Justin Fung a.k.a. gershom's journal

The last weeks of 2009

Last week, I celebrated Christmas with Aaron, Amy and Elijah in Huntington, WV, home of Marshall University ("We Are Marshall") and of Amy's family. It was great spending a few days outside of DC, and with an awesome and wonderfully welcoming family.

To boot, last week ...

• I got to go on a tour of the East Wing of the White House.
• I got to talk with family in Australia, Hong Kong, and California.
• I got to talk with friends in New Zealand, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California. (What up, iChat video conferencing?!)
• I got to watch a truckload of enjoyable movies: Avatar, Invictus, The Blind Side, The Invention of Lying, and Sherlock Holmes.

It was a good week.

[For Christmas pics, check out my Facebook.]

This week, I'm in snowbound St Louis for Urbana 2009, InterVarsity's triennial missions conference. I'm here with Sojourners, who are co-leading the Poverty and Advocacy track along with World Vision and International Justice Mission. It's the first time in Urbana's history that they're looking at advocacy as a form of mission, and so it's a pretty momentous occasion and an exciting development.

One of the things we're launching this week is the Human Wrong Initiative, which is geared towards combating child slavery in all its forms: prostitution, forced labor, and child-soldiering. Of the 27 million people still in slavery today, about half are women and children.

This is how the world is today. But it is not how the world should be. Nor how the world needs to be. Join us, get involved, let your friends know. Let's stamp out child slavery.

The other thing that's happening (that I'm involved with) is helping Sojourners lead a night of lament for the injustice in the world; that'll take place tomorrow (December 29th). I'll only be speaking for a few minutes, but I'm gonna be laying the groundwork for the couple hundred students in our track to engage with God in this way, so I'd appreciate your prayers!

[Pics to Urbana will follow. ]