Compassion

On the side of my blog you will find a link to Compassion International. I know it is quite possible that most of you have heard of it before and are maybe sponsoring a child through the organization. However, this time last year I had never heard of them so I am excited to tell everyone about it.

There are thousands of children all over the world, of all ages waiting for sponsorship. With your monthly sponsorship you provide:

• Food and clean water
• Medical care
• Educational opportunities
• Important life-skills training
• Most important of all, your sponsored child will hear about Jesus Christ and be encouraged to develop a lifelong relationship with God.

At this time our family is sponsoring 5 children through Compassion. This includes one that my girls are paying for all by themselves. I am so proud of the way they love Jesus so much that they give up their hard earned money (which they don't have much, only side jobs for neighbors and friends and birthday money) to provide hope and help to another child. They already want to sponsor a 2nd child, but I have encouraged them to wait until they have a more steady income.

The part we love so much about this program is that we get to write to the child through an online system that includes us sending photos. And we can write as often as we like, in fact they encourage you to write often. All of our children have hand written (with translation) a letter back to us at least once. 

These children live in very impoverished situations, nothing like we would ever have in the US, even our poorest would be in luxury. The children have daily opportunities to go to the local Compassion Center (maybe a local church or just a building) as often as they like. There they get all the things described earlier and just as importantly they have others pouring into them a love that gives the children hope. 

I have had the privilege of meeting 2 adults that used to be children sponsored through Compassion. Their testimonies are inspiring and convicting. Can you imagine the harshness of having to take care of your younger siblings at the age of 6 because your father has abandoned you and your mother must work hard all day to make a few cents a day in order to feed you? This is just a small glimpse of what these children might be dealing with, actually it is often quite worse and they often alone.

The wonderful thing in my opinion is that I believe each one of us could afford to sponsor at least one child. It only costs $38 a month! That is just a little more than a dollar day or the same cost as 9 Starbucks drinks or one hair cut at the beauty salon for a woman. 

I just wanted to encourage all of you reading to genuinely look at where your heart is. 
Luke 16:13 
"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

Think of the compassion and important character you will be sowing into your children with a program like this? What we sow is what we will reap. If we sow a love of money and not God, we should not be surprised when our children grow up greedy and selfish. We should not be surprised if they grow up ignoring God, because they will have to give up the comforts of the world and they are too attached.

Check out Compassion. One fun thing we did for several of our kids is to find a child that had either the same birthday (2 of them do) and in the least same age (all the rest do). This way our children are very certain to remember that child more and to think how fortunate they are for all they have, compared to their sponsored child. 

I know there are other sponsorship  programs out there, World Vision for one. I have not personally experienced their program, but have spoken with at least 2 people that did not think it was as a direct commitment to the individual child and were disappointed in the communication aspect with the agency. Again, I don't know but do your research.

Let me know if you sponsor a child or already do. I would love to hear from you.