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YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Ali Eastburn was sitting with two dozen or so women at an Orange County Bible retreat when the facilitator asked the group how they could be influential in the world.
As a pastor’s wife, Eastburn’s thoughts immediately went back several weeks to when her husband, Ken, told her that two-thirds of the world’s population did not have access to clean drinking water.
“I was looking around the room and saw these large diamond rings, including my own, and I noticed some of the designer bags and designer shoes,” Eastburn recalled of the August 2006 event.
The pastor’s wife spoke up. If they sold their possessions, they might be able to feed an entire African village.
“It kind of fell silent,” Eastburn recalled.
While her comment stalled out there like a biblical millstone, Eastburn noticed that her heart felt remarkably lighter just at the thought of such a thing.
When she got home, she telephoned Ken, who was out of state at an event with the church’s elders. As he listened on the other end, Eastburn told her husband, pastor of The Well Church in Orange County, that she wanted to sell her wedding ring and use the money to purchase a water well in Africa.
“He was so proud of me because I was so materialistic growing up,” she said.
She then suggested launching a new ministry, telling her husband that if she was willing to give up her wedding ring, other women might be, too.
Appreciative of her excitement, Ken encouraged his wife to follow her heart, but suggested the idea probably wouldn’t resonate with other women. He polled the elders he was traveling with and they all agreed: Their wives weren’t going to go for it and no one else would either.
But within months Ali and four of the six elders’ wives had shed their glistening covenant rocks as part of Eastburn’s new ministry, With This Ring. It’s part of a concept she calls radical giving, something she first became exposed to while watching the Stephen Spielberg epic “Schindler’s List.”
The film is based on the life of Nazi sympathizer Oscar Schindler, who took advantage of the Jewish slave labor to build his manufacturing empire. Over time, though, his heart changed and Schindler is credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews by buying them out of captivity under the guise that he needed more labor at his factory. At the end of the film, a group of Jewish men celebrate the war’s end by presenting Schindler with a ring they made from gold they extracted from their own teeth.
The ring was inscribed with the Jewish proverb, “He who saves one life, saves the world entire.”
Eastburn, who converted to Christianity from Judaism, said the conversation that followed—and Schindler’s overwhelming remorse of not realizing the freedom the sale of his possessions could have brought—resonated with her.
“(Schindler) looked down to his watch and at his car and said, ‘I could have done more, I could have saved more,’” she recalled. “That was a really powerful scene.
“We are about radical giving because that’s what God commands us to do,” she said. “We are just collecting houses, collecting cars and boats and we’re not helping anyone but ourselves. That’s not what we’re supposed to be.”
Inner assessment
As she began to evaluate her own life, Eastburn said she didn’t like what she saw.
“My husband was a pastor,” she said. “I had to have the perfect ring.”
They had purchased a new home and were “moving up the debt ladder.” Since selling her ring, the couple has also sold their luxury SUV and tried to sell the house, but pulled it off the market when there were no buyers because of the economy.
“We are just trying to change our lifestyles because we don’t feel 10 percent is enough for us anymore,” she said.
The movement that God ushered in at home also was at work in their 50-year-old Baptist church, which previously gave up an expensive building lease to begin meeting in local houses. Instead of paying rent, they used the money for outreach into the community and for missions.
In the four years since the Eastburns arrived, attendance has increased from about 15 to more than 100 and seven network Well house churches have been started with several more scheduled to begin in the next few weeks.
“God did it with our church, He did it with us, and now he’s doing it with other people,” she said.
Making her own mark
While the Lord was visibly at work in the life of the church, Eastburn said that it wasn’t until the women’s retreat that she finally understood how she could personally be an influence by perpetuating God’s love using Schindler’s model.
“Where’s our heart?” she said. “Are we so attached to our things that we are unwilling to give up our things to follow God? I want to do amazing things for the Lord. I want to be a trailblazer.”
With the proceeds from the sale of her wedding ring, Eastburn was able to spend $8,000 to dig a well in Africa. On April 17, Pastor Johnson Asare, whose community was a beneficiary of that well, traveled from Ghana to publicly thank Eastburn for her work during a fundraising banquet in Anaheim.
To help promote the cause, the ministry has developed house party kits where women can get together, watch an eight-minute informational video and plan their own water well drive.
“We cut them loose, let them raise money and build their own well,” she said.
Another project still in development is the Wedding Well kits, which allow soon-to-be married couples a plan to incorporate the ministry into their wedding plans.
“Instead of opening a box with a toaster in it, you are saving a life,” she said.
People more comfortable with ongoing support instead of donating jewelry can become involved through the Wedding Band, a group of sponsors who commit to pay $50 a month to apply toward administrative costs so that eventually 100 percent of the money raised from the rings will be used to build the wells.
Expanding the reach
After more than a year of planning and applying for nonprofit status, With This Ring began accepting public donations of gems, gold and other precious jewelry in December. Since then she’s received more than 30 rings. A missionary, who heard a radio interview with Eastburn from his home in Ecuador, sent in two class rings. Another man sold two custom wheels for his car and sent in the money.
“What’s more important, save a life or the ring?” she asked.
While the concept sounds simple, Eastburn admits the logistics are time-consuming. Even with 20 volunteers, she’s working full-time to shop the jewelry around town to get the best prices. The jewelry is kept at an undisclosed off-site location for security.
To maximize resources, Eastburn teams up with Living Water International to build the wells so that she can concentrate on raising money.
Foreign concept
She admits the concept seems foreign to others when first broached, especially among Christians who put a great deal of weight into the sanctity of marriage and its symbol—the wedding ring. In fact, it took Eastburn several months to actually sell the ring.
“It sounded good that I wanted to do it, but it took a while to do,” the pastor’s wife admitted.
She was not alone. Her close friend, Jaimee Hubert, laughed at Eastburn when she announced her decision to sell the ring.
“She said that’s great for you, but there’s no way I’m doing that,” Eastburn said. “Fifteen minutes later she started crying and said, ‘For goodness sake, you can have my ring, too.’ ”
While on the phone telling her father, Eastburn listened as he relayed the information to his wife. Her mother dropped—and shattered—a dish. Despite their surprise, Eastburn said her parents have been supportive.
“It’s been an amazing thing. I can’t take the credit for it. It was a God thing,” Eastburn said. “With sacrificial giving you feel you are struggling to give it away. With radical giving you are holding your hands up to God.
“We are a society that takes and takes and takes. We feel we deserve these things. We are focused on turning that around and saving people in the process.
For more information, visit www.withthisring.org.
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