The fact that this has happened twice makes me undoubtedly assured that God did the orchestrating.
A few weeks ago I got a private message from a woman I don’t know and have never met. She told me that she’s been trying to reach me. She just came back from a mission trip to Burkina Faso, West Africa. While she was there in the village, a young girl came up to her and showed her pictures of a couple who sponsors her through Compassion International. That couple was my husband and me. It being obvious that the missionary was American, without words the young girl was asking if the woman knew me. (more…)
A dear friend who I love and respect and look up to so much (I secretly want to be like her when I grow up even though she’s a little younger than me) posted on Facebook recently that she is reading Jen Hatmaker’s book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. She said that the book is “rocking her world” and she’s been “gutting her house and making packages for homeless people”.
Oh wow! I want to want to gut my house and make packages for homeless people. I really do.
But I’m not ready to read Jen Hatmaker’s book 7. (more…)
It’s almost the end of Compassion Blog Month. As of last Friday 2,006 children all over the world found sponsors. Our goal for September is 3,108.
Have you considered becoming a sponsor yet?
There are several reasons why people do not consider sponsorship.I’ve had many of these same thoughts and concerns, actually. So today I want to talk about some of them and tell you my experience.
That’s probably the biggest reason, isn’t it? I get it. I totally get it. Extra money is hard to come by sometimes, especially now-a-days. But think about this. By just living in the United States most of us are in the top three percent (or something like that) wealthiest people in the world. A pastor said that once in one of his sermons, and my mouth almost dropped. The percentage may not be exact, but it’s something crazy-high like that.
Jesus said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48)
There’s no doubt that giving to a child in need takes sacrifice. It takes saying “no” to some of our monthly pleasures to be able to use that money elsewhere. But when you see how God blesses you with peace and joy when you get that first letter from your sponsored child in the mail, then you realize how you gain more than you could ever give.
2. The Fear
There are a lot of scammers in the world. People trying to exploit children for money. We all have to be careful, prayerful, and vigilant so that these things don’t happen. Some people wonder if their money is truly being used for their sponsored child.
Well, I had the opportunity to visit my Compassion child at a Compassion site in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Honestly, I was more than impressed with what I saw. It was clean and well-kept. The children were happy and learning. They teach the children about the Gospel, but also about good hygiene, manners, and how to interact properly with others. They teach them life-skills that they would not otherwise learn. The team of leaders encourages these children to be all that God created them to be. And of course they provide food and medical care for their families.
From what I have seen, Compassion is a top-notch organization. Here are some pictures from the Compassion site:
Outside the Compassion siteSome children playing outside the Compassion siteAll the children when we walked up to the siteThey teach the children how to use toilets.A Compassion buildingThe children in classOutside classroomNotes from the children’s classInside a classroomInside a classroom. They are separated by age.
And here’s a little video from our visit that day:
3. The Difference
I write a lot about my mission trip to Africa, and every time I do I worry that you may think you have to go there to make a difference. That is so untrue.
If you didn’t read this post, please do. Recently I wrote about how I was very bad this past year about writing my Compassion child. I just kept thinking, “What is my letter really going to matter?” Well, it mattered. More than I ever thought. When another team from my church went back there recently, my Compassion child ran up to one of my friends who was there. She was holding the picture of my husband and me.
You don’t have to visit your child to make a difference. Your letters make a difference. They truly, truly do.
4. The World
A common reason I hear of why people do not sponsor children in other countries is “Well, what about the children here? Shouldn’t we be helping our own first?” Of course we should be helping children in our lives and communities right where we live.
But the Great Commission does not stop just with here. The Great Commission is for everywhere. We just happen to live in a country with resources that make it easier to help children and people all over the world, not just here, so why not do that? And with the internet and technology it is easier and more convenient than ever.
“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)
I encourage you to think the way I think God thinks. I don’t think He sees us all separated by land masses and water. All of us live on a fallen earth, all of us need a Savior, all of us are His children whom He loves more than anything.
May I challenge you?
Sometime today or tomorrow, go to this website. Look through the children who are waiting for sponsors. Don’t just make a commitment. Really look at their faces. Then pray and ask God:
to protect these children. Give them what they need. Help them to know Him intimately.
to reveal to you if this is your time to sponsor. It may not be. He may tell you “not now”. But at least pray and ask Him.
This is a wonderful opportunity to get your personal children involved, too. Grow in your children a heart for others by having them choose a child to sponsor. Then, involve them in writing to your sponsored child.
What do you think or wonder about often about child sponsorship with Compassion?
We sat in front of the T.V. on Saturday afternoon, flipping channels, wasting time, and landed on the food channel. You know the one. The channel where either a food artist works a decadent act of chemistry on a white, ceramic, canvas disk, making your mouth water and making you wish you were the artist in your own kitchen. Or you watch other people traveling around savoring the prepared art of someone else in order to make a fair judgment about it, which always seems to be a pleasant one they can’t resist.
On this day we watched the latter. A man traveling around from city to city indulging in wonderful food in quaint hidden towns and hole-in-the-wall secrets.
My mouth, too, began to water, and I wondered what great food I could be missing right here where I live.
Then my mind flashed back.
Back to that trip six months ago deep in the bush of Africa.
The women starting preparing our dinner at two o’clock in the afternoon. They started with cutting the cabbage as the chicken ran around them for one last time.
Four hours later dinner was served. Some men brought benches over for us to sit on to eat. They had a few forks for us, too, but not for everyone.
In the pitch black night the rest of the village sat over on the other side of the hut, away from us, as we ate. There was no thought of them ever eating with us. That was simply unspeakable. So they waited until we were finished.
Whatever was left would be theirs. First the men, then the women, then the children would eat. In that order. If there was no food left, then the children would go hungry that night. That’s the way it is. A man is more valuable than a child. After all, how would the family get food if the father died?
Just recently I was listening to a sermon by someone. I don’t remember his name because I have several podcasts downloaded. The pastor told a story about traveling to another country and seeing the people in that culture literally bow down and worship statues and sculptures and things. Just like the golden calf in the Old Testament. “Who still worships objects?” he thought. How ridiculous that seemed.
Then a woman from that country came to America. He asked her, “How do you like America?” assuming she would love it. Who wouldn’t?
“I hate it”, she said. “There is so much idolatry. People worship their stomachs here.”
His point was the hypocrisy in both his heart and the woman’s heart. And the realization that we are a very idolatrous nation even in the most concealed ways.
I watched that Saturday afternoon the man on the food channel full of enthusiasm and smiles almost panting as he traveled from place to place trying different cuisines and variations of food, and my heart began to ache.
No longer can I see abundance and not think about my Compassion child and the little girl without a dress and then fall on my own knees in confession of the love of things in my own life.
God gave me His eyes for those few hours there in the Bush, and I brought them back with me to the Land of the Free. I cannot hide behind oblivion because I’ve seen it with my own eyes, with my own soul.
No longer may I fully enjoy all that’s around me, but then again should I? Or should I view it from His perspective? Is all of this stuff really a blessing? Or is it more of a curse, keeping us further from Him?
I don’t know the answers. I want a clear-cut line, but there’s not one. I want to accept His blessings with open hands for what they are – grace-filled gifts, but I don’t want to be deceived into thinking they’re blessings when they’re not.
Africa may have ruined my fun of sitting and watching the food channel, but it opened my heart to His and made me think about making abundance my God. I’ll leave the line up to Him.
How do you view abundance? How do you view idolatry? Share with me in the comments. I would love to hear from you.
We had only just started sponsoring her. I had written her a few times, and she had written me back once. But this was the day that I looked forward to most – the day I would see her with my own eyes. Not just in a brochure telling me her name and her daily chores and her literacy level. But see her in person and touch her and look into those eyes.
She is my connection to Burkina Faso. I would go home, and she would stay, but it is through her that a part of me would come back every so often through my letters and the gifts I send with other teams who travel there from our church. She is my one person. My one person who was appointed to me to hopefully make a difference. A continual, ongoing difference, past the thirty minutes I spend with her here on day five of my trip.
I couldn’t wait to meet her.
That morning we walked over the Compassion site. The place where the children gather on Thursdays to learn etiquette and hygiene and Jesus. There were so many children. I carried the brochure in my hand, and her picture was right on the front. The children would look down at it, and I would hold it up. We couldn’t communicate, but they knew I was looking for her, and she was mine.
That day she had a big test at school, a test that would determine whether she goes on to the next level or not. See, I chose her because of her age. She is thirteen years old. I knew that the little ones are often chosen, but I wanted to give an older child a chance before she turned eighteen. So I chose her. In her country going to school, even public school, is a luxury. Only the brightest and the most fortunate are blessed with an education. Today she was working on that chance, and she was not planning to come to Compassion.
But I had to see her. I couldn’t come all that way without laying my eyes on her.
The big pink bag was stuffed full for her. Construction paper, markers, post-it notes, a notebook, a necklace, hair bows, a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and the skirts and t-shirts I had brought for myself to wear. Along with a bag of rice for her family.
They told me they would have to go and get her on the moped.
So I waited.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that the moped drove up with her on the back.
Children were all around me when she drove up. I broke away from the crowd and started walking toward the moped. They knew she was the one I had come to see.
And tears streamed down from my eyes. There she was – the teenage girl on the cover of the brochure that I sat in the church office and picked out from a pile of many. She was mine. My Compassion child.
We walked into the Compassion offices so that we could be alone and talk. My words were translated, and she was mostly quiet. I gave her all that I had brought her, and I told her that I prayed for her every day.
Compassion came alive for me that day.
A few nights later – the night before we left – the missionaries had some Congo dancers come out and perform as an ministry outreach for the village. As I walked to the school cafeteria to see the performance, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was very dark, and I could not see. The voice said, “Blandine”. And it was her. She reached out her hand, and I shook it. She was wearing the pink t-shirt that I had given her, and that I had worn a few days before.
I saw her again that night for the last time in person.
Each day as I pray for Blandine as I picture her in my mind – in her village, at the Compassion site, with her family. She is a part of me. And in some small way I pray that I am a part of her, and through my prayers Jesus grows to become the most important person in her life.
I realize that I had a rare and blessed opportunity to meet the Compassion child we sponsor. Not everyone has that opportunity. But I want to urge you to prayerfully consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International. I have been to their facilities in Burkina Faso, and met some of the workers there. This is an organization that is led by the Lord to provide education, medical care, and spiritual development to children all over the world. It is an organization that is making a difference for eternity.
At first I didn’t think we could communicate. I met her outside of the missionaries’ house after coming back from the bush. She smiled sheepishly, and I smiled back. I reached out and rubbed her back. I found myself doing that when I met the children. It was my way of saying what they couldn’t understand through my words. You are important. So I came here to meet you.
She had a large, full smile, and the features of her face were dainty and defined and beautiful. Jeweled braids fell precisely from her head and moved from side-to-side as she walked.
I began to ask her questions. She would just look at me and smile. So I tried harder with hand motions and drawing pictures in the air. But again, just a smile.
I asked her if she wanted to come and sit beside me on the bricks that were stacked nearby for the new wall we were building. She accepted, and we made our way over and had a seat.
“My name is Imelda”, she whispered.
“What did you say?” I asked surprised that she spoke and making sure I heard her correctly.
“My name is Imelda”, she replied.
And she became my first friend in Burkina Faso.
That afternoon, sitting right there on those bricks, I painted Imelda’s nails. I talked to her about school and her family and where she lived. Her English was limited, but it was good enough to get to know a friend better.
Each day Imelda came to the LAC where we stayed. She would ask one of the missionary children to go in and get me. I would come out, and we would spend a little more time together. It became our standard date.
The day before we were leaving I had one of the missionary children translate for me that I was leaving the next day. We took a picture together, and she asked if she could keep it. I told her I had no way of making a copy of it, but that I would send a copy to her with the next team from our church that goes to Burkina Faso.
Then she handed me this letter that she handwrote.
Not a day has gone by in the forty-six days since I left Burkina Faso that I have not thought about Imelda and her precious country. Pockets of my days still get consumed with my memories, and I count up to see what time it is there, I imagine what they are doing, and I picture Imelda’s face. But I remind myself that for them these are not memories. This is their life that is continuing under that thick, hot sun and on that packed, hard dirt.
Some often wonder why people would travel that far and spend such money when there are plenty of needs here. And that is true. There are plenty of needs here.
But for me the answer is simple. God knew I needed a friend named Imelda who lives in Burkina Faso. He knew that only through that special friend, in that special country would my mind fully open to see his kind of love – a love so deep that he was willing to die for us just to claim us as his own.
God wants Imelda as his own.God wants me as his own.
Now, each day, she is a part of me. I pray for her. That she will know God’s love too. And eternity will be sweet as we sit in the sunlight and talk as I paint her nails.
My friend Imelda is important. So I went to meet her.
Please join me as I tell my story about visiting Burkina Faso, West Africa on a mission trip this past November. I am telling it slowly because a lot of emotions go into writing about the experience. Please join my story from the beginning here: Burkina Faso.
The fact that this has happened twice makes me undoubtedly assured that God did the orchestrating.
