Thanks Pam!

Yesterday morning I had the good fortune of leaving work early so that I could go to the WMSJ radio station and man the phones for the Compassion International Sponsorship drive. The previous evening on my way into work I heard a blurb from Chuck Swindol on the same radio station in which he discussed how we are affected by the people we surround ourselves with. It is no mystery to anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time that my work place is a fortress for the disgruntled and self-righteous, and that I find myself falling into both traps at times (probably more often than not when I am at work).

I arrived at the studio 15 minutes early and was greeted by a somewhat conscious couple of D.J.s  so we had a few minutes to get comfy, get the tour and chat (did I mention we had to make some coffee for the all of us). I was shortly thereafter joined by Pam who had come to help, but as I later found out was not a Compassion advocate. Our shift was only four hours, and was relatively slow only a half a dozen phone calls or so, but the conversation that ensued over the course of that four hours I will never forget.

We (Pam, Mark, Chris – they latter two are D.J.s - and i) talked about everything from growing up to the importance of pouring ourselves out for the sake of the poor to sincerely following Jesus to being content with our circumstances regardless of what they are.

Swindol was right. In the four hours I was there I was saturated in "nice", in "positive" and in "happy". Almost unfathomable to me in a working environment, and yet it happened.

What a great morning. 5 kids were sponsored. Not a great number, but that is five more than had sponsors before the morning. The people that sponsored were awesome and had amazing stories about how God had spoken to them. The best was a 6 year old little boy who already had a baby sister and a little brother and a sponsored "brother" in Kenya, but he wanted another little sister so that he would have two brothers and two sisters. So it was that he sponsored a little girl from Peru.

. . . That little boy was my oldest son James!