Welcome to the Pursuit of Calling podcast, pursuers, where my goal and purpose is to
provide you with the strategies and tools needed to successfully discover and pursue
your God-given calling.
I'm your host, Thomas Carney, and today we're talking about what happened on my trip in
Uganda.
Okay, so let's dive in.
The mission trip to Uganda was honestly the best experience of my life to date.
And that might sound like a dramatic statement.
And it is.
But it's not an understatement or an overstatement.
I mean, it's not an overstatement.
I learned so much on this trip.
I learned more than I actually expected to.
I didn't really have any expectations on what I was going to learn.
I just knew some things that we were going to do on this trip.
I knew potentially only one person whom I might meet.
And I did.
I'm not going to get into that.
I'm not going to get into that first.
Well, first I want to say I went down to Uganda.
You might know this already from the last episode.
But went there with Amplify, who partnered with Compassion International.
Compassion International is a non-profit Christian organization whose goal is to end child poverty.
And so everybody has the opportunity to sponsor a child anywhere in the globe.
I sponsor right now one child in Uganda.
And I previously sponsored another child, Aaron, who passed away from sickle cell when
he was 10.
Well, he passed away last January.
And something cool happened on this trip with that as well.
So on this trip, I did actually get to meet Shafik.
He's my current sponsored child.
And I've been sponsoring him for the last about seven months.
And I wasn't sure if I was meeting him or not when I went.
But that was OK.
I wanted to go and see the experience.
I wanted to experience really the goal of going was to experience the faith of those
who don't have all the distractions that we have here today and have here in America.
I mean, and well, and that's what I got.
But meeting Shafik when I met Shafik, he's eight years old.
And what I got to experience with him was friendship.
Friendship with somebody on the other side of the globe, somebody that I wouldn't have
even.
Otherwise would not have met.
We never have seen.
I knew he existed because I sponsored him.
We had some minor communication in our letters that we can do through compassion.
Besides that, though, besides knowing what each other looks like, we didn't know much
about each other.
Now whenever we got to meet, he was a little he was a little stiff at first.
And I mean, he's eight years old and I'm a stranger.
As far as he's concerned.
And we also don't speak the same language.
So we had a translator.
I was able to have some good conversation with him.
I got him a basketball that we ended up playing soccer with, but because soccer is big over
there, I didn't think about that.
I would.
That wasn't my thought when I bought it.
I just like I'm going to buy a ball and maybe we can play with it.
And we did.
We had a lot of fun.
And you probably maybe you're wondering why I'm bringing this up on the pursuit of calling
podcasts.
Besides that, it's just a big part of my life.
There's there's a big reason why I wanted to meet and go there.
I already mentioned that.
But what I got out of it, and I've already mentioned that before, was I was going to
this is actually a way down the bottom of my notes, but it was a humbling experience
to see people live their lives in a way that we would consider.
If anybody lived their lives here in America, if I like we might consider it a failure.
We might consider that life failing, a failing life, somebody that isn't doing well in their
lives.
And there, it's very common for some people to live in mud huts.
It's very common to not have a lot of personal possessions.
And it was very humbling to me to see that whenever I another thing I got to do there
was I got to meet Aaron's family.
I mentioned him before he was my compassion child that passed away.
And that was the most surreal experience of the whole trip.
I was able to give them my personal condolences.
And the father there, he actually came, we had to visit their home and in their home
sitting in a chair in their home.
And it's honestly a mud hut with a thatch.
I think that's what it's called, a thatch roof.
And he told me, he said, we're going to pray for you for your heart to heal.
And later he said, we consider you the son for the one that we lost.
And I don't have words to describe what that means.
I don't have words to describe how it feels to have that make that much of an impact on
a family on a different continent.
In knowing that it's possible.
We talk about the pursuit of calling on this podcast.
And I talked about my calling being providing people with the tools they need to successfully
pursue their God given calling.
And maybe that all I, maybe in these certain instances, all I can do is provide finances
through a donation through Compassion International.
Maybe that's the only thing I can do to bless these people besides pray.
Maybe I can also pray.
Yes.
And that's huge.
There's power in prayer.
However, if I can provide the funds for that can then be directed to help these to help
a child, whether that was Aaron or Shafik, or maybe hopefully maybe one day when an Aaron
sibling, one of Aaron siblings provide the finances for the tools, for the resources
that they need to pursue their God given calling.
That's a blessing.
And I didn't realize how much of a blessing it was until I got to see these people where
they're at until I met them where they were at.
I didn't know where my money was.
I didn't really know exactly.
I didn't understand where my money was going.
Really whenever I whenever I tithed to the church, I just trust amplify.
I trust God with my finances and I trusted amplify to steward that resource well.
The finances went.
Some of the finances go directly to compassion and we got to see how those are being used.
And now I want to encourage others to sponsor children to tie to their church to tie to
amplify or their church, their local church and trust God with their finances.
If God will do great things.
I would say if you have a sponsored child, I want to encourage you to go on a trip.
I want to encourage you, whether it be to Uganda or somewhere else in the world.
You know, it's not an easy decision, but it's a life changing one.
I want to encourage you to go on a missions trip to wherever this is at.
You can go there with compassion through compassion.
The next opportunity you get, I want to encourage you to take that jump, take that leap to meet
your compassion child if that's possible because it changes your perspective on their situation.
And I believe doesn't just change your perspective and it strengthens the reality between you
and them.
I was we were told there on the trip that sometimes the kids even the kids even have
doubts of whether their sponsors are real people.
And that's completely understandable.
Because they never meet them, all they get is all they see is letters.
They think that maybe somebody else wrote it.
Maybe there's maybe the adults there are just telling them that somebody on the other side
of the world loves them just to make them feel better and to motivate them.
And whenever you go and visit them, now they know that they know for a fact that the person
in the pictures that you sent them are real.
That the person is real and that you do love them and that Jesus does love them enough
to send somebody to send somebody on the other side of the world to just go and play soccer
with them.
To hug them, to pray with them.
So with all of that said, I want to say leave you with a final question, some final questions
or just one final question.
What can you do today to better the life of a total stranger?
How do you want whenever you whenever you enter into an interaction with a stranger,
how do you want to leave them after that interaction?
How do you want to do what is what way do you want to impact them?
I want you to write that I want you to write that down so that the next time you interact
with your bank teller, next time you interact with a cashier at the cashier at the grocery
store, you know how you want to leave them after that interaction.
The reason I bring that up because you never know how much it matters to interact with
people in a way that will positively impact them and not just treat them as a means to
an end.
So guys, on that note, thank you for listening to the this episode of the procedural calling
podcast.
If you enjoyed it, I'd love it if you would share this episode on Facebook and Instagram.
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It really helps.
All right, keep on pursuing your calling and I'll see you in the next episode.