Our Story
The story of Love in Action International (LIAI) is one of awakening to the needs of others. It began in the late 1970's while I raised small children. I began to wrestle with a recurring question: "What is this life about, and what is my life about?" When I became open to seeing differently, I began to see needs everywhere. Those needs had been there all along, but I simply had not seen them. I wondered, "How is there so much need when we have so many helping organizations and churches?"
My search for the answer has taken us into hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters, schools, and homes where domestic violence and addictions are the rule. Throughout the 1980s, we met children facing hunger, parents searching for safety, elders left without care, and entire communities devastated by conflict or disaster. In every story, we witnessed both heartbreak and hope — the kind of hope made possible when people choose to step toward one another out of love and compassion.
During this time, we began to see how all of problems were connected. Abuse, addiction, homelessness, poverty, incarceration — this suffering is part of a vicious cycle. However, I also learned that if I was to change the world, I must first change myself.
To choose to see is to feel the pain of a world of suffering. In 1992, we began working with arriving refugees. Realizing the desperate need, we also began shipping 40-foot containers of essential aid into the former Yugoslavia. Our grief for a world gone crazy grew to new levels with every visit to Bosnia.
“It was the closest I have ever been to Hell. Imagine a place where an army murdered civilians and called it war–a place where women and children were not casualties of war but its targets"
After seeing incredible suffering in Bosnia, I traveled to beautiful and peaceful Herzegovina. Although they were close enough to hear exploding shells, people lived as if there was no war happening. Their religious leaders blessed the soldiers before they went up the road to kill their neighbors. They claimed God had spared their beautiful village, and I saw with clarity a blindness that defied understanding.
War-torn Sarajevo in 1993, through broken glass
Throughout the 2000s, LIAI continued to advocate for survivors of abuse, care for the poor, deliver furniture, and feed the hungry.
In recent years, we have focused on supporting Afghan refugees. As the planes took off from Kabul in August 2021, we began to plan a way to help. Two months later, we had filled seven storage spaces in Dallas and Fort Worth with furniture.
We have delivered food every Saturday for years, greeted new arrivals at DFW Airport, connected families to community resources, and supported hundreds of refugees facing impossible situations. We continue to provide humanitarian relief for Afghans across the globe. In 2025, we founded an online school for Afghan girls to address the crisis of education inequality.
Phillip Hallie, author and poet, spoke very specifically of the battle within during a symposium on evil. He had come to a place in the wake of his experience in World War II of deciding he simply didn't want to continue living. That experience left him without hope and he insisted on facing the killer within himself. The world was simply unbearable.
But he then read about the little village of Le Chambon. He said, their gray little church in this small mountain village was perched on a plateau in south-eastern France. The people of this tiny little church were imbued with the power of love. It was like a battery charged with love so strong that the Germans who came to Le Chambon were disarmed in the literal sense. Their armaments weren't relevant. The result could be described as encountering a disarmingly innocent child.
My question became, "How can we be a Le Chambon?" Amid such confusion and division how can we be a light — we're told we are to be a light. The confusion and division are not "out there" you know. Both are here — in us, in you and in me. Part of the painful process for each of us is recognizing our part in suffering. Then we find ourselves wanting to take only what we must and to give where we can. We want to love God and put love for our neighbor into action so that we, too, can be like a "battery charged with love so strong" it is disarming.
— Rae England, Founder & Executive Director