Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their destress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8

Hey its me Payton Grogan!! I was Greatly blessed with the opportunity to go on this amazing trip to Africa. I am sooo amazingly excited about everything that is going on and how awesome God is. I really want to tell everyone how this oppurtunity came up...Well when I was in sixth grade a group of people came to my school to show a presentation name the Invisible children. A couple of friends and I were sitting together and we were watching the sad but amazing videos about these kids in Africa that were starving, without homes, and with horible illnesses. Whatching these sick kids just broke my heart. Anyways this group, Invisible Children was telling us how these guys went into Africa and helped these starving kids out. Well while I was listening and watching all this sad stuff God just kept laying on my heart that I needed to be there one day. So after the presentation I stood up and told some of my friends that on the summer of my senior year I was going to Africa. All my friends were like "Oh me too!" So for that week that was all we talked about. "Going to Africa!" But after that week we all kinda forgot about it and went on. Well my seventh grade year the same group, Invisible Children came to school again. SOOO WIERD!! And after that presentation I felt pulled to go even more. Well then I was determined to go so I told my parents that I was going to go to Africa my senior summer. They were like "Oh thats cool" but I knew they were really just laughing inside because I had a long time until I graduated and I would probably forget about that dream just like many others I forgot about. I talked and dreamed about it with my friends a little longer than a week this time but then just went on with life. I had always remembered my dream in the back of my head but it was starting to fade away because I was inching a little closer to be a senior and an opportunity had still not came. One day my bestfriend KaSarah Seabourn called me and said "hey you want to go to a girls conference with me at ACU?" Well I was like sure I really would have fun at this and it would get me out of the house for a weekend. So it was in November 2008 that I went to this Girls Conference, well it was the first day there and I had already been to one or two different classes and I was on my way to a class being tought by Pam Cope. I went up and sat in between 50 other girls at the top of the bleachers. Well Pam started giving her lesson and I noticed that it was over kids in Vietnam that were staving and homeless and she started a orphanage for them. I was really in awe over that but then she started talking about how she got called into Africa to do the same thing and my jaw dropped. While she was telling her story she would constantly look up at me and I was not really sure why. Well then God kept telling me that I needed to go talk to her after that class was over. I was not sure at all why I was going to talk to Pam but God was telling me to so I went and did it. While I was walking down the stairs to go talk to her she stopped talking to some other girls and asked me what my name was. I almost fainted! We got to talking and I told her how my dream always was to go to Africa my senior summer, well then she asked me what grade I was in.I told her then she was like I think you need to go to Africa with us this summer. So she gave me here number to contact her after I talked to my parents. So I did and I also told a Girls group we have in Clyde about it. A lady named Kimberli Brackett teaches that class so when I told her about everything that had happen that past weekend she freaked out and told me she always had wanted to go. Well I really wanted someone to go I knew so I gave her Pam's phone number. After they talked we decided to get a group of girls together from Clyde to go as a big group!!! ThAnK yOu GOD!!!