The Tau Connection

What a fine looking group of young men…  I lost touch with many of these guys until recently on Facebook.  Now I see random status updates from time to time.  Amazing as it seems, most of us grew up.

What’s more amazing is how God has used a part of my life that was way off the Christian path for his good purposes.  There are many past experiences and life choices (good and bad) that make up who I am today.  God has used them all to mold me and grow me and he is still at work.  The job often looks hopeless to me but with God all things are possible (Matt 19:26).

This story however is about how God has used my past not just to mold me, but to dramatically change the life of 57 orphans in Liberia and a suburban Baptist church in Cypress, Texas.

A few years ago, before I was a member, Fairfield Baptist Church began supporting a small orphanage in Liberia.  God brought this orphanage to our church when the daughter of the man that ran the orphanage started attending our church in Cypress.  Her father had made arrangements for her to live in America, and God placed her in Cypress.

She came to our pastor with the needs of her father’s orphanage.  Our pastor, who is blessed with a heart for foreign missions, visited their orphanage.  Since that time our church has been providing modest financial support as well as annual trips by our pastor and others to preach and teach at their mission church in Liberia.

On one of his trips a couple of years ago, a young boy named Moses asked our pastor to pray that God would heal his deformed hand.  You can read more about Moses in an article I wrote about him last year.  Our pastor prayed, and as God often moves, he moved my pastor’s heart with his own prayers.  Our pastor came back to the U.S. determined to find a way to help Moses.

Our children’s pastor’s wife works at the Hand Center in Houston.  She knew about the situation with Moses and was discussing it with the doctors at her work.  The Hand Center offered that if our church could get Moses to Houston, they would operate on his hand at no charge.

Arrangements were made to bring Moses to Houston.  When my wife and I heard about this 12-year old boy coming to Houston, we both felt drawn to offer up our home for him to stay while he was here.  God knew that Moses would move our hearts away from ourselves and open our hearts to the needs of those that literally have nothing.

While Moses was here, we prayed about adopting him.  God answered our prayers but adopting Moses was not what God had in mind.  Moses is now in the process of being adopted by a Liberian couple in our church and my wife and I are in the process of adopting a baby boy from Ethiopia.  However, God had more plans in mind than just changing the lives of one young boy in Liberia and one family in Texas.

While Moses was with us, my blog articles started shifting more towards compassion focused topics.  In one article, I wrote about World Vision and challenged readers to get involved and sponsor a child.

One of my fraternity brothers whom I had not talked to in over 20 years commented on my blog post about World Vision.  He had read an article in our fraternity’s national magazine about a fraternity brother from our school, Texas A&M, that had started a program to help sponsor orphanages in Africa.  He thought I would enjoy the article since I seemed to have an interest in this area.

I read the article which described how an ATO from Texas A&M, had founded BrightPoint for Children with another ATO from Georgia.  I checked out the BrightPoint site and stumbled across articles that talked about BrightPoint teaming up with churches to sponsor entire orphanages in Kenya.  God immediately impressed on my heart that this would be a great opportunity for our church in Cypress to sponsor the entire orphanage in Liberia.

I contacted BrightPoint.  They were currently only working in Kenya but were more than willing to talk to us about a possible partnership in Liberia.  From there things just started rolling and now, about one year later, our church’s modest support for a sister church, orphanage, and school in Liberia has grown to all 57 orphans having their basic needs and education covered by families in Cypress Texas.  First God brought us an orphanage, then he brought us a partner to help us provide meaningful care for all those great kids.

I visited this orphanage last fall.  I can tell you that the money is needed.  However, what was extremely important to each child in the orphanage was that someone knew their name.  Now they have families that know their names, that pray for them, that write to them, and love them as best they can from thousands of miles away.

I can also tell you that I have seen a church that in the past has self-diagnosed itself as lacking compassion grow in compassion.  Like myself, our church has a long way to go, but he who began a great work will finish it (Phil 1:6).

I made many mistakes as a foolish young frat-rat.  I promise you, orphans in Liberia or anywhere else never crossed my mind.  I certainly never deserved redemption during those party days and I certainly don’t deserve redemption today as I walk through life with pride, self-centered desires, and an unfounded fear of man.  However, God is good.  His mercy reaches out everyday.  He uses my misguided past to reach the fatherless and the poor, and while he’s at it, he lifts me up as well.

Ephesians 2:4-5 (ESV)
⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—