Monday, April 7, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Promise
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
We spent a breezy September Tuesday driving from Urbana through beautiful country, further and further south to Nashville. It was 2011, and we were registered for our first World Conference of the American Association of Christian Counselors. We parked at the mall next door and walked through a small Tennessee woods to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. We were ready for three days of great music, comedy, counseling education and bible study.
During some of the breaks between speakers (which included Pat Boone, John Ortberg and James Dobson) we heard from children, sponsors and parents involved in Compassion, International. We decided to sponsor a three-year-old African boy.
Our grandson was two that year. His name is Jack and he is now 16. Our Compassion child lives in Uganda, his name is Promise, and he will be 18 next March. Jack lives in Springfield, Illinois, where there is little threat of violence. Uganda, a landlocked country in East Africa, is famous for its wildlife, national parks, and violence often spurred on by the government.
We exchange letters with Promise two or three times a year. His handwriting and English diction make his letters easy to read. He often shares a Bible verse with us, the last one from Psalm 149:
The Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.
Promise wrote to us last week, thanking us for the birthday check we sent him through Compassion. “I bought three baby chickens, sports wear, beans, soda and sweets.” Then he asked God to bless us. “So much.”
“How are you doing there?” he asked. I wonder if we’ll meet Promise in person some day, maybe here in Austin because we won’t be getting to Uganda anytime soon. He’s welcome to stay with us if he comes to the US.
“School is going on well. I am in secondary school now, which is called senior one here in Uganda.”
Promise includes messages from his family sometimes. “Thank you for the love, care and support that you always give to me and my entire family.”
You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.
Other members of our family have traveled to Africa as short-term missionaries. Aki flew to Congo last summer for two weeks. Congo’s east border is with Uganda. Along with a Grace church friend named Greg, who travels to Congo once every couple of years, Aki spoke several times with Congolese about building businesses. Many of these men and women have worked with Greg starting their own businesses for the last ten years. Aki described and demonstrated some of the technology that makes creating and running a business much easier.
Chris, Melissa and their kids Jack and Aly have made several trips to Kenya, where their church is a major sponsor of an orphanage and school. Uganda shares its west border with Kenya. Kenya has a highly developed economy and religious life. Uganda is most famous for its dictator Idi Amin, who carried out mass killings in the 1970’s. Promise’s life does not seem affected by that history, however. His letters talk mostly of school, church, and family.
Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Still, I think of 18-year-olds in countries marked by violence and how often they are encouraged or even forced to join gangs or armed militia. We pray for Promise, and the people around him, for their protection and also their testimony. And then we pray again. Our worlds are very different. But our paths in the spiritual world cross and connect us, and God blesses us each through the other.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
(Daniel 13, Psalm 23, Ezekiel 33, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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