Former Emporian Richard Felipe is one of the lucky ones. He actually has met the child he sponsors through an international charitable organization.
Late last year, Felipe traveled on other business to Uganda and, with cooperation from some Americans and Ugandans he met on the trip, he managed to make a trek up the mountains to meet his sponsored child, 13-year-old Richard.
Felipe had chosen Richard six or seven years ago from children available for sponsorship through World Vision.
“I picked one out that had the same name as me and was the same age as my son,” Felipe said.
He taped Richard’s photograph on the refrigerator at home, sent in the monthly support contribution, and corresponded only occasionally.
“I don’t think I was necessarily a good sponsor,” Felipe said.
All that changed after the trip up the mountain in Uganda.
“I was going to Uganda on a short-term missions trip and I thought ... maybe we can make this happen,” he said, describing his idea to combine the trip to Kampala with a side trip to see his sponsored child. “It really was a secondary thought.”
Strangers he met in Kampala and along the way, however, seemed to be put in place to give him help when he needed it — a couple from West Virginia, World Vision employees, and others all came along at the right time and at the right place.
“Actually it was a miracle that this even happened,” Felipe said. “It was a day’s journey and a wild bus ride across the country” to the area where Richard and his family lived.
Then it became a trek into the foothills to a World Vision office, where he met Alfred, a case manager, and a man named Johnson, who was a senior manager.
“Johnson was actually a sponsored child himself. He has two degrees and is working on a master’s. He was the perfect guy to bring,” Felipe said.
The small group went up the mountainside in just under four hours, meeting Richard and his father unexpectedly on the mountain shortly before they would have reached the village. The effort was not an easy one for Felipe, who had undergone surgery not long before the trip to Uganda. And he was eager to meet his sponsored child.
“There was a lot of anticipation,” Felipe said. “I assumed he would be shy and quiet, which he was.”
Richard spoke some English because it is taught in elementary schools in Uganda. He lived with his siblings in a hut about 30 feet from his parents’ hut, and near a third hut belonging to Richard’s grandparents.
After welcoming speeches at the school, including one from Richard, the youngster presented a carved stool and a handmade musical instrument. Felipe later used his cell phone to let Richard talk, with help from Felipe, with his son Richard, who was at home in the United States.
“It was quite an emotional high,” Felipe said of the experience; “a great testimonial to God’s faithfulness.”
Felipe, the son of Alicia Felipe and the late Humberto Felipe, has worked for about 2 1/2 years for the Union Rescue Mission, a non-denominational Christian organization in downtown Los Angeles in an area known as Skid Row.
“We do everything we can to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give shelter to the poor,” Felipe said.
It is not work that he had trained to do.
After leaving Emporia in 1984, Felipe had attended fashion colleges in Dallas and Fort Lauderdale and became an entrepreneur and, later, a senior account executive in what he described as a demanding legal services business.
Felipe had been involved in his own export company and clothing business, including buying used Levis to resell. His purple Levi collection trailer had even been parked many times on the Guion’s Furniture Showcase parking lot.
But as a single father who spent too much time and energy at work, he began to realize he needed to slow down.
“I got to the point where I needed to make a drastic choice in my life,” Felipe said. “I was caught up in the rat race. ... “I could see where I was going to be money-driven, make more money, then boom! All of a sudden, life’s over.”
It wasn’t the future he envisioned for himself. After about four months of soul-searching, Felipe, a single parent, decided that taking a two-thirds cut in his salary would be the best option for the long haul.
He said facing the decision had reminded him of an old saying: “If you’re looking to find your life, you’ll lose it. If you’re looking to lose your life, you’ll find it.”
“I slowly kind of figured it out,” he said.