It's A Celebration!!!

I hung up the phone, wiped away a tear and looked up at Angie.

She said, “I knew you’d be going. I just knew it in my heart, that you’d be going to Africa”.

I cried hard into her shoulder.

I’m not sure why this experience has been so emotional for me. I have many guesses, but I am not really sure what God has put in my heart toward this experience. What I do know is that when I started, my motivation was much more selfish. I chose to participate in the Dallas 13.1 half-marathon with Team Springcreek not to help change the world but to change myself. I decided to run with the team because I thought it would provide me the motivation to exercise and lose weight. I know this about myself; I am a man who needs a goal. My goal was that I had four months to train to complete 13.1 miles in less than three and a half hours. With this goal in mind, I would get up and go to the gym. With this goal in mind I was a little stricter on my diet.

A funny thing happened during my training and my fundraising – I started thinking about our friends in Katito, Kenya where the money we were raising was going to complete a multi year, $450,000.00 water project. I started thinking about their lives. I started thinking more and more about the four children we sponsor through World Vision. From afar, the more I trained and raised, the more I came to love them and want better for them. The more I sweat, the more I thought about my role and how I could help them. The more generosity I saw in the people that donated on my page, the more I thought how blessed we all are and how it is our responsibility to share that blessing.

The more I worked, the more I loved and the less it became about me. It was about those who needed that of which we have so much. It was about God and His love for all of us.

All of these things raced through my mind as I crossed the finish line on that beautiful day in October. I cried then, too.

After I gathered myself a bit, I asked Angie what she meant that she knew I was going to go to Africa. Apparently, she has seen the change in me, too. She explained that she’s seen the change in my heart and my desire to do more. She knows that I am going to try and run three 13.1’s this year with a goal of raising $13,700 for a deep-water well in Africa. She knows that my thoughts have been dominated by our friends in Africa and how I’ve come to believe it is our responsibility to help those who don’t have as much:

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. (Luke 12:48b)

So, when I got the call that I was being invited to celebrate the completion of the water project in person, in Kenya, I was moved to tears. In fact, whenever I think about the fact that I will be there to CELEBRATE the project, I am moved to tears. I am being included in this trip, in part, because I raised the most money on Team Springcreek. Therefore, it’s because of YOUR generosity that I am going on this wonderful trip. That makes sense to me, because it was your generosity that changed my heart. I shared with many of you that as I received your generous donations I was moved in the love that I saw.

It is this generosity that I am counting on again, as there is so much more to do. Although we will be celebrating the completion of the water project in Katito, there is so much more needed elsewhere. This is why I am running again this year, and why I am asking you to help, yet again. This is why I am asking you to dig deep in your pockets, so World Vision can dig deep to provide clean safe water with a well. [[[ Click here to visit my fundraising page and donate ]]]

As always, I will chronicle my fundraising and training, as well as, our amazing trip to Katito. Please pray for me, pray for us, and pray for those in Africa and elsewhere who suffer because they do not have clean water.

God bless you, and thank you for your support.

Scott