Welcome to Children of Promise. If you would have asked me 10 years ago if Sarah and I and our extended family would be helping children and thinking about children’s needs every day, I would have thought you were some kind of crazy fortune teller. If I had tried to find the logic in starting Founding Family I would still be looking for logical reasons. Frankly, it was Nina’s loving heart that was the moving force in our desire to start Founding Family.
I have known Nina since she was 12 years old. I watched her grow into a faithful Christian woman. God has blessed Nina all her life. I think it was God that sent her back to school at Pepperdine to get a law degree and it was God that sent Nina to Chesapeake, Virginia and to a little church that met in a school building where she worshiped with a couple who went off to China and brought back a little baby girl, leading Nina on her adoption journey.
For some of us it is easier to see God’s answer to prayer than for others that are still waiting for His answers. I don’t pretend to understand my faith or God’s promises, but I do know that when Nina and Sarah, my wife and Nina’s sister, landed in Nashville, Christmas eve morning, just after midnight, pushing a baby stroller with Sarah Helena all wrapped up in blankets, there was something about the whole experience that seemed Godly. I didn’t see her face until we loaded our van and Nina fastened Sarah Helena into her new car seat, but when I saw her little sleeping face I knew I was looking at one of God's miracles. Those of us who can have babies take so much for granted. It took 15 months to deliver Sarah Helena to a loving Mom.
What I’m trying to say is that Sarah Helena is a miracle and I understood that when I saw her face and the first time I picked her up and held her. Our little Sarah was truly an answer to Nina's and our prayers. Don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say. I certainly don’t believe that God is waiting for me to wake up every morning to see what He can do for me. Sarah Helena could have landed in any family living in any place in the world. What I am trying to say is that this little girl has melted my old heart and reminded me of how I felt when each of my sons were born and I held them for the first time. Sarah Helena’s arrival from far away China made me realize that my wife Sarah and I can do something about some of those baby orphans and some of the mothers and fathers that want to adopt.
When Phillip came to me and asked if I would help him expand his Children of Promise work to a 365 day a year effort I again got that same feeling as when I picked up Sarah Helena. We can certainly do something about the orphans and crippled children from ‘Ethiopia to India’ I thought to my self. I now know that God walks along side of us when we invite Him to journey with us. He will guide us and comfort us in all that we do in His name. I’m going to post a letter that I am sending to some of Phillip’s friends and supporters. Phillip and Mary Margaret have been and will be in the future, answers to many prayers on behalf of the children in the hospitals from ‘Ethiopia to India’. You can also journey with us by posting encouraging words on the Children of Promise blog and reading about Phillip and Mary Margaret’s efforts.
See letter below
Founding Family Charitable Foundation – 4525 Harding Rd Ste 316, Nashville TN 37205 – 615-620-4372
www.FoundingFamily.org
Re: Phillip and Mary Margaret Morrison
Children of Promise project
May 15, 2009
Hello,
I am John Rummage, a member of the Woodmont Hills church in Nashville, a Realtor with American Realty Resources, and volunteer with, and co-founder of, Founding Family Charitable Foundation (FFCF). You may learn more about us at www.FoundingFamily.org. click on Children of Promise button to find out more.
FFCF is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, founded in 2005. Our original mission was to give grants to families who want to adopt and who show financial need. Our family has been blessed by the miracle of adoption, and it is special to our hearts.
However, we soon branched out to help other children in need, not just to those eligible to be adopted.
In the book of Esther, we read the account of the orphan girl, Esther, who became a queen and saved her people. The first chapter of Esther tells us that her king was ruler from “Egypt to India.” I have been blessed over the last few years to visit orphan children in China, Israel and India. I looked into small faces that remind me of how Esther might have looked, a girl without a mother or father, whom God chose to save her people and to be an example of supreme service to God to us today. This reminds me that we serve an awesome God, faithful to all generations.
Over the past year, Phillip Morrison and I have had many discussions about his and our desire to expand the Children of Promise work to a year round ministry. For several years, he and a group have gone to Israel in December with gifts for the children at several homes and hospitals which serve Jewish, Muslim and Christian children who are sick and handicapped. Phillip and Mary Margaret love the staff and children at these hospitals, and the staff and children love them and look forward to their visit each year. One young man told Phillip that his life had been hard in the Middle East, but that one happy childhood memory he has, is that of a Santa Claus who visited his school during the holiday season with gifts of food and clothes. Phillip would like to spend the rest of his life being an ambassador for Christ to the children in this war-torn region.
Some of those who have traveled in the Morrison group are Glenda and Jim Hutcheson and their extended family (Glenda’s mother and sisters have also gone to Israel). Glenda is very excited about the work also, and has been invited to speak at several church women’s groups, including a Methodist church in Ashland City, Tennessee. That group has started raising funds and has already sent Children of Promise two checks. They have already spread “the good word” and another church in the area is considering having their VBS children raise money for Children of Promise this summer. Glenda has been asked by the campus church in Atlanta to come and speak about the needs.
Our Board of Directors has agreed that we would like to sponsor the ministry and help it get started to work year round.
Phillip and FFCF, in the past, have raised money for a whirlpool bath for St. Vincent’s Children’s Hospital in Jerusalem. Their 65-70 children are non-ambulatory, incontinent, severely handicapped, and terminally ill. The whirlpool eases the pain in their muscles and makes them more comfortable.
Our first project this year is to raise approximately $20,000 for St. Vincent’s to purchase 2 commercial grade clothes washers and dryers. St. Vincent’s has “mounds” of bed sheets, towels, clothing and cloth diapers that are sometimes being hand washed and dried on clothes lines outside. The washer and dryer which they have is old and non-working much of the time.
Phillip is truly a righteous man, who with support from Mary Margaret, has helped build homes for Habitat for Humanity, is teaching elementary school children at Woodmont Hills church, has ministered in several churches across the United States, and was a driving force, financially and otherwise in the Nashville Jubilee for many years, and in Wineskins magazine. That is why Founding Family Charitable Foundation wants to find support for him to be the leader of Children of Promise.
Phillip and Mary Margaret recently sold their home to downsize and move into a house owned by the church. Phillip is now working at a MAPCO convenience store to supplement his social security income. But his real heart is for ministry.
We need your help to provide Phillip support, so that he can work full time to raise funds for Children of Promise projects. Knowing Phillip, he will continue his personal ministries with the members of Woodmont Hills Church. We would like for him to help the children get involved with our “children of promise from Egypt to India,” including the Grace Homes in India, which Woodmont Hills supports. He would use his contacts all around the U.S. to raise money for the most pressing projects in the Middle East which his trusted contacts of 43 years in this region would recommend to him. The needs might include medicine, food and clothing, and medical care. Phillip and Mary Margaret would be Christian peace envoys to the Middle East. A little Christian love can mean a lot, even to someone who doesn’t respect our God. We will know only in heaven the ways our help influences people to see the Christ. One of the children we help may grow up one day to broker peace for the Jews and Palestinians.
I like to read biographies about men and women who are willing to do serious work to change their world. Some of the greatest inventions, patents, companies, books and music, and some of the most helpful church works have been accomplished not by the young, but by more mature, experienced people. Phillip and Mary Margaret have so much to offer Woodmont Hills and Children of Promise. I truly believe that their experience and faithfulness will lead them to greater accomplishments in the future. That is why I want Phillip and Mary Margaret on the Children of Promise team.
If we had 100 families make a 2-year commitment to provide $240.00 per year we would reach our goal. We realize that this average amount will not fit everybody, and we need some $1,000 gifts and some $100 gifts as well. Make your checks out to Children of Promise and return them in the enclosed envelope. Donations are tax deductible. Or, if you would like to have an amount automatically deducted from your checking account each month, fill out the enclosed form. We understand that you are committed only as long as God supplies the means, and at any time if you are not able to continue your commitment, let us know and we will stop the automatic deduction. We ask that any contribution you make be in addition to your normal contribution to your home church fellowship. Any funds received over and above Phillip’s support will help fund one of our projects.
If you would like to write a note of encouragement and commitment to them, or let them know of your desire to volunteer your help we will pass it along and make it a part of Children of Promise history.
I can’t help but think of the movie It’s A Wonderful Life where all of George Bailey’s friends, the ones he had helped through the savings and loan, all came together with their change and dollar bills in their hands, bags and baskets to give to him so that he could go on helping his community by saving the bank. There is so much more I would like to say, but I think that image is where I’ll stop. Please call me at 615.620.4372 for more information.
Please pray for this ministry.
John Rummage johnrummage@gmail.com
Roger Wiemers rogerwiemers@gmail.com
Jim & Glenda Hutcheson glenda3john4@bellsouth.net
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