Today I was flying back from 12 days in NYC and really didn’t have any idea of who I was going to give $10 to this Tuesday. I got home. I was tired. I was much more interested in playing with Harper and Oreo than staring at my computer. There was a chance that my $10 for Tuesday wouldn’t get posted until Wednesday.

And sometimes it takes a kick in the pants. Today that kick came from Michele Shaw:

Hi Kelsey! In the spirit of your Tuesday project, I have contributed for a month to Samaritan’s Purse. They do one of my favorite projects-Operation Christmas Child, and are already gearing up to help children around the world come December.

Giving is like anything else, you need a little support sometimes. So this Tuesday, along with Michele, I’m giving $10 to Samaritan’s Purse.

One thing I really like about their site is that you can choose what project you want to support.

Thanks Michele!

Anyone have any good ideas where to shoot my $10 next week?

No one wants to live in a homeless shelter.

I remember the scenes in Pursuit of Happyness where Will Smith and son are waiting in line for a bed at a homeless shelter in San Francisco. The father, Will, was looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact while simultaneously scanning out the side of his eye for anyone that might recognize him.

Making the decision to move into a shelter must be quite humbling.

But then to have the last place you would turn burn would really seem like life is kicking you while you’re down.

That’s why this Tuesday my $10 is going to the Muncie Mission homeless shelter, which recently had a fire. I gave to them earlier this year, but they need all of the help they can get right now. If you want to help, go here.

It’s been a pretty amazing experience for me so far. Everyday I get an email or a post from someone asking for $10 or from someone who his giving in their own way. A couple of days ago I received this note from Hannah Ford.

My husband and I do not have a lot of money but every Sunday we pick at least 5 different children in our churches (my husband is the organist for two churches)..from 1-5 dollars each..someday we will be able to do more..we set aside 20 dollars each week for this..love what you are during.

We can all do a little more. Thanks for sharing Hannah!

For a few weeks I actually gave a crap about soccer.

I think every game I watched had a goal that should have been allowed and wasn’t or was allowed and shouldn’t have been. At times it seemed a little like WWE wrestling. Still, the beauty of soccer is its simplicity.

I once played soccer on a sandbar in a remote village in Honduras (listen to my piece on the World Vision Report). Our goals were marked by wood shavings from a recently carved dugout canoe. That’s the beauty of soccer: all you need is a ball and a little creativity to mark a goal. After that all you need is your two feet.

Although, you can’t take your feet for granted. I learned this while I was in Cambodia with an Organization called Spirit of Soccer. They use soccer clinics to educate kids – now over 80,000 worldwide – about Explosive Remnants of War.

Scotty Lee, the group’s charismatic and hilarious, founder has expanded the program to Bosnia and Herzogovina, Kosovo, Moldova, Cambodia and Iraq.

Currently the SOS team is at the World Cup. As the world puts the beautiful game front and center, I thought now would be a great Tuesday to give SOS $10 for the great work they’re doing that I’ve seen first hand and the great work they’ll continue to do in the future.

I hope you’ll join me. Donate here.

He served me tea. We small talked and then he told me about how is son killed himself by jumping off the bridge in Limerick into the River Shannon. He recounted the days spent on the river searching for his son. He talked about the man who found his son and how he came to the funeral.

“And that’s not the end of it,” he said.

Three months after his son jumped in the river to his death, his wife did the same thing, leaving the man with five kids to raise.

We sat in the Limerick office of the Samaritans and talked for nearly two hours. The Samaritans operate in England and Ireland. “Samaritans provides confidential non-judgemental emotional support, 24 hours a day for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which could lead to suicide.”

For the past few months and into the foreseeable future, much of my time has been dedicated to the financial crisis, which seems like a pin prick compared to the bomb that was dropped on this man’s life a few years ago. If anyone should be mad at the world, it’s the man.

He broke down several times. But he cried the hardest when he was talking about how beautiful his first granddaughter is and how she pulled the family together. In fact, his family is closer than ever. They volunteer more. They value many things more than money.

“I think this (financial) crisis might be good for society. For us to get back to what’s important.”

Talking to the man was one of them most amazing experiences of my life. I felt that he had been through the fire and come out with this wisdom to share.

Tom with the Samaritans in Ireland and Patricia with Living Goods – an organization that supports family members of someone who died by suicide – made my day of interviews happen. It was a gift. For their support and for their great work, this Tuesday I’m donating $10 to the Samaritans.

Suicide shouldn’t be a taboo subject. Treating it as such only makes it worse on the families who had a love one die by suicide. That’s another thing, we should all know, don’t use “commit suicide.” People commit crimes. People die by suicide.

I would be honored if you joined me in donating to suicide support groups this week. Here are support groups by region in the US and here are groups worldwide.

Here’s how Tim describes ThankfulHome:

ThankfulHome.tv allows people to share their stories about housing issues by submitting short videos. Visitors to the site can share why they are thankful for their homes or talk about a difficult housing situation they’ve faced (e.g., homelessness, unsafe conditions.) By connecting people who have decent housing with those who don’t, ThankfulHome.tv hopes new innovative solutions to housing issues will emerge.

Having been away from my home for the past six weeks, I’m feeling very thankful for my home. Almost as thankful as this girl…

I did a similar thing in front of the mirror, except I was wearing Underoos.

Thankful for your home? Send a video into ThankfulHome.tv.

I wanted to go, but the timing just wasn’t good. I would have had to leave from the event and go directly to the airport. I was milking those last remaining moments with my girls and opted to not be hope to her, but be a dad to Harper.

Nuru’s grassroots guru asked me to share a post about their Be Hope to Her events that took them around the country. It’s not out of guilt that I’m posting it, but out of great respect of the fine work that I saw the group doing firsthand in Kenya.

Take it away Billy…

BH2O+ 2010 Highlights from Nuru International on Vimeo.

Earlier this spring, 1500 college students and young professionals on 23 college campuses, 3 city centers, and one international site, decided to take a walk. This wasn’t a protest march, but rather a solidarity experience that allowed men and women in the western world to grow in better empathy and understanding of part of the daily life of one in eight people on our planet.

The event was called “Be Hope To Her” or “BH2O+” and was organized by Nuru International in an effort to inspire people to confront the crisis of extreme poverty.

The participants in the event placed a yellow five gallon bucket on their head and carried the bucket through their town or campus to a water source. At the water source, they filled their buckets with water, and began a journey through the area with about forty pounds of water on their heads.

Each step these men and women took made statistics a reality. No longer were they hearing about the reality of women and girls spending several hours each day gathering water for their families. No longer were they considering the opportunities that these girls and women would not experience because of the consuming need to gather water for their families. No longer was the problem of extreme poverty a far-away issue that affects people “over there.” When these men and women walked in mid-April, they were awakened to the issue of extreme poverty in a way that a statistic or a story of another could never do.

The story of nearly a billion people living in extreme poverty became the story of these men and women who gave up time and other choices for one day so that the people of Kuria, Kenya and beyond might experience a life filled with choices and opportunity. Now there are 1500 new storytellers who can tell about their experience of one day, and the daily experience of millions.

And as you watch this video, these young men and women invite YOU to join us in the fight. They invite YOU to be part of the solution, to be part of the END of extreme poverty. Will you join them in the fight?

Jake was a soldier.

Jake fought terrorists.

Jake had a moment that changed his life.

Jake delivered fish.

One morning, before surfing, Jake got a call from Stanford saying he had been accepted to their business school.

Jake had an idea.

Jake went to Africa.

Jake was struck by lightning. (That’s a good one.)

Jake grew corn.

Lots of corn.

Jake changed lives.

This is Jake’s story.

But the thing about Jake‘s story – the thing that Jake really doesn’t like about it – is that it gets in the way of the amazing thing that‘s taking place in Kuria, Kenya.

Josephat, a father and a farmer, went from living in a mud hut worrying about how he was going to feed his family, to a man who produced five years of corn in a single crop.

Lucas went from giving his children water that gave them Typhoid, to a man who taught his community about microorganisms in the water that were killing loved ones.

Times Josephat’s and Lucas’s story by 5,000. This is the story of NURU.

It’s much bigger than one man’s story. It’s about how one man’s story became 5,000 people’s story and about 5,000 people’s story becoming…well, we don’t know that part yet. Nuru has only been on the ground for 1 ½ years. They will be expanding to communities in other needy places soon.

I was honored to visit their program this past week. And it will be even more of an honor to watch their story grow from here.

Thanks to the amazing Nuru team for showing me around.

I’ve lived in the slums of Nairobi, visited soleRebels in Addis Ababa, checked in on NURU which has to be one of the coolest and most efficient new NGOs I’ve seen in awhile, and I ran with (and by with I mean an ever increasing distance behind) world champion Kenyans. The audio, photos, and chicken scratches in my moleskine are piling up.

So to catch up on my ten4tues, I thought I’d recap the past three Tuesdays below:

Tuesday #1: The Prophetess

Oh there’s so much to write here. In fact, one of the main reasons I’m so behind on my notes is that I wrote 6,000 words about my night in the slums with the Prophetess and her family. Here’s a brief excerpt from my notes:

“I have a property North of Nairobi,” the Prophetess says. “I owned a store and saved up money to buy it. It has been pending (I think this means undeveloped) since 2004. In my vision I saw the sun coming up over my property and there was a group of mazungus (white folk) building a house on it. When I see your group come, when I saw you, I knew it was God.” She looks up. If this were a movie the camera would rise from her face, pass through the ceiling, out of Mathare, out of Nairobi, Kenya, Africa, Earth, and into the heavens where God would be shaking his head, or laughing, and mumbling, “Lady, I’ve got better things to do.”

I was prophesized! I’m like Quetzalcoatl with more hair! I’m here! I’m the one you’ve been waiting for.

I could’ve said those things. I could’ve played my roll in the drama. “I had the same vision. Let’s build this thing.” I don’t make promises like that. Heck, I still owe books to my translators from WAIW (which I feel awful about). I didn’t know what to say. I was somewhat disappointed. It makes you feel kind of small when someone looks at you and sees a future that you can’t make happen.

“Too bad I’m a mazungu with no money,” I laugh.

After spending the night on her son’s couch, I slipped her $10, which felt like a very insignificant amount. That’s the one rotten thing about showing up in other people’s visions, their expectations are always a bit high.

Tuesday 2: Geesit (totally misspelled) Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Justin at Life in Abundance hooked me up with the groups guesthouse in Addis. I had the entire home to myself. Each morning Geesit would show up and have a pretty killer breakfast spread just for me. When I had to meet the folks at soleRebels, she took me all they way there via 4 taxis. She’s a single mother of two adopted children and a super sweet lady.

Tuesday 3: NURU

NGOs usually have rather specific mission statements and goals, some of them do just exactly what their name says (think Feed the Children), so NURU’s goal seemed somewhat lofty. They want to end poverty. But after visiting their pilot project in Kuria, Kenya, and seeing how they’ve changed the lives of over 5,000 locals in just over 1.5 years, I’m a believer.

One farm I visited went from producing 3 bags per acre to 30 bags per acre. On average NURU farmers produced 500% more corn then they did before. And that’s just their ag projects, never mind their education, water sanitation, health, and finance projects.

I’ll dedicate a longer post to Nuru later. For now I’ll donate $10.

Home is where your heart is.

Home is where your story begins.

Home is where you are enslaved to your cat, poopy diapers, and lawn mowing.

Home is a lot of things. Even the ones that don’t exactly fall under the “awesome” category are missed when you aren’t home.

I’m leaving my home in a few days. Next Tuesday I’ll be in Nairobi, Kenya. I’ll be sure to continue the “$10 for Tuesday Project” there. I expect I’ll find some very interesting and worthy causes and people to support during the following 6 weeks, which will lead me from Kenya to Ethiopia, Uganda, and Ireland.

I’m giving my $10 this Tuesday to Muncie Habitat for Humanity because they physically build homes for folks to house all of their emotional treasures. I hope you’ll consider supporting your local Habitat for Humanity too.

–

Way back in 2003 when my home was just outside Raleigh, North Carolina, I wrote an essay about home. Here it is…

//HOME//

What do I miss most when I travel?

Sneakers, blue jeans, and basketball shorts. Come to think of it any item of clothing I don’t have to smell before I put it on. Doggy kisses. Phoned in sports updates from my father, fresh off of ESPN, free of charge. Pizza King. A regular schedule. Kicking my feet up in my own space, in my own recliner at the end of the day. Control of the TV remote. Having a phone. Sitting across a warm bowl of chips and a fresh cup of salsa at El Meson with a certain brown-eyed girl. Having someone to bitch to. Not being stared at. Brownies. The stack of books beside my bed. Fed-EXed cookies from Mom. Kitty stares. My truck and the ability to go where I want, when I want. Brotherly rants via witty e-mails, which are actually not that witty. Charmin toilet paper. My CD’s. DVD’s. NPR on FM. Knowing where I am. Not having to convert all currencies to dollars before making a purchase. Houseplants. My computer. Are you actually still reading this list? Flip-flops. Tick-tocks. Bling-bling. The library. Being alone. Not being alone. The smell of Home.

In order to travel you have to leave familiar people, things, building, smells, and sounds. You have to leave Home. Home is something different to everyone. Even a homeless man has a familiar way of life.

Why do I leave? To meet new people, experience new cultures, smell new smells, taste new tastes, and hear new sounds. Ever been on a trip and seen the sign: “If you lived here you’d be home.”? The imagination longingly turns. If I lived here that man would be my neighbor. This would be my favorite restaurant. In my free time I would go here and do this. When you leave your Home you’re exploring someone else’s.

Visiting a friend who is a fine wine and cheese kind of guy, he asks me, “What’s your favorite cheese to eat with red wine?”

I turn the question over in my head searching for the perfect cheese or at least one that sounds like it: American, Swiss, French (is there French cheese or only dressing?), Colby, cheddar, smoked cheddar with bacon, Velveeta. “I don’t know? I’m just a simple small town Ohioan. I actually include Velveeta on my mental list of fine cheeses.”

“Oh now, don’t give me that. You’re well-traveled; surely you have a favorite cheese with red wine.”

He was right. I have spent a lot of time away from Home, but that doesn’t make me some kind of find food and wine connoisseur. Maybe I am well traveled, but I traveled poorly missing certain lessons along the way, too wrapped up in thoughts of Home to attain certain wisdoms.

When I travel I don’t attain some greater wisdom or some inner knowledge of who I am and what I want to be. I did not leave Switzerland with an aristocratic appreciation of cheese. An extensive vocabulary partitioned by —Types of cheese—- and what they go best with. To me it’s all Swiss cheese. It just so happens that some Swiss cheeses taste better than others. Between us, some are repulsive.

I am happy with being able to place names, faces, and experiences with certain places. Kosovo and Bosnia were always dark “No Man’s” lands dominated by the violence of warfare, until I played PlayStation with a 22 year old Kosovar, and before I discussed the siege of Sarajevo with a Bosniak over dinner. Hawaii would just be a tropical paradise if I hadn’t neared hypothermia at the summit of Mauna Loa. I would not follow the civil war in Nepal if I wasn’t able to remember the kind, smiling faces of individual Buddhist monks, the young street beggar girl who attacked me with a stick, and the smell and buttery warmth of salt tea.

If I have gained anything from my travels it’s not a well-traveled savviness, envied by others, but an increased caring. I care more about other nations and their people, having visited them. I listen to the news not for entertainment, but with concern. I care for them because I appreciate their differences, and most of all I recognize our similarities. It’s their Home I visit and realize how not so different it is from my own.

Before boarding the plane on my first trip with no definite return time, I was excited and nervous. A one-way ticket “outta here” is a thing to be excited and nervous about. Where will I be in a month? What will I be eating? Where will I sleep? What the hell am I doing? Who knows?

On the other end of things, stepping onto the last plane- the one Home- is always the best. Home, for me, never changes. Sure, buildings, faces, smells, and dogs, may come and go, but Home never changes. After all it’s where the heart is, no matter how far away.

Running through the sprinkler. The back porch. Reading the newspaper. Samurai Jack. Thick chocolate milk shakes. Everyone knows my name. Comfortable silences. Garfield. The alarm clock, much better than a watch’s. Memories and photographs. My basketball. Customer service…