Laying in my tent at the One-Event in August, trying to make sense of the day and longing to be enveloped by sleep! It was my 42nd birthday the next day. This was the weekend all my dreams were supposed to come true; my 1st September deadline for a breakthrough was close at hand. It was clear through my fragile hope had been shattered. The truth was that 300m square patch of planet earth was literally the last place on earth I wanted to be! Everything in the world I wanted was so close at hand but so very very far away!
I hate self-pity but found myself up to my neck in it!
Early that day I was chatting with a charity leader who told me about an organisation 4Muk that organise slightly more extreme challenges. I had also visited the Compassion Experience, Compassion is the globals biggest child sponsorship charity, and I had learnt more about their amazing work.
I find the best way to tackle self-pity is to look for a way to impact people who really have justification to have self-pity, and I certainly have no right to feel sorry for myself, EVER!
I googled 4Muk from my sleeping bag and found to my surprise they were running an event in partnership with Compassion. A wild marathon in the heart of Kenya, a self-funding charity race with a fundraising commitment of £10,000. I fired off a couple of emails to both 4M and Compassion and fell asleep with a gentle sense of excitement. Waking up with the sun I decided not to wait for the replies to my emails, but I was just going to go ahead and pay the deposit and get booked in. I love living out of instinct and heart rather than thought out head decisions!
So on the 8th June 2018, I am running my second marathon, London Marathon 2016 was an amazing day, but I guess not nearly as exciting as standing on a start line in Marigat with maybe 30 other slightly crazy individuals (there are others walking and biking).
What will Kenya’s heat, altitude, townships, wildlife be really like? Do we carry our own water? How do we find our way, it hardly closed roads in the centre of London!
My 26 plus miles will be over in a few hours; memories will last, legacy could be eternal. I am committed to finding sponsors for ten precious children. Because I am outrageously blessed and know lots of generous people, I want to find sponsors for 25 children. For the cost of a chocolate bar per day, YOU can feed, educate, provide health care and stability for children and often a whole family, who has almost nothing. I know its a huge ask but that Child could grow up to lead their country, to follow in Desmon Tutu’s footstep, to be a teacher or a nurse looking after their community or simply a young man or woman who grows up knowing that there is someone out there that cares!
https://challenges.compassionuk.org/profile/496/paul-kemshell
If you have children or grandchildren that exchange of letters between you and your sponsored child will be worth every penny of the sponsorship, to teach your little person that people are precious, and that our bad days are often better than millions of less fortunate people’s best days, we always have food to eat, a roof over our head, and someone to love us!
At this festive season can I ask you to be outrageously generous? Will you be one of the 25 heroes I am looking for, to take a little bit of your plenty and sow it into someone that has nothing, zero, zilch?
You could follow the link and sponsor me £5 or even £50 which I would be very grateful for, but, that would mean you miss out on the opportunity to change the world, maybe not the whole world, but the world of another human and their family.
As Nike would say “Just Do It.”
I feel guilty for lying in my tent feeling sorry for myself; I long for this to be true “So let my life be the proof, The proof of your love.”
Are you in?
https://challenges.compassionuk.org/profile/496/paul-kemshell
One of my most favourite bible verses is Hebrews 13:2 “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
https://challenges.compassionuk.org/profile/496/paul-kemshell
Paul Kemshell 