From Uganda: Mama Faith

Each morning Mama Faith walked down the dirt road, through the path cut through the long grass, and up the cement to bring us our breakfast.  It was an unnecessary act of service-especially on the mornings that it rained. She saw my bed un-made and insisted on making it.  She saw our dirty clothes on the ground and she insisted on cleaning them. She bent low to sweep the dust out the door and to mop the cement floors. 

Mama Faith runs the orphanage-the 50 kids who are in school, eating well, playing hard, and praying harder. She is not educated and she doesn't know much English. Her daughter Pauline is one of the kids that goes off to school every morning.

She is glad to have the orphanage-but not as glad as the orphanage is to have her.  She gets paid, but not much, not much at all.  Pennies/hour considering how long and hard she works.  She has a room in the orphanage, a bed, and a TV that gets 2 channels when the electricity works.  At church she stands behind the other women who lead the songs.  She is the widow putting her pennies in the offering plate, the least, the servant of all. With all that she does, she is the servant of all.

I found out on this trip that 15 of the children rescued from the slums were able to go to school. We visited them.  They brought us their books and showed us how they could write english and do math.  They are behind for their age, but they are in school. They are boarding school students-their home is no longer the slums, it is a school.  On the ride home from the visit, Patrick was telling me how they were able to send them to school.  Generous outside donors and volunteers who came to the orphanage generously put together almost enough money for all of the kids.  

Then Patrick told me that Mama Faith sponsors one of the kids.  My jaw dropped.  Mama Faith sponsors one of the kids! I thought about her salary-thought about the cost of sponsoring-she gave away nearly everything. Mama Faith uses her salary-a salary she has earned a hundred times over-to send a boy from the slums to school. 

I watched fields pass by my open window and thought about Mama Faith sponsoring a child. It changed something for me-forever I think. Mama Faith redefined generosity.  I had set the bar comfortably low.  I was more generous than most.  But now she is the bar-she is the example.

The kids who were rescued from that slums that are now in school need sponsors who can give $40/month. Their next term starts in June and they don't have sponsors, so as of now, they will have to drop out of school.  We need 12 people committed to 12 kids. Shoot me an email: caleb@beautifulresponse.org