Yesterday I heard a story about a young lady who is spending the summer teaching desperately poor kids in Uganda.

One of her tasks is to sharpen 100 or so pencils every day for the kids, but the school doesn’t have a pencil sharpener. So she does it by hand with a dull razor blade, a task that’s proving so arduous she has blisters from it.

A pencil sharpener.

I’m leaving in three weeks to work in a Zambian bush village, in a school with 150 children. They show up each day hungry and sit on the floor to do their schoolwork, presumably with loaner pencils. One pastor, his wife and three other women feed all these children, educate them and love them, but the need is always deeper than the resource pool.

So it is wonderful that our team is coming to help with plumbing and construction and infection and yes we will bring more soccer balls and pencils, but sometimes the best gift you can give someone is the freedom to decide what they need most, like electricity and rice.

Cash does that. So I’m raising more.

This money is not going to rescue them, they rely on Jesus for that. What it will do is lift some weight. Maybe for a time it will give these five people a breather, maybe give them courage to go back to what seems like endless, impossible work.

Because, for as difficult as it is, they love it. This job, these children, it is what they were made to do. How lucky are they to know that?

Will you help us fund food or electricity or projects in Chongwe Zambia? Will you help us bless this Pastor who has two kids of his own and 150 more counting on him.

You can mail a tax-deductible contribution with The Jasper Project in the subject line to SCRUBS Medical Mission PO Box 8772 Tyler, Texas 75711.

Thanks friends.