Compassion

I’ve been thinking for a while about sponsoring another child with
Compassion. We already sponsor a little boy in Uganda and it’s so lovely to get his letters and photos and to see how our little
contribution makes a real difference to his life. So… I decided over the last
few weeks (having got some paid work!) that it was time to sponsor another
child. And I wanted to write about this because I was surprised at how
difficult I found it. Last time we were at the Big Church Day Out, we just
picked a photo and went with it. This for some reason was much harder. There
are so many kids needing sponsorship, and their little faces look out from the
computer screen. Man, I wish I had the money to sponsor them all…

The Compassion site is well set up so you can choose a child under various
categories, including the country they live in, their age, or even their
birthday. I have to say at first I found this really hard. It seems to be geared towards our
western society, where we can choose everything in life and what we like,
according to our own terms. In this case, even children. It felt like I had the
power to choose which child would have their life transformed…

However, needs must and actually although it initially seemed a bit consumerisitc,
the reality I guess, is that they need our money, and if the best way to get
that is to pander to our western ways, well then do it. For some it will
probably make the difference between whether they choose to sponsor a child or
not.

Anyway having got over this, I decided to narrow it down to Haiti, as our
daughters school is twinned with one there. We already sponsor a boy a similar
age to our son so this time I wanted to choose a girl similar age to our
youngest daughter. In this case the choosing mechanism was brilliantly
efficient. But then came the tug on the heart strings. 10 little girls popped up on my
screen, all similar age to our daughter, and all in need of help. How would I
choose? I began to read through the bios for each one, but that just made it harder,
and I began to weep, especially seeing a young girl, the same age as our youngest, as the longest waiting, having been on the list for 210 days. The difference
between my kids lives and these girls is just the circumstance of where they
were born. I am truly blessed to live in the UK, have a wonderful family and
that we have enough money to eat and live to our hearts content. These girls
have next to nothing. The reality of such needless poverty in our ridiculously wealthy
world really struck me, looking at those pictures. And I know it’s not easy to
change things, even trying to get stuff  or financial aid sent out to the school in Haiti that we
have links with is really hard. Right now my bedroom is full of a load of old junk waiting to go to a
carboot sale. There are things in that pile that these kids really need or
would dearly love to have, but I cannot get it to them. In this day and age
that seems so unfathomable.

Compassions mission is: In response to the Great Commission, Compassion exists as an advocate for children, to release them from their spiritual, economic, social, and physical poverty and enable them to become responsible and fulfilled Christian adults.

This September Compassion have a goal to see an extra 2000 children released from poverty. Can you be one of those sponsors? Please do think about it, it costs just £21 a month and just think of the difference that will make. You can visit the compassion website here   (I would love to encourage you to sponsor a child from Haiti. However if you are in the UK Haiti isn’t an option on the UK site, so you need to call them up if you are in the UK, or go to the US site if you live there.)