compassion changes things

September 25, 2008

The Andes Mountains are all around me, their peaks covered by the morning mist.  The Colombian air is crisp and cool and I drink it in. 

My eyes wander toward the steep slopes and the houses that are perched there.  Small communities shoved together in a makeshift suburbia.  Houses with concrete walls and floors and corrugated tin roofs.  Clothes are on the lines and I think I can hear them flapping in the mountain breeze. 

Families are scattered about.  Men leaning in doorways, ponchos slung across their shoulders.  Mothers shuffling and sweeping, the worn soles of their shoes making a gentle shhh shhh sound as they move.  Children playing happily with strings and sticks in what is meant to be a yard.

I think that I must have known a place like this existed, but I didn’t know it like I know it now.  I had read about the third world and seen pictures of it and parts of me had cringed at the sight.  But today, in the here and now and for forever, this third world and her people are mine.  Her children are mine. 

Sebastian is one of her children. 

He is nine years old and he likes to run in the afternoons.  He goes to school and helps his mother with making beds and because of Compassion International he feels the burden of poverty just a little less. 

Sponsoring a child through Compassion is easy and it’s life changing.  It changes the way you think, the way you see the world, and the way your heart breaks.  Because once you sponsor a child, your family grows. 

But there’s more than just you.   

Sponsoring a child changes the way children in 25 of the world’s poorest countries live.  It gives them letters and pictures and stories from places that they can’t even imagine.  It gives them health care and education and a chance to feel proud of who they are.  It gives them hope that they can cling to and a Jesus that is tangible. 

You can make the difference to a child.  You can change their world a little and I promise, they’ll change yours just like Sebastian is changing mine.

Is today the day that you extend your family?

Click here to sponsor a child that has been waiting over six months for a sponsor.

Posted in colombia, faith, home