Give Archives - Krista Photography Blog

Posted on April 28, 2015September 19, 2018 by Krista Guenin · 1 Comment

GIVE: Nepal Earthquake

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I slept in on Saturday after shooting a wedding with CoCo the night before. I had a leisurely morning and then hopped on facebook, like I do pretty much every morning. And then I was shocked to see the news of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake outside Kathmandu pop up in my newsfeed. It was like Haiti all over again…

My first reaction was panic –
are my friends OK?! Are the girls OK?!

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The faces of people I’ve grown to love began flashing through my mind, and all I could do was pray for them.

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Oh God, please let them be OK, please let them be ALIVE!

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Lord, please be their strength, protect them from fear, from the horror of all that’s happening around them.

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Please help them to reach out and let us know what’s happening!

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And then the updates started rolling in…

“Strong earthquake here in Kathmandu we are fine outside the building but it’s still shaking. The strongest I’ve ever faced!”

“About to die due to earthquake”

“experience a big earthquake in life thanks God keeping us safe and praying for all”

“[Pastor] and family are safe and hostels in KTM are safe. Children are well and safe. However some of the families and villages of the children may have been lost. Please keep up the prayers!”

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OH, the RELIEF!! To know so many of my friends are safe and have survived! There are many people I’ve met along the way who I may never hear word about until I return to Nepal one day. I will keep praying for them all. But for now, I will REJOICE that my friends are safe and able to help others in need!

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Even as I rejoiced, more updates kept coming and the situation became a lot more real to me…

1,000 dead.

“Thank you for all your prayers words and love. It’s 2:25am now and the ground still shakes from time to time. Please pray for those that lost their loved ones and homes as its cold outside and many don’t have much.”

“It’s been continuing from yesterday and it give another shake in 5:03 am… Can’t sleep whole night…”

2,000 dead.

“Cracked in our Asha Nepal and walls collapsed…!! No drinking water,no electricity, no sufficient food. Very depressing…”

“Drinking water tent and some food supply are the biggest problem now”

3,000 dead.

“We can’t get anything to eat from stores today and just now our friends who is policeman they brought us some food and tent…”

“Now our country is facing another problem.. It was really not enough with the earthquake but the heavy rain fall give us big problems… Can’t sleep even we’ve got tent now… And our tents have filled with water too…”

5,000 dead, and it could rise to as many as 10,000 as more bodies are found, and as hunger, thirst, and disease continue to spread. And the trafficking of vulnerable children increases drastically during natural disasters because so many more people become displaced.

My heart weeps for Nepal.

It’s too much, too terrible. And I feel so helpless.

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There is no denying that Nepal needs the help of any and everyone willing to give it – and there ARE ways we can help!

Please PRAY for the people of Nepal as they struggle for the most basic needs, deal with staggering losses, and begin the long journey of rebuilding their lives.

Please consider GIVING to organizations that are working on the ground to help, especially those that employ locals!

To give directly to my friends who participated in our documentary film:

Asha Nepal via Shared Hope International
Lighthouse Nepal via Out of Ashes

These organizations are also doing great work on the ground in Nepal:
MountainChild.org
CARE
World Vision (or text NEPAL to 44888‪)

Thank you for caring about this beautiful country, and these people who I love!

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Krista Guenin · 13 Comments

Forever Family Portraits

For those of you who know us here at Krista Photography, you know that giving back is a big part of our brand, and a big part of who we are! It’s important to me that my talents and my business be used for a greater good, and not just to bless those who can actually afford to hire me. Thankfully, I’ve got an awesome team of people working with me who share that desire! So, we brainstormed together how me might reach our community, and we came up with Forever Family Portraits! On Saturday, November 23rd, we will be offering FREE family portraits for adoptive families!! After my experiences working at orphanages all over the world, and CoCo’s experiences with friends who have adopted, and Amy’s experience as a social worker – it just seemed like a perfect fit! We all really believe that adopting a child into your life is one of the most generous things you can do, so we want to bless and encourage these special families by giving them a photograph to celebrate their “Forever Family!”

We are SUPER excited for this event, and cannot wait to meet some really amazing families, and have an awesome time shooting some portraits for them! To sign up, or get more details about the event, check out the invite on Facebook, or register directly here. Please help us spread the word!!

Posted on January 14, 2010February 2, 2010 by Krista Guenin · 4 Comments

GIVE: Hope For the Children of Haiti

A of couple years ago around this time, I was thinking and dreaming, and making plans for my business. I went through an extensive branding project, which is how I ended up with the Krista Photography you see today. Part of that process led me to make a pretty significant change in how I price my packages. I call it GIVE. I believe it’s my responsibility and privilege to give back from the abundance which I’ve been given. Not that I’m some extravagant lifestyle, but compared to rest of the world, I live in absolute luxury. Part of how I have tried to give back as a photographer over the last few years is through documentary missions photography. I’ve been able to help some wonderful non-profit organizations tell their story by providing images of the work they’re doing throughout the world. I am passionate about this kind of work, would love to do more! But I wanted my wedding photography to GIVE back as well. So, I began a program to GIVE 10% of every wedding package to charity. My couples can choose from a number of great organizations that I’m passionate about and it’s been a blessing to me to see how much we’ve been able to GIVE back together.

This week, one of the organizations dear to my heart has been especially on my mind and in my prayers. In June of 2008, I was commissioned by Hope For The Children Of Haiti to document their work in Port-au-Prince. It was a wonderful experience and am I’m so glad that they have been able to use my images to tell their story. While perusing Facebook the other day, I discovered that a massive and deadly earthquake had hit Port-au-Prince. As the hours passed, friends more intimately connected to the organization began posting news. Almost everyone from the organization is alive and accounted for, praise God, but their home and school have been destroyed. They are sleeping outside on a basketball court. And I can’t even begin to imagine how much death and destruction is all around them.

If you’ve seen the photographs coming out of Haiti, you may have some idea of the enormity of the damage. We can almost imagine it because here in the States, we saw Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. But we’re not talking about the wealthiest nation on Earth – we’re talking about one of the poorest. We’re talking about a country that has been devastated by hurricanes, mud slides, poverty, and cruel dictatorship… and now this.

This image is from my trip in June 2008, after a rain shower.

Imagine all of these homes, flattened. What are these people going to do now? In a country where you don’t always have power, sanitation is questionable, and infrastructure lacking – how are they going to rebuild?

Image taken the morning after the earthquake, from The Big Picture

Even the President of Haiti is without a home…

Image taken from The Big Picture. I just keep imagining what it would do to our morale in a time like this, if the White House was damaged so badly.

Please pray for this city, and for these people. Pray for the 50,000+ who have died. Pray for the tens of thousands left at risk for death by disease and starvation. Pray for the hundreds of thousands left homeless. Pray for the children left orphaned, and the parents left childless. Pray for HFCH as they care for their children, and as more children will surely come.

This was the boys’ home

If you would like to do something to help, please consider giving to Hope for the Children of Haiti. HFCH has set a goal to raise $250,000 to provide for the immediate needs of the children in their care, to rebuild their homes and school, and to minister to those who are suffering in their community. With your help, they’ll be able to reach that goal. As for the GIVE program – all weddings booked within the next 30 days will have only one option for their 10% donation… It will be going to Haiti.

Posted on October 6, 2008August 25, 2009 by Krista Guenin · 9 Comments

On my way home from church…

I know I don’t share a ton of personal stuff on my blog. I wish I did, but frankly, I feel like I hardly have enough time to get the posts of all my shoots up :) And I definitely don’t go in to much detail about my faith or my beliefs – in part because I don’t want to offend anyone, or make anyone uncomfortable. But, I really just have to share this with all of you…

A few weeks ago, I was on my way home from church and I saw a woman walking down the street. I drove past her and felt very clearly that God was asking me to go pick her up and give her a ride. I kept trying to shake the feeling because, heck, Mom always told you not to talk to strangers and to never pick up hitch-hikers, right? But, the Lord kept prompting, and I finally gave in and turned around. It turned out she wasn’t going too far, and I gave her a ride. She was clearly having a hard day and needed a little kindness from someone. After I dropped her off, I prayed for her, and didn’t think of it much again until tonight.

Tonight I was driving home from GENESIS and I saw her again, in about the same place, walking in the opposite direction. So, once again, I drove past her but felt like God was asking me to turn around. And so, once again, I turned around and picked her up. She recognized me and thanked me. But when I asked her where she was going, she told me that she didn’t have anywhere to go. She’s homeless and was just planning to walk around all night to stay warm.

So, I pulled into a parking lot, kept the car running and the heat on, and just listened to her story for a couple hours. I tried to offer to pay for her to stay in a hotel for the night, but she refused. She told me she’d tried some shelters but they were all really scary and that she felt more comfortable risking it with the drunks out on the streets at night. And it broke my heart that I couldn’t help her more. I didn’t think my roommates would be too pleased with me if I invited to her stay with us, and I don’t know of any shelters in my area at all, much less one that I could recommend that would be safe. So, in the end, I had to let her out of the car and watch her walk away. She thanked me for my kindness, but I just felt sad that I couldn’t do more.

What good is it to be nice to someone, or to love them, if you don’t take care of their needs? This is a question I’ve asked myself a lot having seen all I’ve seen in the mission field. It’s a question I have asked of the church quite a bit. James 2:14-18 says “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” What is the church, what is my church, doing to help this woman and others like her? What can I do? I can pray for her. I can give her a ride and a couple hours of warmth. I can give her food. I can give her compassion, mercy, love, and respect. I can listen. I just wish I could do more. And I wish I could point her to others who would do more.

In Chicago, I worked with an amazing homeless ministry called Breakthrough Urban Ministries. I absolutely love that place. In Boston, I’ve heard great things about Rosie’s Place – in fact it’s one of the organizations that benefits from my Give program (check out my website for more details). But, I don’t know of anything in Woburn, or nearby. Do any of you? Seriously, I am looking for suggestions. The next time I see my new friend, I want to be able to truly help her. Give me some great ideas, people! :)

And one final thought, or encouragement. The next time you walk by a homeless person, or drive by someone struggling down the street, what will you do? Think about it. Pray about it. And ACT on it. Don’t just say you want to help people, or say you love or care for people. Do it. Imagine the difference it would make in people’s lives if every one who claims to love Jesus (or anyone at all), actually went out of their way to show that love to others. Just imagine what that would do…

And M, if you found my site and my blog from the card I gave you, and if you’re reading this – please know that I’m praying for you. I pray that God would keep you safe tonight, and warm. And I pray that you would find Jesus out there, and that He would pull you up out of this hard situation so that you would know how much He loves you. And I pray that we would meet again someday, soon.