"That's when I felt Renee's elbow......."
Renee told her husband (Richard Stearns, President of World Vision) that he needed to sponsor the child at his place setting and he said no, we've already sponsored a dozen and we can't sponsor a new child at every event. He bowed in prayer again but Renee was insistent. She gave him the "look" so he reluctantly filled out the form to sponsor Morgan from Zambia. Richard's son Andy was also at this event and he sponsored the boy at his place setting, which happend to be Morgan's brother Jackson.
The Stearns go home after the event and Richard doesn't think much more about these two boys. Renee is the one who always writes to the kids and sends them cards. "I just pay the bills," he says.
About two years later Richard is planning a trip to Zambia and his staff reminds him he has two sponsored boys there. They decide to film their meeting and tell the boys story on one of their tv specials. "So a few weeks later I found myself walking across a field in Zambia to meet Morgan and Jackson, who lived with their grandmother, Mary Bwalya."
"When she saw me, Mary ran to greet me, grabbed my hand, and bowed almost to the ground, thanking me profusely for what I had done. She said, 'When I learned two years ago that a family in America had decided to sponsor Morgan and Jackson, I knew that God had replaced the parents these boys had lost! If I had wings, I would have flown to the airport to greet you.' I was stunned and embarrassed. Mary was not eager to thank me because I was the president of World Vision; she wanted to thank the American sponsor who had rescued her grandsons. She saw me as a new father for two boys who had lost their father to AIDS. I then sat and talked with her and the boys, and I learned just how dire their situation had been. Both of their parents had died within the same year. There were four siblings, Jackson being the oldest. They had literally nursed their parents on their deathbeds, watching their painful and horrible deaths as they wasted away, consumed by sores that covered their bodies. Jackson, thirteen at the time, knew that he would have to care for his three younger siblings, so he quit school and tried to find work and food. (Mary lived several hundred miles away and had not heard of the deaths)"
"But Jackson was not able to support them, so all four left school and began to scavenge and beg for food. 'There were days we lay all day on the floor of our hunt because we were too weak from hunger. We sometimes went a week with no food, and I feared that Morgan would not survive,' Jackson told me."
"Finally, their grandmother learned of the deaths and managed a bus across the country to rescue her grandchildren, taking them back with her. But a poor widow herself, Mary could not manage to feed and support four young children. Soon they all began to sink deeper into hunger and despair. They hit bottom when a storm wrecked the little mud hut they lived in, adding homelessness to their desperate conditions."
"Here Mary picked up the story. 'That was when I learned the joyous news--that an American family had decided to sponsor Morgan and Jackson--and I thanked God that He had raised someone up to help us."
"I felt so ashamed. That night two years earlier at the banquet, I had filled out a card and dutifully written down my credit card number--only because my wife had made me. I had not thought about the lives involved, that my decison might have been a matter of life or death. It had only been a transaction to me, costing me just two dollars a day. But to Mary and those boys, it was an answer to a prayer that literally may have saved their lives."
"If you don't think a small gesture of compassion can make a difference, think again."
This excerpt came from Richard Stearns book The Hole in our Gospel. It was the 2010 Christian Book of the Year!
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