james and lu bowen - cupbearers extraordinaire

james bowen is in the nebraska sweatshirt (go huskers!) and lu is on the right in the #21 sweatshirt. the rest of them are part of the children's cup family in swaziland.

my little sister susan (a hero of mine, too) got this note from lu bowen, a lady who spent some time with my sister in africa while lu was there this year with her husband james. james and lu are incredible people with a huge energy to help children's cup. we need a thousand more like them.

check out this excerpt from lu's email to susan (my sister) about talking to a group of ladies back in nevada about her trip to help children's cup in africa:

Sooze,

Hey! Well, I did my talk in front of many women. It was the coolest thing. I saw women there that I had not see in years and they were in tears that I had remarried AND gone to Africa.

As I got up to tell my story about wanting to come to Africa since I was 12 and then my former husband Don's disease having purpose for Africa, they cried. I don't know if I told you the part where Don looked like an AIDS victim and I had to go in there and take care of him with the stench of diarrhea and the stench of death. It was very difficult. I sat in the car one day arguing with God telling Him how I didn't want to go in there and "Isn't there someone else to do this job?" The Holy Spirit said to me "Lu, how do you expect to serve Africa if you cannot serve your own husband."

I knew that this phase in my life was not in vain. Don wondered why he had to suffer so badly and why didn't God just take him home and I recalled what the Holy Spirit said and I said "Don, maybe this isn't about me and you, maybe it's about Africa. Maybe you are helping me to help Africa." He smiled and said at least it will help someone.

I promised him I would not let him die in vain and I would take him with me.

So, back to the stage at WOW (women of the well). The video ran and they cracked up at the first few scenes. Then it got serious and some of the parts in the video were real life fun stuff and one is where a toddler in Maputo was taking something in his hand rubbing it across another kid's head. It is really cute. Everyone laughed at the reality that these are real kids. They loved the video and when the slide presentation started, they would ahh and ohh and sigh.

I touched on the extremes of sexual abuse to awesome joy and worship. It made the women cry. The ending photo is the one of all of us out to dinner and I told them how you all sacrifice and live your lives as His hands and feet and how proud I was to know you and miss you all very much. I talked about how you all miss the restaurants at home and chocolate.

At the very end of my talk, I said "I am not going to ask you to do anything I haven't done. Even in my poorest days, I emptied my purse out even if it was a dollar and some change. I gave. Now I am asking you to give the most you can, not the least you can. Whether it be a dollar or a thousand dollars. Give! These kids have nothing and the missionaries need your support. They all took the wish list on the tables and the small groups are starting to take collections. It was awesome.

I also got feedback from how powerful it was to actually see the quilt block one of the kids made. I had his photo on the video holding up his drawing and I held it up as his photo was up and the women cried. I asked for people who could sew to help me make a quilt. I have two volunteers.

When I got home, I had three envelopes to open. The first one was a dollar. The second one was $100.00 and the third one was $1,000.00. I laughed at God's detailed humor. It literally was One to One Thousand. I love that God's detailing is for our pleasure so we know that HE was listening.

God bless lu and james and give children's cup a bunch more like them!