"Giving Children a Home" Appearing in The Knoxville News-Sentinel By Amy McRary |
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Reprinted by permission of The Knoxville News-Sentinel Company |
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Knoxville resident David High feels the Lord’s call to help homeless children in poverty-stricken countries. He hears that call so clearly he started a charitable organization to raise money and is selling his own home to help build a South American orphanage. The son of Southern Baptist missionaries who served in Nigeria for 35 years, High is founder and president of the non-profit Homeless Children International. Chartered in 1991, the non-denominational charitable group is based on Christian principles and focused on helping abandoned children in Third World Countries. Since 1992, HCI has raised about $80,000 to help street children in Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Kenya. The group now supports five orphanages in four countries and is planning its biggest project to date—constructing an orphanage north of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. It is to help build that home that High is selling his own house. High hopes that the sale of his Knoxville residence will bring in $90,000 toward the orphanage’s $183,000 estimated cost. Plans are to begin construction this summer on a ranch that HCI would purchase this spring. Like many other steps he has taken in recent years, the 33-year-old High makes this move in faith. "The Lord will provide; he always has. I’m not worried about myself," says High, who runs a Lockheed-Martin fitness program for its security personnel. The roots of High’s mission go back to 1983 when he visited older brother Thomas High, then a missionary in Brazil. While High was there, another missionary took him to visit a Santos, Brazil, orphanage. The small house was cramped with some 40 children, including five infants in one room. Santos resident Dona Naomie started the home after a crippled girl was left on her doorstep one Christmas Eve. Having grown up in Ogobomosho, Nigeria, such conditions weren’t a revelation to David High. But what happened to him that day was. As Naomie called to each child to sing and pray for their visitor, High realized they were honoring him with the best gift they had to offer. "I immediately asked the question to myself, ‘What can I do in return?’ No sooner had I asked the question that I heard His voice. And He said, ‘You can become a father to these children.’" But High rationalized away the thought. He couldn’t earn a living in Brazil, didn’t know the language or customs, had no way to help these children. "It was about six months before I came to the realization that when you tell the Lord to wait, you have told him, ‘no.’" So he told the Lord ‘yes.’ He started sending money to Naomie’s orphans, raising funds by making four bicycle trips from East Tennessee or Virginia to Florida. Biking long-distance once a year, he raised about $1,200 each time for the children. Back in Knoxville, High discussed starting a charitable organization with members of the Bible study he led. After getting started, HCI started a newsletter and later began supporting existing orphanages for street children. Currently, HCI sends about $2,400 a year to three Brazilian orphanages, another in Lima, Peru, and a fifth in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. About 18 months ago, Homeless Children sent High’s younger brother John to Kenya to start an African branch for the organization. The goal is to set up homes for children in East Africa, where estimates say 10 million children will be orphaned by the year 2000. A major HCI project is buying a ranch near Santa Cruz for an orphanage. Not counting the money from the sale of High’s home, the group has raised $10,000 for the project. Board member and construction engineer Kirk Davis of Knoxville will travel to Brazil this spring to begin the project. Dormitories each would house 16 to 18 children. Eventually, plans are to care for 200 children at the orphanage that will be operated by Santa Cruz’s First Baptist Church. Plans are for the ranch to raise cattle to make the home as self-sufficient as possible. The need is great, High says. The dozen or so orphanages around Santa Cruz are filled. "Usually they take the children that are the healthiest, the better-looking," he says. "So if you are really a street kid, you don’t stand much chance to get into those homes. . . . You can start a street ministry, but if you don’t have somewhere to take that child and move him off the street, there is no real way to change that kid’s life." High says that Homeless Children does not ask for money and will not go in debt. "We allow the need to be known, but we don’t solicit for funds. . . . "Our focus must be upon Jesus Christ; we have to go to him and trust him." High is writing two children’s books he hopes to get published with proceeds going to Homeless Children. "If you are not going to ask people to give money, you have to be creative to raise money. But I think the Lord gives us talents to use." |
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