In case you missed it: Today's Breakfast Bite
Pete Baker from Life Church Lancashire joins Nathan to talk about his recent trip to Uganda with Compassion.
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(upbeat music) - Well, it's once again time for today's breakfast bite and I have the privilege of welcoming Pete Baker from Life Church Lancashire. Hi, Pete, how you doing? - I'm Nathan, very good, yeah, yeah, hope you're okay. - Yeah, very good, thank you. And it's great to see you again. Are you ready to bring us today's breakfast bite then? - Yeah, yeah, so I mean Nathan was chatting about a trip I had recently, so I thought I'd just share a little bit about the trip and a little bit about the organization that I went to support. So I recently went to Uganda in Africa, the Pearl of Africa, and a beautiful country, really a really amazing place, really a real privilege to go there for a week with a group of other church leaders from across the UK. And we went there with a charity called Compassion, an incredible charity called Compassion. And your compassion's an amazing word isn't it? It's a word we see in the Bible. Jesus says that he had compassion, that he was moved, sorry, with compassion, 'cause he could see the people were like sheep without a shepherd. And that's what this word compassion, you know, it's about a movement, it's about action. It's not about feeling sorry for people, you know, that's not what compassion is. Compassion isn't pity, you know, compassion is empathy. It's feeling what other people feel and being moved into action. And so compassion is a global charity that seeks to release children from poverty in Jesus' name. So it's very much of a Christian organization, it's a gospel organization, it's a good news organization, but it's specifically aimed at helping to release children from poverty. And so across the world, they sponsor over a million children through compassion. And in Uganda, they work with something like 140,000 children in Uganda, a part of compassion, which means they're part of a compassion project where they have a sponsor, someone in another nation who is financially supporting that child and that family. It means they get access to hot food, nutritious food, access to healthcare, access to education, and all of these local projects in the community are run by churches. And so our trip to Uganda was an incredible cultural experience, but also every day seeing the impact of the work of compassion, meeting children in the projects, meeting children who have now grown up and become adults and had their life transformed because of the work of compassion, seeing the church in action in these communities, some very poor communities, some very rural communities, and seeing the church in action in those communities, serving the last, at least the last, serving these children and their families, visiting families homes in Uganda, and the home would be maybe the sides of the room that many of us are sitting right now, just a normal room in one of our houses, would maybe be a family's whole home, toilet outside and no electricity in the home and cooking outside and really challenging life for lots of people, but we saw so much joy, as we went to different church communities, we were together with the children and the church community, we saw so much joy, so much love, so much generosity. We were given great hospitality everywhere we went. And so yeah, we saw so much generosity and so much hospitality, so much love, so much care, and so much compassion. And so I'd really encourage all of our listeners to check out the work of compassion. And if you've never thought about sponsoring a child, getting involved in another family's life, maybe on the other side of the world, I got involved in compassion as an 18-year-old, I started sponsoring a child over 25 years ago. My first child was with tear fund and then with compassion. And so we've been involved in child sponsorship for about 25 years now, and it's life-changing for the child, for the family, but also for you as the sponsor to be able to invest in someone's life financially, but also writing letters, praying for that child. And when we got the letter to say that our first child had graduated the program also in Uganda a few years ago, that was amazing. We got involved in her life when she was a child and then when she was a teenager, she left the program, graduated the program and went on to the world of work and really flourished in the rest of her life. And that was such a joy to find out where that investment had led to, that discipleship of a child. So yeah, I'd really encourage you to check out the work of compassion. And today, think about, well, what are you passionate about? What moves you at the deepest part of who you are? The Bible says that Jesus was moved with compassion 'cause the people were like sheep without shepherd. You know, where in society do you see people who seem harassed, who seem hopeless, who seem helpless? And where might compassion lead you? If you shared compassion with your fellow human beings, you know, where might compassion and kindness and love and generosity lead you? So be a person of compassion, but also check out the organization compassion, their website, compassionuk.org, go and have a look at that. Compassion operate in lots of different countries. If you're listening to this and not in the UK, maybe check out the country that you're living in. Compassion International is the international part of the charity, but yeah, I'd really encourage you. Be a person of compassion and check out the work of compassion. Thanks, Nathan. - Yeah, fantastic, thanks, Pete. Really interesting to hear about your trip to Uganda and absolutely right, we do need to have compassion. Like you say, we don't all call to the same area necessarily. Compassion is really helping people who are really impoverished, I suppose. But we might be called to people, just sort of school children in our local communities or perhaps called to another group of people. But one of the cases we do need to show compassion and we need to reach out to those within our communities, within our spheres. - Yeah, 100%. - Yeah. Thanks so much, Pete, for bringing this today's breakfast bite. I look forward to another one next week. - No problem, let's share. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Did you know, Pure 24/7 Radio has a shop? Well, we do. You can buy merchandise while supporting the work that we do here. Simply head over to www.pure247radio.org/shop. That's www.pure247radio.org/shop. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
