How was The McKinsey Foundation birthed?

 

When McKinsey went to meet Jesus on February 2, 2015, none of us could have predicted the legacy of hope, faith, and love that she had left behind. McKinsey had a conviction in her heart to serve the abandoned street children in Uganda.

 

She made this well-known to anyone she came in contact with. McKinsey had made plans to return permanently, to live in Uganda and to even adopt Ugandan children and raise them there as her own. ( 18 of them to be exact )

 

When she dreamed, it was always BIG.! McKinsey had a conviction in her heart to serve the abandoned street children in Uganda. I traveled to Uganda 5 months after she passed to see what she saw and fell in love with. 

 

It quickly became clear to me why she had been called there. I firmly believe that God knew all along McKinsey would never return to Uganda, but he was, in fact, using her legacy to move me like he had not been able to do before. God knew the one person that could get me to do just about anything, and that was McKinsey Cook.

 

When she dreamed, it was always BIG.! McKinsey had a conviction in her heart to serve the abandoned street children in Uganda. I traveled to Uganda 5 months after she passed to see what she saw and fell in love with. It quickly became clear to me why she had been called there.

 

I firmly believe that God knew all along McKinsey would never return to Uganda, but he was, in fact, using her legacy to move me like he had not been able to do before. 

 

God knew the one person that could get me to do just about anything, and that was McKinsey Cook. As a child, I had a dream of buying a neighborhood and “staffing” each home in the neighborhood with house parents that would serve as parents for children that didn’t have any.

 

I knew kids that were in foster care and their stories always left me feeling like I should do something. As I got older, life intervened and I lost focus on that dream. Since McKinsey’s passing, God has reawakened that dream or a form of that dream deep in my soul.

 

What started out as me and others sharing McKinsey’s story, telling about the children living on the streets in Uganda, abandoned to fend for themselves and often times even die alone because there were not enough resources in place to ensure these children were safe, fed and loved has quickly taken on a life of its own.

 

I found myself receiving donations of toys, medical supplies and even cash from people that just wanted to help make a difference. It was amazing how God would use me as a vessel.

 

Then something significant happened. I was in front of a Fortune 500 company sharing her story and the response was “we would love to get involved, do you have a foundation set up?”

 

Before we left that room, several people had pulled out their checkbooks and wallets, I was astounded at how God was moving them to help us serve these children and I had not even asked. 

I was simply there to share her story. 

Over the next few days, weeks and months, I felt like God was moving me forward.

 

Step by step, he put people in front of me that wanted to help, whether it was through encouragement when I thought this was too big of a task or it was the actual people that knew the process of opening a foundation and was willing to help me along the way.

 

This has truly been a team effort with God as the pilot, leading us on a journey and today, I am overjoyed to say we did it! The mckinseyfund.org was opened in her honor, to love, serve and restore hope to abandoned children in Uganda.