Mexico

Last week I was in Mexico and inspired by the women I met who had taken out a small loan from World Vision to build up their bussiness. Sewing, baking, running a cafe, making crafts for sale. All told the same story - desperate and unable to feed their children and now secure and growing their businesses. So cool.

Uganda March 2007

She is 17 years old and cares for her six brothers and sisters. Her parents died. They live in a dilapidated wood and mud hut. It is dark and dingy inside and the thatch roof leaks so bad that the children move outside during the heavy rains for fear that the house will fall on them.

When I visited them the children were surprisingly happy and playful and polite. It was a good sign that the older sister is doing a good job as the "mother". She had to drop out of school to work their small plot of land but she makes sure her brothers and sisters go to school as much as possible. It is hard to let them go due to the need to draw water every day from a well some distance away.

We delivered corn meal, cooking oil, sugar and tea and the children were so graceful. When we saw the hoe she was using to try to till her field we were amazed how well she had done growing a small plot of maize and cassava.

To see children is just distress was something I am use to but it is never easy. To think that they are on World Vision's priority list but had not received assistance as others had greater need. At least these orphans had a sister who cared for them. Most didn't.

As we left the church members I had taken there left money for World Vision to buy 3 hoes with handles, blankets and mattresses, maize, bean and groundnut seeds.

They are next in line for a new house, with beds and bed nets, a cow and goats and more seeds. Soon they will be safe, warm and dry and within in a year will be able to sustain themselves but with a deep loss of their parents always with them.

Laura inspires Laura

I hope you can someday meet Laura - could be either Pastor Laura from Chicago or Laura, a widow from Tanzania. What are the chances of two women named Laura encountering each other in a traditional Massi boma in Tanzania? Here is Laura, pastor of the LaSalle Street Church in downtown Chicago meeting and ministering to Laura a mother of seven and caretaker for another 8 children and one grandmother. Pastor Laura’s passion and deep caring spirit was amazing. Wherever we were and whomever we met she reached in such a genuine spirit and deep love to the people around her. What an amazing woman. A real inspiration. You need to meet her.

Seeing Africa For The First Time

By the way, I viewed Africa for the first time in 1963 from a freighter sailing into the harbor of Cape Town. Table Mountain lay in the background towering over this beautiful old yet modern city. We had spent 21 days sailing from New York. I remember that moment very clearly but only a few other things: Driving on the other side of the road made me dizzy, experiencing apartheid for the first time - seeing different entry doors for whites, coloreds and blacks, seeing baboons when we were atop of Table Mountain and zebras south of Cape Town.

Drs. Horace Smith and Lisa Thornton were visiting children with me in northern Zambia in November 2005 when they spotted a child with a badly burned foot. As doctors they, of course, immediatly began to ask questions about how it happened and what treatment the child was receiving. We had to leave for another appointment and when we arrived at the other village some distance away the local World Vision manager was late. When she arrived she said that she had been notified that a "sponsored child" and had put her staff to work seeing that the child received treatment. Later we traveled to the local clinic and when we arrived we were met by two nurses eager to talk to the doctors about their recommended treatment. I was so impressed by the efforts by so many World Vision staff to intervene on behalf of one child but then that is what sponsorship is all about. I returned to the area one month later and took this picture of the child - able to walk and the foot healed. That's sponsorship for you.

A Man of Depth

I first met Wampembe Lukonde in October 2003 when he was a area development program manager in Eastern Zambia. He is now Operations Director for World Vision Zambia. He is highly qualified and experienced in Community Development. Good and sustainable community development depends on community volunteers who take ownership of their own destiny. Wampembe was the first to point out that the community was dying and he was now learning to take care of orphans - 400 at that time and surely many times that now. Wampembe is a strong leader and a man of real depth and the laughter of a child and the discernment of a Solomon. When I was in Lusaka in June he and his four sons and one adopted daughter shared dinner with me (his wife, a nurse was at work). What a joy it is to work with him.

Maasia Warrior

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