Called to CARE with Sam & Melody Harrell (AfricaExchange.org)
Called to Care #2: Sam and Melody Harrell
We begin our 2023 series by interviewing the great Sam and Melody Harrell, co-founders and co-directors of AfricaExchange.org.
This episode is like a good dinner conversation among friends. In it, Sam and Melody Harrell, co-founders and co-directors of AfricaExchange.org, talk with Reverend Julaine Calhoun, Reverend Jimi Calhoun (BridgingAustin.org) and Chris Searles (AllCreation.org) about how growing up Baptist-American in Africa led them to becoming exemplary leaders in “integrated” Sustainable Development and mission work in Kenya.
“I am blown a-Way.”
Rev. Jimi Calhoun, co-host
(renown author and musician)
Sam and Melody Harrell, husband and wife, are saving lives and ending poverty in the most isolated regions of Kenya with holistic, community care. Now celebrating its 25th year, Africa Exchange has built 14 “integrated child development” preschools in Kenya’s most-isolated / least-resourced geographies. AE’s projects are providing clean water, nutrition, education, infrastructure, jobs, job training, Creation care, ecosystem restoration, and more, in these particular places to help Kenya’s most vulnerable children and communities defeat poverty.
“Meet. Notice. Exchange. Serve.”
As the children of Baptist missionaries, Sam and Melody’s foundational insight is that CARING FOR OTHERS means: listening, noticing, and being empathetic before acting. AfricaExchange helps Kenya’s vulnerable communities build upward-spiraling personal and collective assets, which benefit the children, the community and their biosphere. AE is exemplar in their work. This podcast is worth multiple listenings for those interested in “learning the lessons that will propel us forward.” (Sam Harrell)
What can more care do for modern people? Our guests share about the effectiveness of greater empathy, mutuality, relationship, conversation, listening, hearing, seeing, connecting, processing, balancing, healing, and nurturing of ourselves, each other, and all in the Creation.
(L to R:) Melody Harrell, Sam Harrell, Chris Searles, Julaine Calhoun, Jimi Calhoun
Learn More
Sam Harrell (BA, Mdiv), co-founder and executive director, Africa Exchange, has also worked with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for more than 25 years and has been innovating in Kenyan mission work his whole life. (LinkedIN)
Melody Harrell, is co-founder, spiritual director, and board secretary at Africa Exchange. She spent her early working life helping needy children in some of the world’s harshest slums. Today she also works as a spiritual director in North Carolina. (Tending the Soul)
About Cohosts
Rev. Jimi Calhoun is lead pastor at Bridging Austin, an historically-significant American Funk musician, and a noted and prolific author (JimiCalhoun.com).
Rev. Julaine Calhoun is also a lead pastor at Bridging Austin (BridgingAustin.org).
Chris Searles is executive director, BioIntegrity.net, exec. editor, AllCreation.org.
Discussions
INVOCATION & INTRODUCTIONS
METHODOLOGY
KUTANA
SERVICES
CONNECTIONS
IDENTITY
TREES FOR LIFE
Trees for Life
Nature as Teacher
Refugees & “Migration”
Called to CARE
Sam Harrell, “I've come to realize through the help of many wise people, we really are operating on the basis of a myth of disconnection… I understand Jesus coming to show us how we are connected to God... We operate so much in our lives as if we could be disconnected from not only from God and Jesus but from each other. We are not…Africa Exchange is trying to help people who are more marginalized have a voice so they can be part of the conversation, we're all in this together.”
That's what this podcast is about.
We hope you enjoy
Called to Care with Sam & Melody Harrell
(AfricaExchange.org).
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