I have lived my life in comfort. I have always had enough to eat, a place to sleep, a way to get to where I need to go, a loving family. I have never wanted for anything vital for survival. The hardest decisions I have made to date are where I would like to go to college and which job I should accept. Probability would have indicated a life very different from the one I currently live. I am an outlier. I cannot ignore my location outside of the bell curve. How do I respond to this? More importantly, what is the work God has crafted me to do? Continue Reading…
Hey all – Bryan here. I’m currently serving as HOPE’s Asia and Eastern Europe regional director. Matthew did a great job describing the main purposes around the Summit as well as walking you through the best of what is currently happening in Eastern Europe with HOPE and beyond. It’s now my pleasure to walk you through what I considered to be my favorite part of the Summit —dreaming of what could be. In a world where we spend so much of our time addressing and confronting challenges and constraints, we as a team were challenged to intentionally free ourselves from them and to envision a much more fruitful future. Imagining that 10 years from now each microfinance institution in the region has become the organization of our dreams—having a huge impact for Christ—what would that look like? 
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8 (ESV)
Hello everyone. My name is Matthew Rohrs, and I serve as HOPE International’s Director of Spiritual Integration. In case you are newer to HOPE, for us spiritual integration refers to our intentional effort to put Christ at the center of everything we do. This includes client and community outreach, staff discipleship, partnership with the local church, and a deep desire to honor Christ in the way that we offer financial services to the poor.
I spent my second full day in Kinshasa with the HOPE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) staff. Once again I spent the day in the field: this time visiting repayment meetings. As I said in yesterday’s post, since the election at the end of November, things have been unsettled in the capital city of Kinshasa. The staff is working hard to get our program back to normal, working hard to catch up on both repayments (collecting payments on existing loans) and disbursements (distributing new loans). So while I wasn’t able to see a normal operating environment while I was in Kinshasa, I did manage to cram a lot of action into two short days. 
