Editor, Times-Union: “Oh, God will bless him! God will bless him! Thank you, Madam Sarah! Thank you!”
Five-year-old Eric is joyously celebrating the good news that this year his family won’t have to worry about his education, because someone in North Manchester, Indiana, just became his sponsor.
It’s one of the best parts of being here in Winneba, Ghana, West Africa, for one year: telling the kids and parents at the Challenging Heights School when one more person signs up to become a child sponsor. One more kid off the waiting list. One more grateful parent sitting in our office amazed at this sudden gift.
Obo Garry dances, spinning around in circles in front of everyone passing him on the upstairs porch.
Georgina tells me, “Madam, I want to see my sponsor’s face.”
Emmanuel jumps all over the room and I hear him singing for the next hour as he washes his clothes in a bucket.
Mabel just smiles.
The moms – Esi, Hannah, Ekua – thank me, as if I’ve done something personally. I don’t speak Fante, so I can’t explain to them that it isn’t me at all.
It’s my dad in the states, calling up newspapers to schedule interviews. It’s my library kids in the seventh grade, bringing in less than $2 each so they can, together, sponsor one child. It’s churches and Bible study groups in Liberty Mills and North Manchester who immediately respond to the needs of Ghana’s vulnerable children. It’s a business that decides to invest in the lives of five beautiful Ghanaian kids. It’s a family that decides to pay school fees for a child they’ve never even met (and maybe never will).
Thirty-seven children have received a sponsorship. Most of these donations have come from Northern Indiana. If it wasn’t for you, there would only be four of five sponsored kids.
If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have 37 snapshots in my head of smiling, dancing, jumping, spinning, God-bless-them! children.
Medase pa pa pa! (Thank you very, very much.)
If you are interested in sponsoring a child, please contact Nikki at Victory Christian Fellowship, 112 W. Main St., North Manchester, IN 46962; 260-982-8357; or www.victorynm.org for more information.
Note: James Kofi Annan (founder of Challenging Heights where Sarah works) will be speaking in North Manchester Feb. 5.
