The Phil Files

After yesterday’s post and a few bits of feedback and some healthy skepticism about the good of donating to certain relief efforts, I would like share two things with you.

First, my own experience with the child we sponsor in Uganda with Compassion.

What you see are the medical treatment records of our sponsored child, Doreen. These records were more than an inch thick. They were carefully taken and tracked.

Doreen was brought into the Compassion’ Child Survival Program at 1 year old because she was felt to be at high risk. Without medical treatment, immunizations, regular doctor’s visits, mosquito nets for her bed, treatment for her mom, training for her mom and grandmom, Doreen and I would probably have never met because she would have not survived the two and a half years before I met her.

The second picture, of Doreen with me, reveals to you how great a tragedy that would have been for both Doreen and her family, as well as my family and me. Where God will take Doreen, how she will respond to the love of God and the opportunities she has, are really outside my control. But, I can help give her a chance at life, a group of people who will help her meet Jesus, my daily prayers, notes and cards, and the assurance of the basics of life — in other words, I can help release her to have an opportunity at life — for about 110 pennies a day!

Second, I’d like to point you to my friend, Shaun’s blog to learn more about what it means to “release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.” Check out Shaun’s clear and vivid explanation.

You see, we’re not donating to a cause or an organization, we’re helping children … we know … we’ve held … and we pray we’ll know forever.

Click the Sponsor a Child with Compassion button at the top right and see for yourself!

Sooner or later, the jet lag, emotion, and amazement of the Compassion trip to Uganda had to hit me. When we arrived home on Monday the 19th, I got a good night’s sleep and jumped right back into my routine with Heartlight and Southern Hills. I was playing catch up and scrambled my way through a busy week.

On Sunday morning, however, about ten minutes into my sermon, an image flashed on the screen of some of the children I had been with in Uganda. Then the picture, the little girl we sponsor flashed on the screen. In a very public situation, and without warning, all the emotions, exhaustion, cultural differences, and jet lag hit all at once. I wrestled to gather my emotions, my voice pushed by will through clenched vocal chords tangled by emotions. The carefully prepared outline of a message suddenly scrambled in my head as my thoughts wrestled with the emotions of my heart. By the grace of God, I got through it without a total meltdown. However, some things slipped out in ways that I wouldn’t have said them under different circumstances. Carefully crafted points suddenly became fuzzily entangled in the moment.

When I sat down with ministry staff and several elders months earlier to speak on the topic, “Unto the Least of These,” I had no idea I was going to Uganda to be with children, and especially this one special child, whose smiles would be indelibly written on the canvas of my heart. But I had gotten through the message … in the first service! Somehow, the Holy Spirit was going to have to pick me up and kick me in the backside and help me through another one.

Before I made it home from that Sunday morning, Megan (our daughter) and I picked up Donna at the airport. She was coming in from a speaking engagement in Alabama with her friends, The Coffee Group. They were excited and tired and glad to be home, but feeling good about their weekend with their sisters in Christ from Homewood. I was excited to be with her and we were both glad to get home and be together.

On the way into the house, there on the counter, was a simple vase filled with white roses. They looked great except for one wilted set of leaves. I had sent them to her for Valentines’ Day, along with red and pink roses — two dozen in all. Somehow the white ones had hung on for nearly two weeks and still looked good, but all the other roses with color had wilted. I had culled out the wilted roses, and left behind the white ones. It was a little thing, but something I knew Donna would notice as a simple way to say, “Glad you are home! I love you!”

As I looked at those roses, that’s how I felt. Glad to be home and loved, but drained of color and wilted on the edges.

My blogging buddies — it is unbelievably cool to think of these incredible people as my buddies connected at the heart through the children of Uganda — have been discussing the challenge we have faced the last few days of speaking about this event. We want to share what we feel, but our feelings are too deep to communicate without tears and laughter. We are not sad, we are just deeply changed. For awhile, as we regain our balance, we are wilted roses. But unlike the roses I culled to leave only the nice looking white ones for Donna to see, we will regain our color and lose our wilt. We have experienced something we don’t want to forget and have been touched by children whom we can’t forget.

One week ago today, I was in Uganda making a home visit to the precious little girl we sponsor through Compassion International. One week! It’s hard to believe it’s been that long, and yet with jet lag and all the emotions, it seems like a month ago. But the emotions of meeting this precious little girl are as fresh and real and powerful to me today as they were one week ago!

For those that have asked, here’s a video of that visit. It took place over about seventy minutes. As you watch the video, you can detect at the beginning the nervousness on her part as well as my own. I’ve got a full video of the first few minutes and it’s painful for me to watch in its entirety because I experienced all of range of emotions as this little girl tries to figure all of this out. (You are spared all the nitty gritty minutes of this dance as we got acquainted — but she didn’t speak English and had never been around a white man.) What you don’t see are the first stages of the walk into the slum.

As this video shows, however, our interactions moved to a more relaxed, then fun, stage. At the end, we went inside the tiny little house, visited, and then came back outside and prayed together.

This precious little girl easily sat on my knee while we prayed and I got to see the smile on her face when I received the pictures from Keely about our visit — her photography is great and we were privileged to have her to ourselves for this treasured visit. My friend from Compassion, Tom Emmons, used my camera to get the digital video as unobtrusively as possible — thanks bro! Most treasured of all is the final picture that shows a joyous little girl, a loving mother, and an old preacher guy from West Texas grinning like crazy. Sweetness indeed!

Of course, no video of a Compassion child would be complete without a Michael W. Smith song in the background. This incredible artist is one of the leading advocates for children and Compassion.

I don’t know if these images tug at your heart, but I know it brings tears to the eyes of everyone in our family. It also drives us to our knees praying for God’s blessing on this child, her mother, grandmother, and siblings. (For more on this visit, please see the Heartlight.org article written immediately after the visit!)

God, please bless this child and use us and others like us to make a real difference, and eternal difference, in the lives of Your precious children. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

 

When a bunch of Internet/blogger types head to Uganda, what would you expect to happen?

Knowing the way our adversary works, you can imagine we have battled Internet issues all week long. I have not been able to get my email to work for several days.

My family hasn’t heard from me in at least three days. So here goes a note to my family on my blog — I find it quite ironic that while I’m on a blogging trip, the only way I can get a personal message to my family is through my blog. So here goes …

To My Precious Family — Donna, Megan, Zach & Mandy,

I’m headed home! My heart has been pointed there for several days. I miss you all terribly and I can’t wait to see you. I’ve got wonderful things to share with you — too many to be captured by a few articles and blog posts. But, more than wanting talk TO you, I want to hear FROM you. I want to hear your voices, to see your faces, and to learn how your week went last week. Most of all, I’m looking forward to being home and being with you!

This has been an amazing trip with a wonderful group of people. No one would have put us together by looking at our personalities and past experiences. We’re quite a collection! But, I believe we all feel that God did what no one else would dare to do: He did bring us together in this far away place. Compassion International and the children of Africa were His vehicles to do it.

There are funny stories to tell about each of my new friends, but I will share those some other time. You’ve read their blogs and probably seen some of their videos. You probably know more about what they’ve said than I do, because we haven’t been able to read each others’ posts.

So, before we leave on the plane to brings each of us home, our team will gather one more time. We’ll share the Lord’s Supper together. We’ll remember the Lord and His sacrifice for us. I know that I’ll miss being able to do this with you.

I know that my journey home will seem longer than the one coming here, because I can’t wait to see you. Yet I will also leave a part of my heart here in Uganda. When I get home, I will tell you more about your new little sister, the little girl we sponsor, and I think you will understand what I mean. Until then, please know that I love each you and hope that we can all do something like this together.

Love you forever,
Phil (Dad)

P.S. Donna, I want to especially tell you how precious you were to hide a card for each day in my luggage. I can’t say everything on my heart to you face-to-face. Until then, 3 squeezes!

“Tonight,” Stephen said, “we are going to put the icing on the cake. Tonight, we are going to put the roof on the building.”

We had made our way to a wonderful evening dinner. While the food and atmosphere were good, we were anticpating something much more exciting. Our table was about to meet Dennis and Atofia. We were a bit nervous, but mostly excited. For several days, our band of weary bloggers had seen the first hand work of in the trenches. Now we were going to meet the finished person of Compassion. Completely overwhelmed with the need and the incredible work being done and the commitment of the Compassion workers — volunteer and paid — we were ready to see where all of this would lead.

For me, I needed some tangible hope to hang onto. I still would cry everytime I thought about leaving our Compassion child in that innermost, darkest part of the slum where she lived. I needed hope that she had a chance at any kind of life, much less the life I will pray for her to find.Our Compassion child had begun her relatonship with a Compassion project through CSP. CSP (Child Survival Project) involves internvention in high risk situations for very young children. The purpose is to rescue children in bad health situations — situations often involving an HIV positive mother and a deceased or sick father. Intervention often occurs before the child is born to prevent the mother’s HIV condition from being transmitted to her child. Health, hygiene, and habits are key parts of the education, mentoring, and help. Proper nutrition and immunizations are key as these children stay in the program until they are between 3 and 3 1/2 years old. We had seen some of the work that goes on in the neighborhood church/Compassion CSP projects on our home visits where we met children and their parents. We were always invited to pray with them and learn about their lives. From CSP, children are moved into CDSP (Child Sponsorship Project). CDSP is where those us who have been sponsors participate directly. This is more than sending a monthly check to help these children receive education, hygiene/nutrition help, spiritual training, including exposure to Christ if they have not already learned about Jesus. A sponsor also gets to write the children and pray for them regularly. We get to help with Christmas and birthday gifts, as well. This caries the children through their primary and secondary educations in a well monitored and surpervised program through a local church.

We are so excited. We got our sponsors packet on our little girl from Uganda. We will be her monthly sponsor: it’s only $32 per month and it helps her with nutrition, education, and a chance to know more about Jesus. This precious little girl is named Doreen. She is precious. I hope to get to meet her on the trip to Uganda in a few weeks. This will be our second child to sponsor with Compassion. The other child we sponsor is a boy named Starlin.

With Luke 16 being my daily Bible reading today, I couldn’t help but hear Jesus’ call in this chapter to use our worldly wealth to bless so we will be “welcomed into our eternal dwellings.” Jesus makes clear that how we handle (I handle!) the blessings he gives me hear will determine what God will entrust to me in the future and where my eternal home will be in the future.

//Inspiration“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

//Incarnation:
I have to admit that for many years it was hard for me to be as generous with the work of God as I should have been. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be part of several opportunities to use the blessings I have and share them with others. But, I have to look hard at my heart and how “things,” the “things” I call “my stuff,” seem to be too important to me still. I am still trying to make my first reaction to blessings, first to praise God and second to ask Him how He would have me use those blessings.

//Invitation:
O God of generous grace, open both my eyes and heart to see how You want me to use the blessings you have showered on me. Please help me use what I have in ways that do your work. In Jesus’ name. Amen.