Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce!

Monger Hope

There's a running joke between me and my good friend Dawn about my hometown Belton. I always claim that Belton is like the island in "LOST" -- everyone who passes through it is somehow brought back to you again in the future. Case in point.

About a year ago, I read what would become one of my favorite books of all-time, "Red Letters: Living a Faith that Bleeds" by Tom Davis. It calls us to pay attention to the, well, red letters in the Bible. If we focused on those letters and didn't get so wrapped up in the politics of who's right and who's wrong, church committees about committes and new building campaigns to build bigger and newer buildings, we'd see a call to live a life that loves and serves the "least of these" with laser-like focus. The orphans, the widows, the prisoners, the strangers on the other side of the street we tend to cross the street to avoid. It's a simple message, but it rocked my world.

Fast forward a few months later. I was talking to another good friend from Belton, Kristi, about an amazing book I had read called "Red Letters." She said, "You know Sam Henry that we went to high school with is really involved in that movement." Movement? Come to find out, Sam had gone on a trip to Africa with author Tom Davis and was a founding member of a grassroots movement called "Red Letters Campaign." Kristi had listened to a talk at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor where Sam spoke about the RLC. She was talking about how passionate and gifted he was about reaching out to the less fortunate, especially in Africa.

I started doing some research and discovered a site called hopemongers.org that was just in it's infancy stages. It was nothing more than a static "brochure" website at the time. I befriended Sam on Facebook and things took off from there. He needed help writing some web copy and with marketing/PR. I've been helping out a few hours each week. Yesterday, HopeMongers officially launched. Check out the press release here. Sam believes so much in this, he left his job at Microsoft to dedicate his life to this. He even got HopeMongers to be a part of Microsoft's Employee Giving Campaign. Every dollar a Microsoft employee donates through HopeMongers is matched dollar for dollar by Microsoft.

What is HopeMongers?

Think of it as a marketplace for non-profits. Instead of writing a check to a charity X and hoping the money reaches project Y that you're really passionate about, you go online to HopeMongers and decide to fund X amount of dollars for a specific project. Right now, there are four national non-profits signed up with many more on the way. As of launch time, there were more than $1.1 million in projects requiring funding with many, many more in the pipeline. They range from digging clean water wells in Haiti to paying for start-up costs at a community garden in Uganda. One of my favorite projects is here.

You can donate as little as $10. But HopeMongers is more than just giving money. It's about connecting to a larger group of people who share your passion for child sex trafficking, clean water, orphans or education access. You can join a Cooperative and be connected to like-minded people who blog, host parties, hold fundraisers and take trips to change the world. There are even direct links on the site to post projects to Facebook and Twitter. Did you give $20 to fund a playground for orphans? Post it to Facebook. Tweet it. Like most of us, we all want to help, we just don't know how to go about doing it. HopeMongers is helping make that easier.

Some of you may be familiar with "Katie in Uganda." She has several projects for funding in Uganda. There's also video of her and her beautiful kids in the Cooperative section.

So if you read this blog, I urge you to visit HopeMongers. If you blog, consider adding a HopeMongers badge to your site. Get a badge here.

Find a project. Give $10. See the Impact.

And here's the best part. HopeMongers is staffed by an all-volunteer staff. No overhead is taken out of your donation.

UPDATE: Recent article written by Direct Marketing News about HopeMongers. Read it.

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Back from Thailand...Sort Of

Well, it's been almost a week since my return to the States. It's great to be home, but I do miss our group and the camaraderie. I don't know if I've laughed so hard or had so much fun in my life. It was truly the best vacation EVER.

My sleep pattern is something else I miss. I've lived the life of an insomniac the since being home and totally empathize with those who suffer from sleep issues. Since being back, my normal sleep pattern looks like this: wake up around 5 am bright eyed and ready for the day; hit a wall around 5 pm; sleep from 6 pm-9 pm; stay up until 1 am and then try to get back to bed. The past two days have gotten better, and I've only resorted to Ambien twice (half-pill only). No intervention is required yet.

Here are some photos from the trip.

The final part of our trip was so relaxing. We stayed at the Zeavola resort. There are only 48 rooms so we felt like we really escaped from civilization. One night, Dawn and I decided to visit Ton Sai village for shopping. We asked the concierge how to catch a taxi. Come to find out there were no roads leading to or from the hotel. We had to take a 45-minute water taxi (and inhale about the carbon dioxide) of a longtail boat to reach civilization. Aside from that one excursion, we stayed at Zeavola from Tuesday until Friday.

The one bit of disturbing news -- not just for us -- but the for entire country was reading the front page of the local newspaper on our arrival to Ko Phi Phi. I took a photo of it and pasted it below. Check out the bottom headline! The only warning buoy in Andaman Sea alerting Thailand to tsunamis is not working. The buoy which was paid for by a grant from USAID has non-functioning battery. The Thai government doesn't have enough money to pay for a replacement. Come to find out, the cost to replace it is roughly $5,000 USD.

The Island

We made it to our final stop on the trip. We're planting at Ko Phi Phi until Friday afternoon. We took a 2-hour boat ride from Phuket this morning to Ko Phi Phi Don (the larger of the two islands). They circled Ko Phi Phi Leh where "The Beach" was filmed. We're loving the resort. There is a mother and daughter staying here from Austin. The daughter lives in Steiner Ranch. The mother is from Belgium.

Updated photos (toward the end)

Finished REI portion of trip. Now on to Phuket and beach. We had final goodbye dinner with group last night. Five of us were on the same Thai airways flight this afternoon. The final boat to Ko Phi Phi island (where out resort is located) left at 2:30 pm. Our flight didn't land until 2:45 pm so we're spending Monday in Phuket. One of our REI campers from Durham, NC, is letting us stay with her at the Royal Phuket Yacht Club on Nai Harn Beach (south tip of island). The resort is sending a taxi at 7:15 Tuesday morning to take Dawn and me to the island. We spent the afternoon at the beach.

Pic link below shows hill tribe eco-lodge in Chang Dao. This us where we stayed on Saturday night after our bike rides. We biked to and toured some caves where monks lived 300 years ago.

http://yfrog.com/3opdbj