Once we got in the room, I figured someone needed to be an adult, and I said: hey look buddy, it's freezing outside, and you need to put your shoes on. We don't want you to get sick; and he went: shoes? Who has shoes? I thought to myself: does he not have any shoes? So I asked Pam. I said: does he not have shoes because they choose not to wear them, or can his family really not afford shoes? She said: likely his family can't afford shoes; and it was at that moment she said: look around the room. I looked around at this room full of kids, and only half of them even had shoes on their feet. I thought: we're in New Zealand, flip! Somebody buried something. Somebody buried something, they absolutely did.
God's not the failure by the way - we are. God has entrusted all of us with a certain amount of talent. What are you using, that God gave you; or what have you buried?
Every year we hear stories of people freezing to death, homeless people; there's a homeless shelter in my home town, I went down there to see them, because they feed a lot of people.
I said: hey, how can I help? I said: I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go around to restaurants, and I'll try to get them to donate more food. The guy went: NO! No, no. We don't need more food, and I thought: dude, you're homeless shelter, you're feeding people, you need more food. He said: no, no, no, we have more than enough food that comes in every day, because food will spoil, like we have more than enough food that comes in every day. What we need is more hands to feed the people.
Our limitation isn't food, our limitation is hands to feed it. So I said: you mean to tell me, that you have more than enough food; your problem is, you don't have enough people to serve the food to the people coming in? He said: yes, that's right.
I thought to myself: when you're serving lunch in the middle of the week, you mean to tell me there's not 12 people watching the end of The Price is Right, waiting for The Young and the Restless to start? Are you kidding me? Somebody buried something. You mean to tell me there's not 12 people choosing to watch TV, instead of feed someone who can't eat? Come on, somebody has buried something.
God is not the failure. We are the failure. You know what the leading cause of blindness in the world is? Dirty water! Kids drink the dirty water, their gut adjusts to the parasite, but the parasite in the dirty water causes cataracts over their eyes, and they're blind by four. There's a guy in Australia, he's an eye surgeon (Fred Hollows). He said: this is not okay. This is just not okay, and so he decided to give the rest of his life to restoring sight to blinded kids.
Do you know what it costs to restore sight to a blind kid? $30! Thirty bucks! Do you know what it costs to have cataract surgery in America? $15,000!
Somebody's burying something. Somebody's getting rich, and profiteering on people's health, and that is not okay. $30 will restore sight to a blind kid. Let me ask you this: what's the last thing you spent $30 on? How does it compare to the sight of a blind kid? Somebody buried something.
See, when we hear stories of burying, there's something inside of us - if you're not moved right now, I'm questioning whether you have a soul. 16,900 children are going to die today. If you have the ability to walk out and go: what are we eating for lunch; what is wrong with us! I mean go enjoy your lunch, but not at the expense of not helping someone else. That is not what we're called to be.
We're called to be Salt and Light, and establish the kingdom of heaven on the earth. When we hear stories of people who unbury their talent, it moves us.
One of my heroes is a girl named Kyla Alexander. Kyla is 39 years old, and she's given up her dream of being married and having a family, because she chose, she went to China. In China they have a one child policy, so that leaves a lot of problems when a child is born mentally handicapped; so she went to the Government Welfare Office...