Meet Jeffry. He lives in Nicaragua . . . uh, wait a minute. We’ve explained that already.

From left to right: Mark Hanlon, Compassion’s senior vice president of sponsor and donor development, Jeffry and Jeffry’s grandparents

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Compassion President Dr. Wess Stafford often says that ”latitude and longitude can determine whether you’re wealthy or poor in this world.” It’s true. I was born here…so I have access to things that others only dream about.

That lesson hit me hard this week when my 11-month-old son, Morgan, got sick.  His doctor tells us that it’s a gastrointestinal virus that’s going around. The worst part of it is diarrhea. Poor little guy, he’s just so uncomfortable. So, we’ve been giving him plenty of fluids, trying to get him to take naps (though he’s been extremely restless) and just loving on him…cuddling.

Then I remembered a statistic in our Health Quick Facts section of Compassion’s website: 

There are 1.5 million diarrhea-related deaths of children under the age of five in this world, every year.

1,500,000 children dying of what my little boy has right now.

My son is fortunate. We can afford to take him to the doctor. We have access to clean water and formulas that can help replenish the nutrients his body needs. And I am thankful to God for that. But I pray for those families who don’t have the same. I pray for those who, because of latitude and longitude, have no access to clean water and formula…or can’t afford to visit the doctor.

It’s not really fair, is it? We were born here, so we thrive. They were born there, so they struggle to survive. But poverty has never played fair. And God told us what the great equalizer is: YOU and ME. He called for those of us who have to share with those who do not.

Today, I ask you to pray for children in poverty. I ask you to cross the lines of longitude and latitude and give to those who suffer due to something as silly as geography. Maybe it’s through sponsoring a child. Or maybe it’s giving to one of Compassion’s funds designed to help those in need.

Whatever it is, find a way for your hope to cross the globe.

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As I was perusing the news feed on my Facebook profile the other day, I stumbled upon a note posted by one of my co-workers, Greg Birgy. (Greg is Compassion’s Area Director of Advocates and Church Relationships.)

I was moved by what he wrote and thought it was worthy of reposting. So here it is,
in Greg’s own words:

I have friends in the Philippines right now. As I spent some time praying for them this morning, a strange conviction hit me.

Recently my wife and I were lamenting some of the shortcomings of our present home. We’ve been married for nine years and this is our fourth home (in our fourth state), but this is our first home without a basement. We’ve never had elaborate basements, never a fully-finished one, typically just a cement area with storage, mechanicals like the furnace, and laundry. It’s the storge space we were really missing. We like to think we live modestly, if not simply … yet we do have boxes and crates of “things” that we have to store … things like Christmas decorations, keepsakes, seasonal clothing that doesn’t fit into our closets, kids clothes that we pass from one child to the next, extra items that we don’t have space for in our kitchen cabinets, and so on.

What we do have is a crawl space under a portion of our home … a crawl space we were feeling was rather inconvenient and inadequate. This morning, in my prayer for my friends in the Philippines, I was reminded of my own visit to that country last Fall. While there I visited two different homes that required me to crawl to enter them … a first for me in all my years of visiting the poor. Two homes in which I had to bow my head even while sitting so as not to scrape the ceiling (standing wasn’t even an option.) Two homes that easily could have fit together inside the space of my “small” crawl space. Two homes that collectively had fewer light bulbs than my one crawl space. Two homes that had far fewer possessions than the “extras” I store in my crawl space.

My crawl space doesn’t flood when it rains. I’ve never seen a mouse in it, much less a rat like the one I saw while visiting one of the homes in the Philippines. While I’m sure it is inhabited by an occasional spider, it isn’t infested with cockroaches like the tiny home in Manila. The temperature in my crawl space is always moderate and vented with fresh air. In the homes in the Manila slum, the air was stagnant, humid and swelteringly hot.

I was humbled today, knowing that my crawl space is palatial compared to the homes I visited in Manila. My inconveniences are born out of my abundance … can they really be considered inconveniences? How easy it is to lose perspective and take things for granted. I’m thinking my family wouldn’t last a day trying to “live” in our crawl space together, and I wonder how long we could go on living without even missing the things we have stored there?

Thank you for the lessons in humility and gratitude today Lord … may they permeate my choices, my lifestyle, in order to love you and your people better.

It’s so easy to lose perspective, isn’t it? Especially living in a country so full of abundance. Hopefully posts like this one can help us keep a true perspective on reality and our place in this world.

Do you have a story of how God used a small, seemingly insignificant moment to radically change your perspective? I’d love to hear it!

You can also read others posted on Compassion’s Web site in the Share Your Heart section.

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“What is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?”
-Psalm 8:4, NIV

A few years ago I learned something shocking yet humbling. I learned that I ought not to have joined the Compassion Child Sponsorship Program; that I was the last choice in a process involving 60 other children my age and my name was not even originally on the list.

I learned that it was actually my cousin, who is also called Anthony Njoroge, who ought to have been enrolled in to the program. The only thing that stood in his way was his age; he was seven years old instead of the preferred age of six years old. When my aunt was asked to recommend someone else to take her son’s place she remembered me, and that’s how I came to be enrolled in Compassion.

Now I look back at this and see so many lessons that as a Christian I need to remember but most of the time keep forgetting as I journey through life:

Lesson 1
That love and sacrifice conquers all. Just like God giving his son to die on the cross instead of me, my aunt chose to have her son exempted from the program so that I could enjoy the benefits of the program even with the full knowledge that she, too, was in need, if not more.

Lesson 2
That God indeed thinks of me and He has a plan for me regardless of how far behind I might be in life or how many odds are against me. Surely His plan and purpose for my life will be fulfilled as long as I keep my mind stayed on Him.

Lesson 3
That indeed all things work for good to those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose, and there is nothing that takes place in my life that catches Him by surprise.

I can’t justify or explain any of these circumstances or factors that led to me joining Compassion, but one thing I know is this: it was the best thing that happened in my life.

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Meet Jeffry. He lives in Nicaragua. He is our one millionth registered child.

A registered child is different than a sponsored child in that the registered child doesn’t have a sponsor . . . yet. Once the registered child gets a sponsor, that child is a sponsored child. Makes sense, right?

The registered children are the ones whose pictures you see on the sponsor a child page at compassion.com and in the child packets at concerts and other events, such as Compassion Sunday.

The registered children are the children who are waiting to be chosen by a sponsor and who the Unsponsored Children’s Fund assists until that sponsor comes along. The Unsponsored Children’s Fund bridges the gap between registration and sponsorship. It allows the registered child to have all the same benefits as the sponsored child.

We don’t have one million children waiting for sponsors. Jeffry is the one millionth child concurrently registered. More than 850,000 of those children already have sponsors. And since Compassion began in 1952, nearly two million children have been part of our programs.

That’s a little context for this post that Mark Hanlon, Compassion’s senior vice president of sponsor and donor development, submitted from Nicaragua yesterday.

It was like so many other Compassion child home visits I’d done before (and in my 28 years at Compassion, I’ve done a few!), but this one seemed to hold a bit of extra anticipation and excitement for me.

I happened to be in Nicaragua two weeks after we had registered our millionth child for the very first time. It turns out that this millionth child is a little 3-year-old boy in Nicaragua. The office staff there was so excited, and they set up a home visit for me to meet little Jeffry.

It was kind of strange because Jeffry had no idea what a historic milestone he is in the history of Compassion. In fact, when I got there with several of the Compassion Nicaragua staff and some of the center staff, he was totally overwhelmed. Too much attention by too many grown-ups all at once - and he did what many normal little 3-year olds do - he covered up his eyes with his hands (a la “see no evil”) and pretended we weren’t there! When his grandmother (who is his caregiver since his mother now lives in the U.S. and couldn’t take him with her) tried to get him to take his hands away from his face, he ran away crying.

That was OK. We shifted our focus to the grandmother and asked her questions about the impact of having Jeffry registered in the program at the church. She talked about the hope and a future she had for Jeffry to get through high-school and maybe even go to university. She expressed concern over his health and the health of her husband who has diabetes. She talked about the challenges of supporting a household of 17 adults and children in her dirt floor, cinder block structure in the heart of economically challenged Managua. Her husband (the diabetic) and her three sons work hard as day laborers - when there is work - and they have terrible difficulty in making ends meet. She wanted better for her little grandson, Jeffry.

Then it struck me that this visit indeed was like most other visits I’d done. Parents (and grandparents) worldwide want the same thing for their children - a better future than what they have. It didn’t matter one bit to Jeffry or his grandmother that he is Compassion’s millionth child. What did matter is that they now have some hope. And now, I really was excited to be there! Not because I got to meet the millionth child in his home, but because I got to see something that Compassion gets to be a part of with the local church every day. Releasing a motherless child, living in extreme poverty, living with 16 other people, from poverty in Jesus’ name. Now that’s something to get excited about!

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I was born into privilege. No, I don’t mean the kind of privilege of living with butlers, maids, fancy cars and mansions. I was born into privilege because my family was able to move to the United States when I was a 5-year-old child, and because of that move I was given the privilege of a life that I would not have had in India.  

When our family gets together there is always a story or two told of our childhood in India. When my older brothers talk about our childhood home in Kerala with the lush green plam trees and the rice paddies, their stories seem like make-believe. The smells of the open markets filled with fishmongers and the sounds of the honking cars and buses. In our minds, we often go back to the reality of our dirt-floor home without running water or electricity. Kerosene lamps lit the way down the rocky hill to our home at night after prayer meetings and church services  The place where we learned to catch minnows in the creek with our threadbare towels or the well where our mummy drew water for the day. 

Strange to remember that life and realize that God allowed it to be the place where I spent my early developmental years. It is also an eye-opening experience to think, “there but for the Grace of God, go I.” What a statement when I think of where I am today and where I could have been, had it not been for God’s great provision in my family’s life. When I think of poverty or what its effects are, it has a personal look and feel because I’ve experienced it as the fabric of my life. My family did not have much, but what we did have were parents who believed in God and sacrificed for a better future for us. I know that today I am at Compassion International as an advocate for children because God orchestrated my childhood to be a starting place for me to recognize need and to empathize with children who do not have the same privilege I was born into. 

I was born into privilege, and if you are reading this on your desktop at work or a personal computer at home, then more than likely you were born into privilege also. No, not the “Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous” kind of privilege, but the kind of privilege that we take for granted because we don’t think twice when we turn the knob on a faucet for water or flip a switch for light. Our children are privileged with the requirement and opportunity for an education. We lay claim to the kind of privilege that allows us to walk into clean supermarkets to purchase beautifully packaged foods. We Americans, as a whole, own approximately 40 percent of the world’s wealth but we make up only 2.5 percent of the world’s population. We, my friends are privileged…and with this privilege comes…yes, you’ve guessed it, responsibility. So, as you are looking at these words of mine I have a closing thought. What will you and I do with the responsibility of the privilege we were born into?

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The title of this post scares me. I love all of God’s children, but the thought of a room full of teenagers makes me a little nervous. The exception will be this Wednesday night when I travel deep in the heart of Texas for the start of the Hawk Nelson “Green T” Tour. Compassion has partnered with artists for 30 years and in that time almost 200,000 sponsors have been found in the seats of concert venues all over the United States.

My job with Compassion is to build relationships with artists and partner with them when they are out on the road. I love the fact that on my Compassion roster is one of the legends of Christian music and young bands like Hawk Nelson. The common thread between the two is the calling to be an advocate for children throughout the world and a belief that we are called to partner together to release these children from poverty.

One of the great joys of my job is traveling to different parts of the world with these artists so they can see “first hand” the ministry of Compassion. 

In January, I took Daniel from Hawk Nelson to Haiti where he met his Compassion sponsor child, Franchioux. Daniel immediately connected with the boy he only knew through letters and pictures and outfitted him with a “Hawk Nelson is My Friend” t shirt written in Hatian Creole for the occasion. 

This trip encouraged and inspired Daniel to stand up in 36 different cities for the next two months in front of 2,000 screaming teenagers, parents, and youth leaders and tell them about this 8-year-old boy in Haiti that hears about Jesus every week, is doing well in school, has the right nutrition and medical care, and believes that one day he can be an engineer so he can build better roads in his community. Daniel will stand up each night and invite those 2,000 screaming teenagers to take a stand and join him in the fight against poverty. 

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When I was a kid I used to love mayonnaise sandwiches. That’s right, just two pieces of bread, with a thick helping of Miracle Whip (which technically, isn’t mayonnaise — it’s salad dressing) in the middle. No meat, no cheese…no veggies. Just Miracle Whip and bread. I’m not sure how that started. Perhaps it’s because we were so poor and often didn’t have anything else to put between our two slices of Wonder Bread. It’s not very nourishing. But at the time, it was a wonderful snack. And now, having grown up and had all sorts of meat-filled hoagies, clubs, burgers and Reubens — Mayonnaise sandwiches don’t sound very appealing.

The early part of my spiritual journey was just like that mayonnaise sandwich. I had the bread, but not much to put in the middle. My early walk with Christ was encapsulated in the only two things I really knew about Jesus:

1. He was born of a virgin, in a manger, under a bright star. Wise men came to see Him and brought Him gifts.

and

2. He was crucified for my sins.  But after three days, He rose from the grave…proving His power over death, and thus granting us everlasting life.

But I knew very little about the middle of the sandwich. What happened between birth and death? What did Jesus do with His time here on earth?

We can grow so complacent in our spiritual journeys that we forget about the middle of the story. And frankly, part of that may be the fault of the Church. Pastors — not all of them, but many — find it easy to talk about the bread. Sermons about how Jesus was born…and how He died for our sins are abundant. It’s an easy topic to give the body. But what about the middle?

Last year, a Barna poll found that more than 50 percent of church-goers in the US said they had not heard a single sermon about ministering to the poor over the past 12 months. Over 50 percent! But so much of what Jesus did was ministering to those who were hungry, thirsty, hurting, sick, lame, blind…poor. Jesus spent the better part of His ministry addressing those needs. And He told us to do likewise. Why isn’t the Church teaching about the middle?

Seems to me that ministering to the poor ought to be the most preached topic in the Church today…not one of the least. If we truly want to be Christ-like, and we should, then let’s start teaching Christ’s message to the Church. Let’s start doing what Jesus did — and what He told us to do…serve the poor.

Anything less…is just a mayonnaise sandwich.

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So we have a blog, and you’re reading it. Excellent (Did you say it like Mr. Burns?) Aside from that, who are these people? The ones talkin’ with ya. I mean are we real people or is there a Wizard of Oz thing going on?

Look behind the curtain and see for yourself.

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I ran across this quote on another blog the other day …

“There are only 6,574 days between a child’s birth and their eighteenth birthday. Don’t waste a single one.”

I have no idea who first said it but it kind of puts the brevity of life into a new light, doesn’t it? Makes you want to move “spend more time with my child” up on life’s priority list.

We have a collection of quotes about children and poverty on our web site. Check it out … some of the names might surprise you.

Do you have a favorite quote about children or poverty? Let me know.

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