(the following blog is posted by Clarissa Worley. It is the first of a series of blogs which are created to give a million thanks to the precious people whom God has sent to share the passion of saving children from injustice by partnering with Touch A Life. We would like to honor them by sharing their stories--which are true miracles. Many times we've been asked to suggest fundraising ideas and there could be no better way than to share with you what others have come up with. These special blogs will soon be on a fundraising page of our website.)
A year ago my future mother-in-law Joanne told me about Oprah interviewing Pam Cope. She said it was amazing. That night curiosity got the best of me and I had to get online and check it out. I consider Africa my homeland, having spent most my childhood there, and she’d said Pam had read about a little African slave boy in a major Newspaper here in the US, and had gone and found him and others and rescued them from slavery. It gave me goose bumps.
I went to Oprah’s site and read it all. I checked out the interview, the photo blog and read just about every linked article I could find. As naïve as it may sound, I hadn’t thought of slavery as a present day problem in Africa… and wow… I was dead wrong. For several days afterwards I prayed for the kids still in slavery and felt all this sadness, like I needed to do something. I called Joanne and thanked her for telling me about the story… but that was about it.
It wasn’t until about four months later—early spring—when I was planning my wedding that the plight of children in Ghana came back to me. I have always trusted God to guide my mind and heart. Usually when I hear something significant—like Pam’s story and work—I commit it to God, trusting that if I am meant to participate, He will tell me when and where. Well it was the middle of spring and God was just about to poke my memory.
I had just looked over our budget of about $20,000 we were working with for the wedding; a fully catered meal from our favorite restaurant and all, when I checked my e-mail and read a forward from my younger sister Celina. The e-mail was from Ben, a dear friend of hers (who, I’ve got to add, she is now planning to wed!) and it was all about how these kids he’d helped in Peru last summer hadn’t made it through the winter because they were too poor to have the clothes, food and medicine needed to survive.
What touched me most about that e-mail was how Ben grappled with his cushy life here in the US and all he had, when these little kids were dying because they couldn’t get enough food. He was saddened and frustrated… it seemed so wrong. Logging off my yahoo account, I sat back and looked at the list for our wedding—Ben’s thoughts echoing in my mind, when it happened.
I immediately had this overwhelming sense that Doug and I should use our wedding to make a really difference, to express tangible love to those in need. It wasn’t even a sting of thoughts; it was just this huge sense of knowing. We would help children with nothing, we would make our wedding a homespun affair and focus the spending and giving to help little boys and girls who had nothing. I called Doug; he thought the idea was marvelous.
Immediately we started to make new plans. First we were sure we needed to help the cause in Ghana. It was as clear as if God had called me up and told me to contact Pam. Second we wrote and printed up a letter and a story of “what and why” we were doing for our wedding that we could send out with our invitations*. And then third, we began enlisting the talents of friends and family to cut the cost of our wedding.
It was a glorious plan and everyone got excited on hearing it. We had all these people come forward and participate in everything from making free flower arrangements to shooting incredible photography, to landscaping and even to making my cake and my dress, (thank you mom!) and those of the bridesmaids. It was this huge labor of love, and the outcome was hard to believe.
At the wedding we asked that all gifts be donations to Touch A Life foundation and people were happy to give. There were also several who couldn’t make it but donated via the website or sent us a check in the mail. I’m not sure what the final count is… but it’s somewhere between six and ten thousand! And that’s not including my husband and I. We saved a lot, and then realized that there were a lot of expenses we didn’t plan for! But we’re committed to freeing at least one child--$2500.00, by the end of the year.
In fact, I have decided to keep promoting this work wherever I go. We set the challenge at our wedding of raising enough to save 10 kids, ($25,000) and Doug and I have decided to continue participating in this work until that amount is reached. As Christians, we believe that we should have a personal plan for tangibly helping the widow and orphan, and this is one of ours.
I could go on and on about how blessed everyone has been from this. People wept. Some could only give $25.00, but they did it with so much love. It set a tone at our wedding that elevated all of us to a place of deep meaning and joy beyond what I expected. I will never forget the minute of silence we took for all the children still in slavery as our wedding ceremony got underway, or the reading and prayer of a Malawian friend of my who blessed this work in his native tongue. As I write this, it still brings tears to my eyes.
As I wrote a while back to a friend, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate marriage—the ultimate commitment of love—then to release human beings from darkness and death into life and a loving home. It sure beats releasing white doves (who just fly back to their trainer in the end) or helium ballons (that will eventually pop and litter up someone’s lawn somewhere).
Looking back now, we are so in love with God’s heart. He gave us this idea, filled in the details and poked us into action. Without God, Doug and I would have spent all this money on our friends (who hardly needed one more huge meal).
And received a pile of gifts we can live without. I think Penny (with Touch a Life) said it best: “Towels, wall hangings, and dinnerware will all someday pass away, but your wedding gifts will make generational differences.”
Yeah God! Doug and I are still smiling!
*The “how and why” is actually going to be printed as it was written in a women’s magazine next August. It’s can also be found on my website if people want to read it at: www.clar.cc
,+Mawule+(Emmanuel),+Sara+-+Copy.JPG)
