Johann Sebastian Bach
Leo Tolstoy
Nelson Mandela
Steven Jobs
Aristotle
Louis Armstrong
John Lennon
Rudyard Kipling
Cyrus the Great
William Wordsworth
David Bussau

What do these people have in common? They were all orphans.

Most often when we think of orphans we imagine a helpless child totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. All the typical pictures we see only confirm that. All the mail we receive emphasizes their vulnerability. We rarely imagine orphans as having the normal personality traits and gifts of children born to and raised by their natural families, and we often in our perfectly understandable mindset of charity and compassion fail to think of orphans as strong, achieving and powerful personalities. We are instructed by Scripture to take care of widows and orphans but are hardly ever prepared for them to end up capable of taking care of us. That’s the irony of the story of David Bussau. He was abandoned at eight years old and raised in an orphanage until he was sixteen and put out on his own. It didn’t take David long to figure out how to build a successful business which he then turned into several at a very young age. And that’s where the story takes a turn. As a result of responding to a catastrophe in Darwin, Australia he began to think about ways to help individual people create self-supporting businesses instead of simply accepting relief. In time, that led to his creating out of his personal resources a small loan fund that has become the largest Christian microloan organization in the world – Opportunity International. I am proud to count David as a long time friend and consider it a rare privilege for him to call me the same. I am sorry he cannot be here in person tonight but seeing him live from Australia is a truly international opportunity. Please help me welcome David to East Texas.