A little more than a decade ago, a couple from The Fellowship made a trip to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to bring home the 10-year-old son they were adopting. While there, they connected with some local missionaries who took them to the city’s tremendous garbage dump. Many people, the poorest of the poor, were making their homes there while scavenging in the dump for any small thing of value to sell and for discarded food to eat. They were attempting to survive on the “throw-aways” of others.
Entire families were trying to eke out an existence in this environment. That included a number of small children. This couple from Katy was introduced to some young Christian men from Korah who had felt the call of the Lord to minister to the little ones. They wanted to help them in any way they could, but most especially to get an education and learn about Jesus. But lack of funds was severely hampering their efforts.
The enormity of the need was overwhelming, but the Holy Spirit touched the hearts of this American couple to help. Through the leading of the Lord, they came up with a plan to find sponsors for individual children. The monthly support from sponsors would provide education, access to medical care, proper nutrition and most importantly, the opportunity to learn about Jesus Christ and His love for them. The organization that resulted is named Caring for Korah and their official Bible verse is Isaiah 58:10: If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness. The ultimate goal of this organization is for the people of Korah to find their value in Christ, not their circumstances.
The Fellowship got right on board in helping recruit sponsors for individual children. When the situation at Korah was presented to the congregation, my heart and my husband’s were very touched. We had previously been on a short-term mission trip to Mexico City sharing the gospel at the municipal dump there where a very similar situation exists. That made us painfully aware of the enormous needs of people trapped in those circumstances. Without hesitation we immediately volunteered to sponsor a child. Knowing that human nature makes the younger children more attractive for selection, we asked to be given a child that might be harder to place and asked the Lord to give us the child of His choice.
That Christmas, The Fellowship made Caring for Korah the focus for giving gifts to Jesus for His birthday. Many thousands of dollars were raised to help build a solid financial base for this new endeavor.
It was with great joy that we received a picture of our new “God-child”. It promptly went on our refrigerator with those of our grandchildren! We happily reciprocated by sending a photograph of ourselves to her.
Our child was a 9-year-old girl who had been sent by her parents from the country to live with her grandfather at the dump in hopes that she might get an education. M was only in the second grade, thus well behind in her journey to acquire learning. Through the years there have been opportunities for us to give a little extra blessing for her on birthdays and Christmas. Photographs, reports and artwork have been received as she has grown up. But nothing prepared us for the message that we received from Caring for Korah just a couple of weeks ago:
“M is in our first group of students attending college and we are very excited for her! She is attending college in Addis, studying Information Communication Technology (ICT). After graduation she would like to find a job in the tech industry and looks forward to supporting herself and helping her family. She would like to say thank you for your dedicated support for her. Never would she have dreamed of going to college, but God sent her a sponsor and she loves you both.”
How the tears flowed as I read this! What an affirmation for the goal of Caring for Korah to break the cycle of poverty through education!
There is nothing that our Lord cannot do! It is such an incredible privilege to be able to join Him in even small ways in His work on this earth.
Truly, I say to you, as you did it to
one of the least of these … you did it to me.
Matthew 25:40
New sponsors are always needed for Caring for Korah. To sponsor a child and give that young one the chance for a much better life while learning about Jesus, go to caringforkorah.org.
