Rugged Town
Theme for the Week: Investing Internationally—1 Thessalonians 1-3
Charles Colson
Friday, October 26, 2001
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else (1 Thessalonians 3:12).
Bonus Reading: 1 Thess. 3:11-13
In the mid-1970s, retired North Carolina businessman Donald Adcox was contacted by a Haitian pastor for help. The pastor of the Duvalierville church had found Adcox's name in a magazine article about Christian laymen. As a result, Donald and several other businessmen visited Haiti. They found entire villages subsisting in huts with barely enough to eat, and disease rampant.
Don enlisted the help of associates, bought a small rug factory in Pennsylvania, and shipped the machinery and supplies to Haiti to set up the plant. Then they brought two young leaders, chosen by the Haitian church, to North Carolina for training.
Today the Duvalierville plant is the center of a thriving community of 1,000, with a church school that enrolls 700. Don and others have helped the Haitians build a clinic and guesthouse on the factory grounds, and set up a program for Christian doctors and dentists from the states to donate their services.
The villagers' pride in their plant comes from a sense of ownership, for the plant does belong to them. Don and the other participating businessmen quietly gave the business to the church a few years ago.
Charles Colson in Loving God My Response:
I experienced the thrill of investing in someone else's life when .
Thought to Apply:
To be a missionary, you don't have to go around the world, you just have to go outside yourself.
Otis Keener (pastor)
Adapted from: Loving God (Zondervan, 1997) with permission.
For your convenience, Loving God is available in the ChristianityToday.com bookstore.
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Men of Integrity magazine.
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