Something to Smile About
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
Continue Reading ›Geography Lesson
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.
Continue Reading ›One Man’s Crawl Space, Another Man’s Castle
What shapes your perspective on poverty? Are you ready to have it shaken up?
How It All Started
“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.
Something to Get Excited About
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!
My Life Of Privilege
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?
2,000 Screaming Teenagers
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, Dallas Holm, 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.
Brian Seay is an artist relations manager for Compassion, working with musicians and bands who advocate for Compassion and children in poverty. He was one of the bloggers on the Uganda blog trip.
Mayonnaise Sandwiches
What connection is there between mayonnaise sandwiches and your spiritual journey?
6,574 Days
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.
Lives Transformed
One of the most impactful things I observed during our trip to Uganda was the profound difference between the children in a Compassion child sponsorship program compared to other children. Compassion-assisted children are connected with a loving, church-based program that provides:
- educational opportunities
- health care and supplemental nutrition
- opportunities for safe recreation
- opportunities to learn about important life skills
- hope and a sense of confidence
- most important of all, the child has the opportunity to hear about Jesus and be encouraged to develop a lifelong relationship with God
I met this child in the slums of Kampala. He’s not part of our child sponsorship program.
I met these children at Compassion’s program. There’s a significant difference between the two photos. The children in our child development centers still lead difficult lives but they have a sense of hope and purpose.
Everywhere we went, people would tell us things like:
- Compassion is doing great work in our country.
- Do you know my sponsor? If so, tell her I said thank you.
- I love my sponsor.
- I would not be the person I am today without Compassion.
All of the bloggers on the trip have arrived safely home, but you can still follow along since they’re still processing the experience and writing about it.
Check out the Uganda Blog Trip page and click through to the blogs to read what they’re saying.
An Introduction
I have always had a desire to write, but if you ask me, never in my wildest dreams did those thoughts include blogging. In a way this feels like God’s way of preparing me for that special role of sharing my life with others and using my past and my present to build others as He builds me.
At first, when I read the e-mail telling me that I was selected to be a contributor to this blog I was excited, but it was not until later that evening, when I was thinking of what to write for my first post, did I start getting cold feet with the realization of what I was just about to do.
I sincerely don’t know where God is taking me with this but my prayer is that at the end of it all relationships will be developed and through the many authentic conversations shared, communities will be fostered, trust built, and that I will have effectively and knowledgably shared with you about Compassion International and what it means to me and to the other many sponsored children, not only here in Kenya, but around the world.
My name is Anthony Njoroge. I was born 24 years ago in one of the largest slums in Kenya, Kawangware, famously known for drug abuse, prostitution, crime and high levels of poverty.
I am the fifth-born in a typical family, typical being where the mother is the bread winner, head of the home and the pillar of the family. It’s a scenario in almost all the slums because all the men are either too drugged to take care of their families or in prison.
It’s in this slum that Compassion found me, enrolled me in the Child Sponsorship Program, gave me the chance to go to school, and provided me with the chance to enjoy three meals a day, something unheard of in the slum. Compassion also provided me with my very first pair of shoes, and, literally, my very first set of clothes, because most of the clothes I had were either handed down to me from my big brother or given to me by a close relative. Most importantly, I got the chance to know Christ.
Once your heart is changed, your mind changes, your body changes and definitely the environment around you changes, and that’s what it means to release a child from poverty in Jesus name, for poverty is not only a lack of basic necessities but more so a lack of hope. It’s times like this when I look back at my life and the places I have come from and thank God for having brought Compassion International into my life and the way God has used the relationship with my sponsors not only to show me that I can make it, but that where I came from doesn’t matter and that I am not defined by poverty.
I am about to graduate from Compassion’s Leadership Development Program,* and I leave a better-fulfilled Christian adult with big dreams, a degree in information technology, and a servant leader. And that’s why it’s hard for me to truly tell you about my life and who I am without mentioning Compassion and my sponsors, for they have helped me be who I am today.
My life has had its ups and downs, and through the many conversations we will be having I will share these moments with you. Did I tell you how I joined Compassion? That’ll be my next post.
*This content honors our historical Leadership Development Program. To learn more about our current youth development opportunities, click here.
A Holy Job Description
There are a lot of things I love about working for Compassion. In fact, I’m going on eight years here, which is practically unheard of for my generation. (I’m a twenty-something.) But I’ve not stuck around this long by accident.
I was reminded this morning of one of the reasons I love this ministry. Every Wednesday morning we meet together for chapel. It’s not something that’s required, but every week, it seems, the auditorium is packed out. It’s a great break from our desks, and more importantly, a chance to feel like a family – like the Church body. We sing together. We pray for our sponsors together. And we hear about how what we are doing as “work” every day is changing lives all around the world. It’s very motivating!
This week the room was especially full. Wess, our president, spoke. Anyone that’s been working here for any amount of time learns that when Wess speaks, it will be moving. He has a lifetime of stories. If you’ve read his book, you know that God allowed some pretty extraordinary circumstances in his life to bring him to where he is now. I love to hear Wess speak because every time he does, he shares straight from his heart. And once you hear him speak, you want to hear him again. Apparently employees here have figured this out because there wasn’t an empty seat in the room.
The talk, of course, was great. But something that he said this morning really resonated with me. He said that what we as employees are doing here is exactly the same as what Jesus’ mission statement was while he was here:
because he has anointed me
to preach the good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for
the prisoners and recovery of sight
for the blind, to release the opporessed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
(Luke 4:18-19)
Wow. A job description literally right out of the Word of God! It doesn’t get much more motivating than that, huh?