Written by Taylor, Project Orphans Intern

My name is Taylor and I am so pleased to say that I will be interning at Project Orphans this semester! I am a senior at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and my major is International Community Development. I have no idea what I specifically want to do with this degree after I graduate, but I do know I have really enjoyed learning about community development.

I have imagined since I can’t remember when about working with orphans. I don’t know why, other than the fact that I love children, but years ago I can remember picturing my life in the future and having such a heart for the fatherless. That heart expanded from orphans to including all of the poor. All through high school, as I would read scripture, verse after verse jumped out to me revealing the Lord’s heart for the poor, the needy, the orphan, the forgotten. I can remember reflecting on how much the bible talks about the poor, and even specifically orphans, and I couldn’t believe this wasn’t talked about more. I couldn’t get away from the Lord’s emphasis of caring for the poor, orphans, and widows no matter which book of the bible I was in.

 There are at least two main scriptures that have always stuck with me. One of them is in Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 49. In this verse God reveals the sin that he saw in Sodom (the Sodom from Genesis) - “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (ESV, emphasis mine). This shocked me to find that this was how God defined the sin of Sodom. The second scripture is in James chapter 1, verse 27, which says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (ESV, emphasis mine). Again, this is shocking to me when I think about it. This is how God defines religion, or worship, that is pure. As a teenager these were the type of verses that were confronting me in my Western, Americanized comfort, and I knew that I could not live the rest of my life ignoring it. So I purposed in my heart to jump out of that suburbia box at any chance I got, in order to partner with the Lord’s heart and understand his devoted love to the poor, the orphan, and the desperate. I know this might have sounded a little intense, but this is the honest heart behind why I chose Project Orphans. They have the privilege as a community to live out the Lord’s heart, loving the ones he loves, every day because of the work they do, and I know God is so pleased and so proud because it is pure before him. God’s heart is so involved with orphans and the poor, and I want to be where his heart is. I can’t answer what I will do with my major, and I don’t know where I will be going, but I know where I want to be. This is why I chose Project Orphans, because they are living it.

With that, I am so excited to say that I get to partner with Project Orphans, and that they have allowed me to join in on a part of their journey! I feel like it is the perfect place and community for me to grow and learn as I am launched out into a journey of my own.