Every year before Christmas I received a fill-in-the-blank that I didn’t think mattered.
I was so wrong.
Leif and I have sponsored children though out the years for Compassion International—an organization who identifies children around the world in the most desperate, dire situations.
Compassion goes into the schools, neighborhoods, and local communities to find the children who are orphaned, who are being raised by single mothers or grandmothers, who sleep on dirt floors, who are hungry and live with food insecurity. They are the poorest of the poor.
Through Compassion, they receive a big meal every day, education, and access to medical care. Kids in the Compassion project often come home and teach their parents, guardians, and siblings what they just learned about sanitation, hygiene, social skills, and more. Entire families are being affected by your sponsorship.
Before I traveled to meet my Compassion child, I honestly looked at the end-of-the-year letter from the organization as just another appeal for funding.
I saw the fill-in-the-blank to give a Christmas, birthday, or family gift as something nice to do, a way to give something extra. I had no idea the impact those gifts make before I saw it first hand in the 3-ring binders at an actual Compassion site.
In Africa, I saw the receipts from how those gifts are spent. A pair of shoes. A pair of pants. Shoes. Socks. A jacket—the only jacket that kid has ever owned. A kilogram of flour or sugar. A bowl and dried fish for a start up business for a parent. Sheets of metal roofing so the home can finally have a non-leaky roof and a way to catch clean drinking water.
Those gifts are likely the only source of your child getting new shoes or a new shirt this year. But when your child grows out of them, they’re passed on to younger siblings. The food that’s given is shared by the entire family. The small businesses—whether a goat that produces milk or a bag with dirt and seeds that produces vegetables—provide income for the entire family to eat, visit the hospital, and survive.
When you see that option to give a little extra, know that it’s making a bigger difference than you can imagine.
We filled out our blank with the maximum amount and we hope that you will, too!
I also make sure that whenever I receive a letter from my “Little Flower”, the child I sponsor, I write her back immediately. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to let her know she’s in my thoughts and prayers.
And this time, I even tore out a page from Lived Loved: An Adult Coloring book and slipped it in the correspondence. If you have one of these coloring books, tear out a page, and include it so your kid can color, too!
Here’s a video of Leif and I talking about our involvement with Compassion International:
If you’ve never sponsored a child through Compassion International, you can click on this Charity Navigator Four-Star Rated non-profit (***highest rated****) and begin making maximum impact in a child’s life today.
Click here, to learn more.
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