Jeff Leeland - A Thousand Small Sparrows: Amazing Stories of Kids Helping Kids

A T HOUSAND S MALL S PARROWS
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
A division of Random House Inc.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are taken from the King James Version.

With permission, some names and other specifics have been changed for various reasons.

Copyright 2007 by Sparrow Clubs USA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leeland, Jeff.
A thousand small sparrows / by Jeff Leeland with Marcus Brotherton.1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56180-0
1. ChildrenDiseasesCase studies. 2. Medical social workCase studies. I. Brotherton, Marcus. II. Title.
RC58.L384 2007
618.92dc22

2007006399

v3.1

This book is dedicated to all the children who are Sparrows.
Your courage to face medical challenges with simple faith and hope in God is a gift to many others. You inspire us to exchange self-pity for compassion, self-protection for courage, self-indulgence for character, and self-absorption for good conscience.
You have helped us learn to love.

All the stories in A Thousand Small Sparrows are true.

You have in your hands a collection of heartfelt stories from many wonderful people. A very special thank-you to the children, teens, parents, teachers, and volunteers who have been involved in Sparrow Clubs and have shared their journeys with us in these pages. We are grateful as well to our special friends at Multnomah Books who have made this book project a labor of love to help advance the mission of Sparrow Clubs USA.

S parrow Clubs USA is a cutting-edge national youth charity where kids help other kids in medical crisis by doing good for their communities.

Sparrow Clubs USA actually helps two types of kids: children in medical need and everyday youth who long for something purposeful to do, whether they realize it or not.

Young people need sanctuary in their world todaysafe places where they can release their compassion, courage, character, and conscience by learning to care for one another.

Sparrow Clubs USA gives them this opportunity and shows that kids can do heroic things when they have heroic things to do. Heres how it works:

1. Children (and their families) in medical and financial crisis are referred to Sparrow Clubs USA by schools, social workers, parents, and doctors.

2. Children are adopted by area Sparrow Clubs and become Sparrows. Sparrow projects are held in elementary, middle, and high schools; colleges; youth groups; service clubs; youth ranches; and more. Sparrow Clubs USA provides all-school assemblies, workshops, club handbooks, and tools for kids. Kids often meet their Sparrows in person. The clubs do community service projects and fund-raising events to benefit their adopted Sparrows. Clubs can get as creative as they want in encouraging and supporting their adopted Sparrow children and families.

3. Local businesses or individuals provide seed money by sponsoring a club for each adopted Sparrow. The area clubs earn the funds provided by the sponsoring businesses or individuals by doing community service projects. Money is then credited to a Sparrow family up to ten dollars per hour of service. Each Sparrow has a designated tax-exempt project account that is administered by the Sparrow Clubs USA nonprofit organization. One hundred percent of the Sparrow Cash and additional monies raised are designated to the Sparrows account. A Sparrow family can access the cash for medical needs or for family needs incurred by their childs medical condition.

I pray that God would fill your heart with dreams, And that faith gives you the courage to dare to do great things.
M ARK H ARRIS , F IND Y OUR W INGS

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Dont be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Luke 12:67

W e learn to recognize hope in unexpected places, sometimes even better when were in a place where we dont have any hope at all. My family was in that place once. Hope visited us at a very low time, in a very unexpected way. Today that hope has expanded into a vision that is greater and more far reaching than anyone could have dared imagine.

On August 19, 1991, my fourth child, Michael, was born. That same day I was offered a job as teacher and activities director at Kamiakin Junior High near Seattlea cross-state move for my family.

Six months after the move, Michael became sick. He was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. A bone marrow transplant was needed to save his life. But because I had changed insurance carriers with my new job, my new son fell under a twelve-month waiting period for transplant benefits. Our six-year-old daughter, Amy, was a rare perfect donor match. But Michael was disqualified for the $200,000 procedure that could spare his tiny life.

How does a teacher come up with $200,000?

My income was already spread thin supporting my family of six. I had taken another job selling encyclopedias part-time just to cover the higher costs of moving to a bigger city. Medical bills not covered by insurance began to swamp us. Our baby had fallen through a narrow yet deadly crack in our nations health-care system. We appealed to the insurance company, to the state, and in quiet brokenness, to God.

Life continued, in spite of the waiting.

As the new PE teacher at Kamiakin, I was stuck with the job of taking Mrs. Kennedys self-contained special ed class one hour a day. It was called Adaptive PE. The class consisted of twelve disabled kidsthree in wheelchairs, two with Down syndrome, a couple with autism, and the rest with a variety of other physical and mental disabilities. We played simple, makeshift sports and games, a far cry from the Advanced Conditioning classes I typically taught, which were filled with jocks. But Adaptive PE quickly grew on me. These kids displayed an amazing depth of characterfrom courage to face challenges greater than I had ever imagined, to unrestrained joy in even the most minor successes, to an unhindered expression of love and appreciation that ministered yes, mostly to me. These kids possessed a poignant realness and innocence seldom seen in todays junior high schools.