This is Lawrence. He’s 15. I first met him when he was 6 years old and living with a local pastor in his village. His father had recently died. His mother was nowhere to be found. The pastor found him living in an empty house caring for his 4 year old brother. They hadn’t eaten in 3 days.
Since then, Lawrence has lived in 6 different houses with close to 10 different caregivers. Every single one of his family members has died. He has been in and out of the hospital too many times to count and in and out of school so many times that he barely has a 6th grade reading level.
The single most important reason why this kid is still alive is because of his sponsor, my best friend. When we first began the sponsor program back in 2007, my friend, Julie, jumped on board with the caveat, “I want the kid that no one else wants.” At that time in the life of the program, we threw sponsorship events at people’s homes where we displayed beautiful portraits of each child with a quote and story about their life. Potential sponsors could see the children, read their stories and hand pick the child they wanted to support. All the cutest kids got selected first. Always. I’m not saying that’s how any of us want things to go down, but that was sadly, the reality.
Now, I was taking all the photographs and, believe me, I did the best job I could and took as many photos as it took to get an amazing shot of each child, knowing that this might be their one chance at getting sponsored. But, Lawrence was different. I could never figure out just how to photograph him so that he looked ‘cute’. You see, Lawrence has an eye problem. To this day we have yet to have him diagnosed (which we are working on right now), but his eyes seem to be lazy, cross-eyed and never looking in the same direction, which made it highly difficult to photograph him.
In 2007, Julie took one look at this picture and said a resounding, “Yes, that’s my kid.”
Through her own ups and downs over the past 11 years and in and out of challenging financial situations, she has never stopped supporting him. She has gone above and beyond to give extra during times of extreme need and has written him letters every year. She was willing to do whatever it took to figure out her finances to help him transition to a new, more expensive boarding school 2 years ago so that we would be able to actually give him the help he so desperately needed. That move, regardless of how financially draining it was to her, was life giving to him.
3 weeks ago, she met this kid face to face. And the experience of that interaction is one I will never forget. Over the course of a few days, she spent time with him in his classrooms, in his dormitory and even got to shoot hoops with him on the basketball court. It was all seriously surreal.
In addition to watching my best friend experience the dream of meeting her sponsor child, the feelings that rush through me when seeing him thrive are overwhelming. Being part of his story in the past, hugging him year after year through a lifetime’s worth of struggles and now getting to put my arm around him as a young man who is moving forward into something good is beyond fulfilling. This is why I do this. For even one story of success. For even one kid to have a chance at something better than what the world handed him from the get go.
There are more struggles to come for him, I’m sure, poverty never seems to run out of those, but the beauty of his successes right now shines brighter than the noonday African sun.
