A few years back, Israel Candia from Bolivia served as our “poster boy” for the Leadership Development Program (LDP). He entered our Child Sponsorship Program at age 4 and graduated from LDP in 2004.

Today, Israel is demonstrating the Lordship of Christ by serving as pastor of the Villa Moscu Church. He is also supporting himself economically by practicing law. And, on March 29 he exchanged wedding vows with his beautiful bride, Benedicta!

So, our “poster boy” done good! And that means, you done good! Way to go! Way to go Israel! And, of course, way to go God who “is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of…” (Ephesians 3:20, Living Bible).

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Will you help us say thank you to Tammy Chalfant, who organized the first ever Compassion Sunday event at Farmland Friends Church (FFC)?

Please tell Tammy and her pastor, Kris Sorensen, how much you appreciate their work.

And Shaun Groves too. He spoke at the event, and he’s a TIRELESS advocate for children in poverty.

Then, take a hop over to SearchKindly.org and help us win $1,000!

SearchKindly is a non-profit organization that donates 100% of its ad revenue to charity. This month Compassion is competing against four other charities for the donation. And right now, we’re in SECOND place with $500 on the table. But the amount goes up every time someone visits the website.

Please visit, and please vote. The contest ends “sometime” on Sunday, April 27.

• Help us win!
• Vote every 8 hours.
• And help us set a record for how much SearchKindly donates.

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I like to listen. My wife will tell you I’m not very good at it. But I really do like to listen to the way people say things … and the meaning behind certain words or phrases. I recently tried an experiment. I paid close attention to some of the things we say around the house, and then tried to imagine how different those conversations would be if we were living in a developing country. Think of how these phrases would be different — or non-existent — if we were living in one of the poorest countries of the world:

• “You wanna go out to eat tonight?”
• “What would you like for lunch today?”
• “There’s nothing on TV.”
• “It’s so nice out…let’s go for a drive with the top down on the Jeep.”
• “It’s starting to get warm again. We need to think about turning the sprinkler system back on in the yard.”
• “I need to run to the store to get some more diapers and Diet Coke. Can you think of anything else we need?”
• “Morgan is outgrowing his clothes so fast, is it okay with you if I go to the store to see if I can find him some new pajamas?”
• “I’ll empty out the dishwasher.”
• I’m going to take a shower.”
• “Feel like ordering a movie?”
• “The housing market is so bad right now. I don’t know if it’s the right time to sell our home. But we sure need more space.”
• “I’m starving!”
• “What would you like for dessert?”

I would bet that most of those phrases are NEVER uttered in the homes of children who attend Compassion child development centers. And the ones that are, are said in a much different context.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to listen in on their conversations for a week?

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Mentos had an intern. And when you plop a Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke cool things happen. Really!

We (the web team) want to be like Mentos … at least as far as the intern thing goes … but not exactly like Mentos. We’ll be a bit (meaning a bunch) more traditional in our approach.

And as far as the Diet Coke thing goes, we (Compassion) can’t compete with Mentos.

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I ran across this quote on another blog. It’s definitely deeper than your average beach reading, but it’s worth your time. What do you think?

… Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humaness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon the concern against the entire numbness of his social context.

(From The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann)

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I can’t get this photo out of my head. In my job each day, I look at tons of photos from the field, but some stick with me.

Edwin Estioko, our Communication Specialist living in the Philippines, took this picture of the Camilo family. A family of eight who share this little home together. What you’re seeing is their whole home. There’s not a sitting room hiding just at the edge of this photo. That’s it. Those little children sleep lined up by each other like sardines each night.

When I was a little kid I had a nickname: Heater Legs. At night, my legs would reach roughly 375 degrees and, allegedly, flail wildly all night. My sisters would fight over who had to sleep next to Heater Legs on vacation, ‘cause it wasn’t gonna be a fun night.

I wonder if one of these cute little kids is a Heater Legs. Or a Snorer. Or a Bed Hog … umm, I guess that would be a Ground Hog in this case. And yet despite this sleeping situation, here they lie smiling. Some days this family only eats bananas. Some days they don’t eat at all. And yet when Edwin asked them to show him how they sleep, they rushed to their places, laughing and pushing each other playfully. They don’t mind it because they keep each other warm.

It reminds me of something Paul Henri, our communications specialist in Burkina Faso, said to me. Paul Henri just recently started working for Compassion; he goes out to the projects to get those great stories about how children are affected by Compassion’s ministry. And this is what he had to say about the kids he gets to meet: “Something great that I have learned from children I interview is their happiness despite poverty. They seem not to be affected by poverty. When I talk to them, I usually see a large smile on their faces. This makes me remember Jesus, who was sleeping in the stern of the boat while a storm was raging.”

These children in the Philippines and Paul Henri in Burkina Faso sure give me perspective. It’s hard to keep up my attitude of grumbling when I remember those little faces lined up on the floor. Faces that reflect joy despite the storm they’re in.

It’s not that we don’t have real problems here, too. We might be facing unemployment or divorce or infertility or cancer. Our problems are real and hard. But what I’m learning from the field is that I can’t wait for life to be perfect to live in Christ’s joy. I sometimes think that if only this one thing happened, I’d be happy. But I can’t wait to have joy and peace until my storms have passed.

Oh, for the day I can become like a child — to live each day with a kid’s playful smile on my face. To have Jesus’ peace and joy today, despite my worries, just like those cute little kids in the Philippines.

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Story and photos by Charles Ngowi, Compassion Tanzania Field Communications Specialist

Compassion International Tanzania (CIT) registered* its 50,000 child two months ago on Februray 16. This historic registration ushered in a new era for us. It was a moment to put down our tools, celebrate the Lord’s favor, and thank Him for what he has done and for His faithfulness. It was a milestone for the Tanzanian ministry, an achievement worth celebrating.

Now let’s see how we reached the 50,000 child mark and also learn about how our child registration process works.

The milestone occurred in Tabora, more than 650 kilometers from Arusha, where the head office of CIT is located. But the search actually began months earlier.

Finding Church Partners

Before going into a new area, CIT conducts country mapping to determine the level of poverty in one area as compared to another. Country mapping is necessary so we can determine where the greatest ministry need is.

After country mapping, we conduct a baseline survey to determine if the areas identified with a high degree of poverty have Christian churches whose mission matches ours. This is critical because we work through the local church — it is the local church that actually implements the program and cares for the children. If there is no church, our ministry model won’t work, regardless of the degree of poverty that exists there.

We ask questions, such as:

• Does the church have classrooms to accommodate the children?
• Do they have people who can teach and work with children or who can learn to assist children?
• Are there peopleand children who can help the program continue?

This baseline survey helps us decide which areas and churches are a good fit. Of course, in all the stages we keep praying and asking God to lead us in the right path and to bring people who will be willing to sponsor children and release the resources needed.

After the baseline survey, we gather all the potential church partners for vision casting. In this gathering we share the importance of ministry to children and call on the church to awaken to the call of Jesus Christ to fulfill the Greatest Commandment.

After this, we choose the potential church partners and invite them to a partnership meeting. At this one-day meeting, it is time to pray together and for us to give relevant partnership documents to the new church partners.

If the partners agree on the conditions, they sign a partnership agreement with us. These partnership agreements give room to church partners to start preparing environments to begin the ministry. They start recruiting project workers and create a child ministry committee formed from church members. The church has to find those able and qualified to work in the project as project coordinator, project accountant, project social worker, and project health worker.

Once all the project workers are chosen, they attend the “One-Month Child Ministry Foundation Course” that all project workers go through. In this course, the newly recruited project workers are trained on how to implement the ministry and how to minister to each child individually. They also learn what is expected of them and different ways and procedures of reporting and giving feedback to us. They get to know the organizational structure of CIT, the departments involved, and how each department works.

Screening and Registration

All this leads up to child screening and registration. (more…)

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“Let’s not curse the darkness, instead let’s light a candle.”
- Anonymous

Hello everyone. By now, I am sure some of you may wonder where I disappeared to. My blog absence has been for a good reason.

From December 27 to late January 2008 my country was plugged into what is now famously referred to as post-election violence; violence in which over 1,000 people lost their lives and over 300,000 more were displaced from their homes.

The impact was even more devastating in the slums, which saw the biggest brunt of the violence and left many people wondering, questioning, hungry, displaced and grieving the deaths of family and friends.

It was at this time that I decided to start a reconciliation program at one of the child development centers I grew up in. I wanted to try and help the children, who mostly live in the slums, understand what was going on, to give them a platform to share their feelings and a place for them to come and heal.

On March 20, I received a letter from the local government representative that I had been selected among 15 other young men and women in Kenya to join the national reconciliation program, which is a special program started by the government to bring the people of Kenya back together and help prevent a similar scenario in the future.

So all this time I have been traveling around the country talking to various political groups, communities, churches, elders and youth on the need for unity, and more importantly, forgiveness.

It has been tiring, but its all worth it. And it gives me a chance not only to share with people the love of God but put into practice the skills I learned through the Leadership Development Program, to teach the importance of servant leadership, which I believe is the solution to the many problems here in Africa.

The program will come to an end on May 23 and hopefully by this time a nation will have been saved through the candles that were lit by 15 young men and women.

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“The Lord used Compassion in our church when we began to look beyond ourselves and to see how we could be less of a ‘holy huddle’ and more of a Jesus impact on the world around us. We challenged ourselves to see if we could become more involved internationally with being just a small part of the solution to world poverty. Compassion came to our aid and showed us the way to be Jesus to the developing world. As a result of this service, we were able to reach beyond ourselves and build actual relationships with children living in poverty through Compassion. Forty-six families in our church have become involved sponsoring children and have been so blessed because of the interactive nature of this ministry — they love to hear from the children and love investing money and time in a relationship.”

- Don Taylor, Pastor - Ni River Community Church, Spotsylvania, Virginia

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