Blown Away By Generosity

I have been blessed over the course of my twelve years at Pepperdine to have a front-row seat to numerous selfless acts of kindness by my students.  About seven years ago, one of my students was struggling to meet the minimum GPA necessary to graduate.  He had one semester left and needed to have his best semester ever to make it.  He had plenty of financial resources and was willing to pay handsomely for a top student to tutor him.  I connected him to Virginia, who was a stellar student and an even better person.  Virginia agreed to tutor him.  I later asked him what hourly rate they had settled upon.  I was so touched and inspired by what he told me: Virginia said that her payment would be seeing him walk across the stage with her at graduation.  Unsurprisingly, the struggling student had his best semester in law school and Virginia received the agreed upon payment – she was clapping louder than anyone when I read his name at graduation.

This last year, I had another student ask me if he could assign part of his academic scholarship to another student who was more in need than he was.  The only condition he insisted upon was complete anonymity.  We honored his request.  I could tell dozens more stories of selfless sacrifice by my wonderful students.

But what happened yesterday topped them all.  One of my former students, Holly, has been following along with my relationship with the Ugandan teenage boy I met at a prison in rural Uganda in January of 2010.  She knew that my relationship with Henry has been an important catalyst for my decision to relocate to Uganda for six months beginning next month.  She had also read in my post last month that Henry, his brother Joseph, and their father were arrested for a crime for which they were completely exonerated after spending nearly two years in prison, and that during that time, Henry’s mother had to sell the family’s small herd of cows just to survive.

Unknown to me, after reading that post, Holly set out to raise among some of her fellow alumni enough money to buy one cow (about $400) to give to Henry’s family.  Within a couple weeks, nearly forty of my former students contributed to this effort to help someone they had never met who lives halfway across the world.  Yesterday at church, Holly presented me a check for more than $3,000!  I was blown away and completely speechless.  I teared up immediately, but (barely) held it together in the church parking lot.  (I still have a silly grin plastered on my face and chuckle every few minutes).  I cannot wait to back up a cattle truck to Henry’s house and start unloading them one by one.  This generous and compassionate act will restore self-sufficiency and hope to this hard-working and God-loving family – this will be truly life changing for them.

I promise to take (and post) lots of pictures and video.

P.S.  I am exceedingly grateful to Mary Ellyson Buxton, Dan Coats, Wendy McGuire Coats, Julie Wainrib Connelly, RJ Cornell, Julie Dilworth Cornell, Max Czernin, Rachel Dickey Czernin, Aaron Echols, Courtney Echols, Kevin Ferguson, Meghan George, Chris Gaspard, Kristin Heinrich, Randy Herndon, Christie Herndon, Brent Kampe, Miles Jennings, Wes Krider, Rebecca Lee, Brian Link, Nic McGrue, Meghan Milloy, Narguess Noohi, Lexie Norge, Lisa Ottomanelli, Holly Phillips, Amy Poyer, Jeremy Shatzer, Joel Sherwin, Brian Simas, Emily Smith, Ricky Steelman, Erin Tallent, Brett Taylor, Melissa Thornsberry, Chelsea Trotter, Matt Williams, and Jeff Wyss.