Say hello to Promise.  She is a 1^st grader in the Kyalulangira area of Uganda, and our family has been blessed to sponsor Promise since last Spring when her picture got the attention of the boys at the end of a “Step Into Africa” program at a local church.  Thanks to World Vision, Promise’s family has received health education about HIV and AIDS and malaria, which is the deadliest childhood disease in her area, and Promise now has her own treated mosquito net that she sleeps under at night.  World Vision has also built four classrooms and provided furnishings to several other schools in the area so Promise and the other kids in her community can go to school.  Promise is really just like millions of other little girls in the world.  She loves singing and jumping rope and the color pink.  But she also happens to live in a very poor part of the world where access to basic healthcare and education are not easily come by.  Thankfully, World Vision is working tirelessly in Promise’s community and hundreds of others throughout Africa to improve the chances that Promise will have a healthy and happy life, and our small $35 per month contribution plays a role in that. 

Tumelo, the boy in Lesotho we have been sponsoring for several years, and Promise, are two of the people who have inspired me to raise money and child sponsorships for other children in Africa as part of my training activity for the 2011 Boston Marathon.  Would you please consider helping?  A small sacrifice of a little more than a dollar a day for sponsorship can make a huge difference for one of these kids.  A cash donation to World Vision can do the same thing.  World Vision is one of the most financially responsible charities in the world.  Their overhead for management and fundraising is only 11% and the remainder goes directly to the programs that support impoverished communities (http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/about/why-donate). 

If you would like to make a cash donation, you can easily do so by going to my fundraising page, click on “Make a Donation”, and follow the instructions.  I would like to raise at least $100 for every mile of the marathon for a total of $2,620.  

If you are interested in child sponsorship, even better!  Follow these simple steps to check it out:

1. Visit www.teamworldvision.org.
2. Click on “Make a Donation” in the left menu bar.  [direct link]
3. Click on SPONSOR a child on behalf of an athlete for $35 each month.

At this point you will see a picture of a child and some information about him or her.  You can also use the menu on the left to look for a child you would like to sponsor.  I personally have a really soft spot in my heart for kids in Ethiopia so I’d love it if you pick an Ethiopian child, but you may feel called to sponsor a child from a different country.  Follow your heart!  When you’ve found that kid that grabs your heart:

4. Select “Sponsor Now”
5. Fill out the on-line form and put “Joe Heikes” in the Athlete Name field.

In the end, I don’t really care if I get “credit” for your sponsorship of a child.  The important thing is that you get the joy of sponsoring the child and the child gets the help!  But it would be nice to track my effectiveness in raising support for these kids if you would put my name in that field before you submit the form.  It’s even okay if you misspell it – World Vision said they can sort that stuff out.  The most important thing is to help the kids!

Love and God bless you all.

Joe

A New Course

Wyatt and my dad in St. Paul

I thought it might be good to write down how I came to decide to run the 2011 Boston Marathon for World Vision. My dad, my son and I were wandering about the Twin Cities Marathon Expo on October 2, about to leave, when we happened upon the World Vision booth in a far corner by the restrooms. Up to that point I had heard of people running marathons for all kinds of good charities, but I didn’t know there was such a thing as “Team World Vision.” We didn’t stop at the booth very long, but I provided my contact information on a sheet to request more information and then didn’t think about it too much more. At that point my mind was more focused on the next day racing my first marathon since knee surgery 20 months earlier. Maybe that was a good thing since the next was a very special day. I ran my best marathon ever (at age 44!) and was triply blessed having Dad and Wyatt with me. Wyatt ran along parallel to the finish chute yelling, “Dad! Dad! 2:50!?” Exhausted, I looked across at him with a raised “thumbs up” and said, yes, I thought so.

In my post-race euphoria I had almost (but not quite) forgotten about Team World Vision, but at the end of October I received an email from World Vision letting me know they were responding to my sign up. I guess I’d got myself into something and it wasn’t going to go away! Since we visited Ethiopia in 2009 it had been bothering me that Kay and I needed to do something more. The needs are so great in Africa, and it is hard to know where to start or where one can make a difference. The magnitude of the problem and the uncertainty of where best to start has been paralyzing for me. But the idea had been nagging me that I had to do something, had to start somewhere. So, when Orphan Sunday rolled around at our church my heart became even more deeply convicted. There was this something right in front of me that I could try to do. I’m in the race, God willing I will run it, and now I’ll try my hand at fundraising for what I think is about the best cause there is, bringing hope and practical help to some of the poorest kids in the world. And that’s pretty cool.