Come with me….

It’s 2013. Lou and I woke up at 03:00am in Bolton, England. We are packing away the calories for what lies ahead of us. A whole day of swimming, cycling and running. We are 3 hours away from jumping in a lake and swimming 3.9 km, cycling 180 km and running 42 km, we are about to tackle the UK Ironman.

Rewind a few years back to 2006. Lou and I are at a soup kitchen in Pretoria South Africa on a Friday night, helping feed hungry kids and families with nothing. Spending time talking to them and building relationships that we will pick up every week while visiting these people.

Fast forward again and we are on our bikes. It is the 24th of October 2010, we are cycling 1000 kilometers in 3 days to raise awareness for kids that have been abandoned in South Africa in an orphanage. This was on our 1st year wedding anniversary. Many adventures were to follow!

It started many years ago, Lou and I met at university and in that final year, we both committed our lives to Christ and so began the journey. We both went on to pursue professional sporting careers in the UK and got married shortly after. 

Our passion and heart has always been to help people; be it financially, physically or even emotionally. The thing is, we love people, but we hate seeing people suffer, not having food, shelter, love and the ability to be a child. We want to make a difference. 

I still believe one day we will be at the forefront of helping innocent children being eleveated from slavery, sexual exploitation and homelessness. God placed this in our hearts and one day we will make a significant dent in helping where God purposes us. 

We started of playing sport and applying our physical fitness for ourselves, our future, our enjoyment, our life, our reputation and never considering that there is more to life. We have been fortunate enough to live a life with eyes wide open - we see people’s needs and we have compassion on people in need.

Early on in our marriage we started doing stuff for charities, ones we believed in and ones that we could see the people running them are passionate about it. We reached out and started planning these extreme events, in order to raise some money to help. I know everyone does their bit and we aren’t special, we are just purposed and set to intentionally make a difference.

Back to 03:00am, we both did that Ironman that day and completed it. Lou obviously nearly went to the world Champs on her first try missing it by 2 spots in her age group, but something was set in motion that day. We realised doing these extreme things for ourselves did not mean anything, that we could do more and in doing these things we could raise some cash to feed some people and do our little bit to help.

It was an amazing day and we ended up embracing at the finish line, an amazing day, but something fell short... Off we went and have since been driving charities yearly. 

Two weeks ago we received news that 2 spaces opened up to go and climb Kilimanjaro and to do it as a couple for an incredible cause close to our hearts. We will be on the mountain on our 10th wedding anniversary, which will make it even more special.

What is the most special though is what we are doing it for. We have a great opportunity here and if you are still reading then you too have a great opportunity. We can do our little bit to free humans from modern day slavery. While we are there, we are spending 2 days in Ethiopia to see what is meant by modern day slavery. What we have found out is that it is about freeing enslaved people, men, woman and kids from very harsh conditions. Children as young as three exploited sexually and made to beg for 16 hours a day, woman enslaved for the sex trade by the masses and men indebted to work as slaves forever. 

Hope for Justice is a organisation that goes in and gets their hands dirty. They go in physically and rescue enslaved people from their cruel and harsh realities and be a light of hope. Climbing a mountain to free people that are caught in modern slavery is easy on the flip side, what is not easy is raising the money to make the difference. I hope while you read this you and I can reflect on how blessed we are to have life, freedom and the ability to live our lives out fully not constrained by a master and tormented to do things we never wanted to do.

Thank you for reading so far and for potentially parting with some cash, please donate, help us get up the mountain and help us free some people from slavery.

So, in closing, Lou and I truly want to make a difference and this opportunity will give us a small chance in doing something. Please take this opportunity with us, together - we can make stuff happen.

We are just some crazy kids with a vision and a plan, we use what we have, make the most of it and hope you will to.

Bless you, we love you and we thank you for every donation made!!

AD and Lou Foster