Tom Davis' Blog

An Orphan's Faith

We have a great team in Uganda right now, led by Greg McElheny and Vince Giordano.  I just received an email from one of our team members, Ben Savage, from Cincinnati Ohio. I had to share it with you.  Please join me in prayer for this team as they visit carepoints throughout the Teso Region over the next few days. I hope to update you with more stories as they come to me.

"Today I walked into a world unlike any other that I have experienced.
I arrived two days ago with a team from Children’s HopeChest to visit
orphan communities in the hopes of creating connections between our
world of plenty and their world of want.   As we drove through the
towns, I witnessed a bizarre mixture of beauty, despair and hope.  The
landscape was truly astounding.  There were many imaginative and
hardworking people who had used what little resources that could
muster to create businesses that were showing signs of success.  The
next sight I would see would be a child naked, in a ramshackle mud hut
with no one to care for them.

In this strange stew of images we pulled into Rapha Community School,
a community that is sponsored by a church in Florida through
Children’s HopeChest.  We were greeted by 150 children in white shirts
and orange smocks.  The children were not exactly what I expected.
True, their situation was more dire than any I’ve seen, but the
children shone like the sun.  Their smiles were bright and filled with
pride and dignity.  The children greeted us individually and thanked
us for coming.  I only wish my children acted this respectfully.
After we toured the community, we were escorted to their schoolroom.
The room consisted of a small map of the world, a few old posters and
rough hewn benches.

The children sang a welcome to us.  They danced and recited Gods words
to us.  I was challenged and changed by all of this.   And then there
was Sarah, who read Matthew 6 aloud.  Sarah, who, from all earthly
perspectives should be disabled with despair for her future spoke of
faith.  She is an orphan who has depended on God to deliver food,
shelter and all other earthly needs.  She had suffered loss and pain
that people in my community would have spent countless dollars on
therapy to recover from, but today Sarah spoke to me of faith.  She
read

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will

eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more
important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at
the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more
valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to
his life?
"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field
grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon
in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God
clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is
thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of
little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What
shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all
these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But
seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things
will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of
its own.”  Matthew 6:25-34

To hear a lovely child of God with a gleaming face recite those words
to me was the high point and most devastating moment for me.  The
thought that Sarah, who has good reason to worry about tomorrow would
unassumingly speak those challenging words to us fairly contented and
well fed Americans destroyed me.  That we worry more about the news
from Hollywood than the desperation found around the world was nothing
short of life changing.  While our culture is so consumed with anxiety
and fear, here was little Sarah exemplifying faith and courage.  She
read the words but I could see that she felt them too and that she
felt them deeply.

I have always loved that passage and thought about it as a cute
phrasing of my simple faith. But today I heard it as a life mantra
that was spoken from the core of this small framed girl.  It was the
throwing down of the gauntlet.  And the question that confronts me now
as I sit in my Ugandan hotel and Sarah sleeps in her mud hut is “What
will I do to respond?”  I have been blessed - not so much that I am
rich in my own community necessarily, but I am insanely rich in a
global context.  I have also been exposed to enough of the
difficulties that these communities face that I can no longer hide
behind ignorance.    Do I truly believe that these children are more
valuable than my cable television?   I am the “I want my MTV”
generation.  As Africa burns I live in comfort and ease while I CAN
make a difference in the lives of others but will I choose to? What
sacrifice have I been willing to make to help fulfill God’s promise of
care to others?  I will live differently from this day forward.
Have mercy on me God, though I truly don’t deserve it.  I have for too
long ignored your call to love those who are broken and abused.  Help
me capture and hold onto the conviction, sorrow, and joy reflected in
Sarah’s eyes today.  And thank you for showing me a picture of your
heart through these broken but not forgotten children in Rapha.  I am
devastated and changed.  Thank you, sweet Lord."

Thinking Differently About Orphan Care

I'm loving these lively discussions!

Since the topic of 'solving the orphan crisis' is coming to the surface over and over in the comments, I think it's important to define a few terms. Russ made the comment that "orphan care is a band-aid...the only real solution is beating the sources that cause orphans like extreme poverty and preventable disease."

The predominant strategy for eliminating poverty and preventable disease has been foreign aid. The West has spent 2.3 trillion dollars over the last 5 decades of foreign aid, but we still have not managed to get 12 cent medicines to children to prevent malaria deaths, or get $4 bed nets to poor families, or $3 medicines to new mothers to prevent 5 million child deaths. Why? Something should tell us that's the wrong approach.

In my experience of hundreds of trips overseas, I have seen entire communities transformed because of orphan care. I have seen kids who had no hope for survival not just exist, but thrive. I have seen young girls living safe and going to university instead of becoming prostitutes.

Foreign aid is a top down approach which ignores the power of individuals (like Hanna from Addis Ababa and her network of foster care homes for orphans in Ethiopia) to provide bottom up solutions. My friend Lyston calls these people "creatures of invention." They are the women like Gugu from Swaziland who asked the 13-year-old prostitutes in her community what they needed to escape the sex trade. They answered simply, "A school." The next day, Gugu started a community school under a tree for these girls (Gugu's carepoint is not sponsored yet...call me if you're interested in getting involved here). They are pastors like Walter from Swaziland. God told Walter to "look in his own pocket" for the resources to help orphans in his community. So, he stopped paying for his own kids to go to school so that he could feed 500 orphans using the help of widowed grandmothers to cook and serve.

Walter, Gugu, and Hanna teach us about what true orphan care is. Orphan care is not a sponsorship program. It's not a feeding line, a mission trip, or a humanitarian project. It's holistic care that meets the needs of what a child would receive if they were in a family, ie, medical care, education, food, clothing, shelter, love, etc. That eliminates issues like extreme poverty and preventable disease.

I wouldn't call that a band-aid.

True orphan care gets people involved in communities, releases compassion in a way that makes a real difference, and helps to solve the bigger issues behind the orphan problem. I believe we can do this by helping communities (churches, companies, and organizations) take responsibility for communities in poor countries filled with orphans. Everybody, every church, every business, can "adopt" a Walter, or Gugu, or Hanna. The results transform children of the lowest state in their societies into men and women of great dignity and compassion. This happens when we roll up our sleeves, and get behind the work that is already being done to eliminate the orphan problem by these great men and women. The West does not bring the answers. We can bring the money and the compassion to keep this work growing and expanding. It's what Children's HopeChest does. Our goal? Engage 12,000 communities in the US and Europe to sponsor 12,000 communities, reaching 1,000,000 orphans. If you reach 1,000,000 orphans, you've just empowered an entire generation to reach itself. The 1,000,000 will reach the 150,000,000.

Make Poverty History

Dear Tom , Every morning 77 million children don't go to school, and not because they don't want to. 77 million children go without school because neither their families nor their governments have the resources to provide them with a basic education. Without education, these children are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, hunger, and AIDS. Confronting this global challenge requires leadership and courage to take the bold action necessary to confront this crisis. Yesterday four of those leaders, Representatives Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have stepped up and introduced the Education for All Act to give tens of millions of children the education that will lift them out of poverty. Now, as the bill is introduced, we must convince other Members of Congress to demonstrate the same courage and sign-on to this important piece of legislation. Write a letter to your member of Congress asking them to co-sponsor the Education for All Act. Education is a tool to transform the world, one student at a time. Education raises incomes, reduces infant mortality, slows the spread of HIV-AIDS, and saves lives. This is an investment that pays rich dividends. The Education for All Act tackles the issues impeding access to education, from improving facilities and training teachers to eliminating school fees. This bill empowers developing countries to create and implement plans to put every child in school. Will you write a letter to your member of Congress asking them to support the Education for All Act? If anyone can make a difference on this issue, it's you. In the last week 108,044 people have joined ONE, making our collective voice ever louder. Now let's make ourselves be heard.

The Poorest of the Poor are Always Marginalized

Whenever I read a story about the poor, they are typically abused over and over. Some of this is intentional, some of it not. But the very fact that the poor are poor, puts them in danger of being mistreated by the world's system on a regular basis.

This reminds me of one of the first little girls I met in Africa. Unfortunately, her story is more common than not. Her father had disappeared, leaving her mother to care for all 5 children alone. Naturally, the father was the breadwinner of the family, so the mother was left unskilled and unable to provide for the family. They were already poor, now they were poor and hungry.They were also treated as cursed people in the community - because their mother soon became sick.

The children watched as the HIV virus turn into to full-blown AIDS in their mother's body right before their eyes. It wasn't long until the children were now starving, and a few people would drop food by every now and then. But it wasn't enough. Then men started coming by, raping the children and leaving a loaf of bread as 'payment.' This little girl had been raped so severely, she had lost control of her bladder. That's injustice and the Bible screams for justice.

Can you see how evil is perpetuated on those who are poor again and again? The story is all too familiar. You can read another story similar to this one about a girl named Regina is Mozambique HERE.

This is why we must be engaged and why we have to help. It is the heart of Jesus and it is "pure religion." And it's what the Five for 50 Foundation is all about. More to come on that this week. Also, keep your eye peeled for some live video to go up on my blog as we prepare to go to Africa on March 2nd. We're taking you with us!