle Eastern hospitality.

This sheikh is a friend of a Christian man I work with in Jordan who helps the Syrian and Palestinian refugees with food, cooking stoves, heating stoves, washing machines, blankets, etc. The sheikh asked us if we would bring some of these supplies we had paid for to his village – a poor village outside Amman. We were only too happy to do so. To work together as Muslims and Christians is one of my strongest goals as a bridge-builder.

In this blog post you can see two pictures of people that my sheikh friend and I visited to bring them food bags and blankets (I do not include pics of the sheikh because I forgot to get his permission).

A Christian leader in America said these pointed words about caring for the poor:

“Today more than a billion people in the world live and die in desperate poverty. They attempt to survive on less than a dollar per day. Close to two billion others live on less than two dollars per day. That’s nearly half the world struggling today to find food, water, and shelter with the same amount of money I spend. . .for lunch. More than twenty-six thousand children today will breathe their last breath due to starvation or a preventable disease. . .God takes very seriously how I respond to them.”

I thank God for the sheikh and our mutual concern for his people.

Galatians 2:10 – “we should continue to remember the poor.”