be sure to download and enjoy "Light Up The World" (at the bottom of the article)
In 2008, God connected passionate young people from a church in Colorado Springs with a soft-hearted businessman and a small missions organization that rescues orphans. Out of that meeting and much prayer, the students took up a challenge to raise $60,000 in order to build orphan homes with the promise that if they could raise that amount, the businessman would match it dollar for dollar. The resulting $120,000 would be enough to build four homes for orphaned children in impoverished areas of Africa.
Jon Egan, a worship leader at New Life and frontman for the Desperation Band, recalls watching the students that night. “In the middle of worship, the kids came forward to make donations... bringing something to touch other lives. What I saw that night was young people truly worshiping for the first time ever.”
The students left that meeting with a new understanding of worship. They immediately started to make sacrifices of the heart and pocket, from giving up fast food to taking on after-school jobs or extra jobs to make their goal.
For two months, junior high students walked door-to-door, doing odd jobs for extra money. Seniors drained savings accounts they had started when they were in elementary school. Former youth group members sent checks by mail.
News spread and the whole community got involved. When all was said and done, a group of 12 to 18 year-olds had raised $67,000 to change the lives of children they had never met and, in the process, had changed their own lives forever.
With the matching funds, they connected with the missions organization World Orphans (http://worldorphans.org/) and work began on homes built and operated by local, indigenous churches. To date, homes have been built in Uganda and Kenya with more in the process.
“As I watched the students that night and time after time as they gave all that they had, I started to realize that the best way to reach a young person in Colorado Springs, was to help them reach a young person in Uganda,” says Egan.
It is a story of sacrifice, a story of worship and a story of Jesus at work in a generation without fathers. “Destiny rescuing destiny,” says Patterson of the student’s efforts. And it is the story behind Heartwork, the organization birthed out of New Life’s experience as a way to challenge other youth groups to join them. The story continues to unfold and it is the inspiration behind the Desperation Band’s new critically-acclaimed CD Light Up The World. To learn more about HeartWork and the Desperation band, visit http://desperationband.com/.
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