Working at Compassion is hard on your heart.

When I purposely expose myself to the ugly things in life, I open myself up to possibility that my heart will be hurt. It’s a scary, vulnerable place, but it’s exactly where God has called me to be.

My heart hurt badly last week when I read this in a crisis report from our staff in Bangladesh …

Approximately 95 percent of Compassion-assisted children are feeling the effects of the [global food] crisis. Many are living on one meal a day — receiving it at their child development centers — and struggling with feelings of guilt and sadness because their family members don’t receive the same benefit.

Did you get that? Our children are feeling guilty for eating one meal a day.

We just had our once-a-quarter meeting where all the different department leaders report their numbers for the previous quarter. Usually, this meeting is filled with exciting reports of how God has blessed Compassion beyond our expectations. We set high goals and God consistently exceeds them. And while last week’s meeting had its share of positive reports, the one issue that overshadowed everything else we talked about was what is being called the Silent Tsunami, or the Global Food Crisis.

Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, you’re likely not alone. But perhaps you’ve seen a glimpse of it here at home: “the rising cost of gas” or “economic recession” or “the creation of biofuels.” But whereas we here in the United States are facing inconvenience and sacrifice, our brothers and sisters around the world are facing death by starvation.

Does this upset you? It should. It obviously upsets me. We’ve got to start doing something about it now because this crisis is going to get worse before it gets better.

This Global Food Crisis is complex — it is not caused by one single thing but is the combination of many factors including:

• Diverting food towards the creation of biofuels
• Recent droughts and floods
• Higher gas prices
• Higher tariffs in export markets, especially rice

When several of these factors occur together, it creates a kind of “perfect storm” situation, with global consequences. Compassion Vice President of International Program, Mark Yeadon, says that while every person is affected at some level by this crisis, there are varying degrees depending on where in the world you live. Some are refraining from purchasing that new car or vacation home. Some are carpooling to work or riding their bike more. Some are adjusting their grocery list to accommodate the higher food prices. Some are wondering where there next meal will come from. Some don’t worry about where their food will come from because they don’t need to wonder — they know there’s no food.

I don’t mean to depress you. I want to motivate you. Compassion is in a position to make a difference. We have already sent supplementary funds to our two hardest hit countries, Haiti and Bangladesh. We are in communication with our staff in other countries at risk and will address the issues based on the level of severity.

If you are interested in giving money to our Global Food Crisis fund, you can do that. But this is NOT an appeal for money … this is an appeal for your broken heart.

Our family is hurting, and I hope you are not okay with that.

Here are some small things you can do:

• Pray for God to show you what you should do.
• Learn about the crisis and then tell others what is going on.
• Write to your sponsored children in Bangladesh and Haiti to encourage them and love on them.
• Pray hard about which candidate to support in the upcoming presidential elections.
• Talk to your own children about what is happening around the world.

While it’s hard not to get overwhelmed at the situation, God is so much bigger than this, and none of this is out of His control. So what is it that He’s asking you to do?

Popularity: 57% [?]

Popularity: 32% [?]

Blogging gets children in poverty sponsored.

Here’s da proof that blogging works.

• Be Thou My Vision
• flowerdust.net
• 429 children sponsored as a result of the Uganda blog trip.

And here’s da rebuttal.

The Search Kindly “Money Thermometer” shows that only $203 has been raised for Compassion this month.

Using highly complex advanced math skills that bend the imagination as well as extraordinarily precise scientific pattern analysis that can’t help but impress, and with one-third of precincts reporting, CNN (Compassion Network News) predicts that Search Kindly will donate slightly more than $600 to Compassion at the end of the month.

No goals will be met, and no observable impact for your efforts, particularly the friends below, will be seen.

• Compassion at the Orchard
• Jonathan’s Journey
• Innovating Tomorrow
• Just Another Day in Paradise
• A New Kind of Minister
• musings of a foreign heart
• (Don’t miss the wonder.)

It seems our call to action was too weak. Any ideas for a compelling way to influence da thermometer?

Popularity: 59% [?]

Be forewarned. What follows is pure rah-rah. It showed up in employee inboxes … from MARKETING. It’s just a small glimpse into the response Compassion Sunday 2008 has received so far.

We’re at over 9,700 children sponsored. Our goal is 22,000. It’s not too late to host your own event.

“Austin Bluffs Evangelical Free Church had a successful Compassion Sunday response. We had seven sponsorship commitments! That is a huge number for our church, which traditionally has two to three sponsorships on Compassion Sunday …. We had at least one current sponsor/family that wanted to sponsor another child. Others took brochures and information as they consider the opportunity to sponsor a child.”

- Pepe Alicea, Compassion Advocate and Lay Elder at Austin Bluffs Evangelical Free Church

“Richard Douglas of Christ Community Church in South Carolina called and requested 50 more child packets. He had 50, and people were running up to the table to sponsor the kids. He said the packets were gone in three minutes, and he had a list of people waiting for more! Once the extra packets arrived, another 29 children were sponsored”
- Valeen Tschamler,Advocates Network & Marketing Assistant

“Hilltop Assembly of God has 147 members, and I guessed the audience size was about 180-190 including children. They began the worship with the children bringing flags of all the 17 countries where their congregation has sponsored children (they sponsor 60 of them) and setting them in front of the church on displays they had made. Then the children sang their own worship chorus in Spanish

One girl, Emery (11 years old) was brought forward to tell how God had laid it on her heart to make jewelry and sell it at a consignment shop to give to Compassion, and then I was presented with a $20,000 check by the 11 new Advocates in their church to fund a Child Survival Program (CSP) in Ethiopia.

At the end of the service the children came in with balloons that had the names of all the sponsored children on them and the whole congregation went outside and had a “releasing children from poverty” ceremony! (Yes, they were biodegradable balloons).

After the service all of the chairs were moved from the sanctuary and we enjoyed an international buffet!

Oh yeah … another 24 children were sponsored, and they now have 12 advocates! The little church now sponsors over 80 children and a CSP paid in full!

They’re already planning fund-raising events for next year and have over $13,000 raised so far. Did I mention that they began all of this last December 2007? With God all things are possible!”

- Mark Pellingra, Relationships Manager Northeast Region

“Get this — I just got off the phone with brand-new advocate Beth Hathcock in the Dallas area. I guess during her interview she mentioned wanting to do Compassion Sunday at her church (small — about 70 people) and Mark Pellingra said that she would get a box of materials. He intended for her to fill out the materials order form, but she got her initial training kit with the one child packet and thought that is what we sent for a church of 70. So she used her one child packet, showed a couple video clips off the DVD she had gotten, got her one child sponsored and used a sign up sheet for the 10 other people who wanted to sponsor. Not bad for someone brand new, self-proclaimed as “not a public speaker” and no materials.”
- Doug West, Southeast Regional Advocates Manager

“Thanks for sending 10 more packets. I had one lady who kept looking at them for a long time, then scooped up five to sponsor. I was flabbergasted….”
- Mike Jennings, sponsor

Popularity: 59% [?]

In his book The New Friars, Scott A. Bessenecker tells a story of living in and serving a garbage community in Cairo with his family and some college students. After a month, “what at first was repulsive — rotting garbage piled everywhere, animals feeding off the trash, mothers climbing rubbish mountains with their babies playing next to them in the refuse” became normal. Inwardly, he questioned if that was okay. He wondered if they were “bringing Western standards of housing and cleanliness to people who have developed their own culturally defined norms for quality of life and are just fine with how things are.”

The Lord answered him in a dream.

I dreamed about the dung truck. You could always smell the dung truck before seeing it. It was the kind of smell that is more like a taste at the back of your throat; pasty and bitter…. Temperatures of over 100 degrees released the dung’s pungent odor with a vengeance, making this task even more intense than can be appreciated by someone reading this in comfort.

In my dream I was walking past the dung truck. To my horror, I saw my children, Hannah, Philip and Laura, sitting on top of the mountain of dung heaped on the bed of the truck. What struck me most about them was that they appeared perfectly content although every inch of their bodies was covered by animal waste. Then I felt the Lord speaking to me. He seemed to be saying, “As their father, are you satisfied? Even if they are satisfied, are you satisfied?”

I’m still sifting the impact of that dream, but the immediate implication is that a person’s contentment with a situation of poverty does not make it okay. My passion for my kids is a shadowy reflection of God’s heart, which yearns for his children to have more than the dung that surrounds them; not riches, but a life in which their needs are met in a way that doesn’t mask their need for him.

Popularity: 28% [?]

I’m in Guatemala right now, taking a handful of sponsors and radio broadcasters on a trip to see how Compassion is changing the lives of children in poverty. And I just had to share something that hit me today. I’ll try to keep this short because the internet service here is so iffy that I doubt I’ll be able to write much.

As we were driving to one of the child development centers, we saw a lot of poverty. Families living in shacks made of scraps of wood, tin … and mud bricks. We saw women working in the corn fields and men sweating in the afternoon heat as they heaved loads of cinder blocks for their construction jobs. But off in the distance, we saw some nice big houses … perched along the hillsides. Those hills overlook the areas where the impoverished families live. (I’d upload a photo but it’s apparently too much for the internet service, and my computer freezes up.)

My first thought, as we were driving by, was “How can those people live in those huge, nice houses and look out from their shaded balconies at such poverty? How can they sleep at night in those big homes, knowing that five, six … maybe as many as eight people are crammed into a tin shack, sleeping on a dirt floor, with growling tummies just a hundred yards away?”

Then I realized … the only difference between me and those people is how far away the hill is. My hilltop home is a thousand miles away instead of a hundred yards. So I must be willing to ask the same questions of myself. “How can *I* live in my big home knowing that poverty is stealing so much from innocent families?” How dare I judge. How dare I question … unless I’m willing to question myself.

Truth is, I don’t know the hearts of those people who live in those big homes (which were only “big” by comparison to the shacks in the foreground. In actuality, they were about the same size as my house.) I don’t know them. They may be the providers of jobs for those families. They may be the ones keeping their local economy from completely tanking.

But I do know my heart. And I know I’ve got some growing to do. I know that God blessed me with a nice home, a wonderful family and a great job … not so I could sit on my shaded balcony, turning a blind eye to the needs of the world, but so I could be part of the solution.

It’s not wrong to be blessed. But I believe it *is* wrong to be blessed and not be thankful for it. It *is* wrong to be blessed and not share that blessing.

How far is your hill from poverty?

Popularity: 27% [?]

Our president, Wess, is a smart man. (He’s also very humble so unless you ask him, you might not be aware of just how many interesting things he knows.)

Raised in Africa, a one-time resident of Haiti, he’s got a fascinating life journey. Thanks to all his travels and experiences overseas, he knows about many things including (but not limited to) slingshots, Indiana Jones, children, malaria, green mambas, hunting, Africa, raising daughters, fire ants, poverty and God.

You may have seen our series of posts entitled “10 Questions With” The intent was to help you better understand our holistic child development model. Well … we want to post another one in the series, but this time with a twist. (It’s like reality TV — we gotta keep changing it up or you get bored.) So here’s the twist: this time YOU provide the questions.

That’s right.

We’re giving you free and clear access to ask our very own president and CEO Wess Stafford anything you like.

• Ask him about his childhood.
• Ask him his middle name.
• Ask him how he met his wife.
• Ask him about work.
• Ask him why ostriches can’t fly.

Now’s your chance to ask Wess some of those burning questions you always wanted answered. You can submit as many questions as you want. He’ll pick 10 of them to answer.

Ready … set … go!

Popularity: 31% [?]

A few weeks ago my little girl Brooklyn asked me for some cookies and milk for herself and her 2-year-old brother. They sat down in front of the TV in their pajamas (we call them jammies at our house) and watched their favorite DVD while I served them cookies and milk.

That’s when it hit me. We are so blessed!

There my kids are eating chocolate chip cookies and cold milk with nothing on their mind but “I hope Dad forgets that we’re supposed to do nap time today.” While somewhere in a land far, far away from their minds (and mine most of the time) is a little girl Brooklyn’s same age working long hours of forced labor who has never had a day of cookies and milk in her whole life. Somewhere there is a child my daughter’s age (4) that will work harder today than I will and will go to sleep hungry tonight.

On our refrigerator at home there is a picture of our sponsored child. Her name is Heidi, and she lives in Bolivia. (Brooklyn thinks the little girl’s name is Bolivia.) We pray for Heidi often. We pray for her to have plenty to eat. Sponsoring Heidi is a great way for my wife and I to teach our children about others’ needs and how we can help by sharing.

Last Wednesday at Compassion’s chapel service I had the chance to hear a young man that truly grasps the power of sharing. Zach Hunter is a 16-year-old abolitionist who is giving his life to the cause of releasing slaves and giving them their God-given right to freedom. He has been speaking out against slavery since he was 11 years old.

I wonder how many students (or adults for that matter) have even thought about slavery today. Thanks to Zach Hunter at least 600 people thought about slavery that day in chapel and 500,000 more will think about it this year as he speaks to them.

As I studied Zach’s message I realized it is storming all around us, and for whatever reason God has given most of us in this country an umbrella. He didn’t give us an umbrella so that we would deny that it is storming. He gave us the umbrella to acknowledge the storm and share our umbrella with those who don’t have one.

Zach asked the question, “How do people in severe poverty know that God is good?” The only way they could know that is if God’s people share His goodness with those who have not experienced it.

It’s raining hard, Church. Share your umbrella.

(ed. - Bobby travels around the country preaching and using rap music as a ministry. Inspired by Zach’s Loose Change to Loosen Chains campaign, Bobby wrote It’s Not Over. He performed the song at our April 30 chapel. Bobby works in our Facilities department. He keeps the building from crashing down upon our heads.)

Popularity: 37% [?]

Here’s something very easy you can do to help children in poverty.

• Use Search Kindly as your search engine during May. (It’s powered by Google.)
• Buy Kindly! Make your Amazon.com, eBay, iTunes, Target and Wal-Mart purchases through the Search Kindly homepage. There are many other popular retailers available too.

Thanks to your votes, Compassion will receive 100 percent of Search Kindly’s ad revenue for the month of May. Their goal is $1,000, but we’re hoping for more than that. How’s that for transparency? And how about $2,500 as a goal?

There’s a thermometer on their homepage where they show how much money has been generated so far. Right now, we’re at $84.

Here’s how it works:

More eyeballs = more money = more children helped.

More advertising revenue is generated from unique visits than from frequent visits. What that means is the “Money Thermometer” goes up more quickly for each new pair of eyes that view the site than it does for repeat visits, but the keywords there are “more quickly”. Repeat visits definitely help!

For those of you who get a bit overwhelmed at the technical side of all this web stuff, like some of us on the Web Team here’s your To Do list.

1. Use Search Kindly as your search engine.
2. Buy Kindly! Make your Amazon.com, eBay, iTunes, Target and Wal-Mart purchases through the Search Kindly homepage. This generates LOTS of revenue because sales are even better than eyeballs.
3. Tell your friends and family about this, and ask them to to tell their friends and family.
4. Make searchkindly.org your homepage. That’s worth about $3 a month because of your repeat visits.
5. Add the Search Kindly banner to your blog or personal web page (see below). Helps with the eyeballs thing.

If you’re going to search, why not Search Kindly?

</p> <div style="background:#fff;border:1px solid #039;font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:11px;padding:5px;width:300px"> <div align="center"><a href="http://www.searchkindly.org/"><br /> <img src="http://www.searchkindly.org/images/banner_250x60_2.gif" alt="Search Kindly" border="0"></a></div> <p></p> <div align="center"> <form action=http://www.searchkindly.org method=GET> <input type=text name=q size=37 maxlength=255> <input type=submit value="Search Kindly"> <h4>If you’re going to search, why not Search Kindly?</h4> </form> </div> </div> <p>

Popularity: 53% [?]

Tell me if you can relate to this: When I first started sponsoring my Compassion child, I clung so tightly to that one picture I had of him — my one lifeline into his world. OK, so I knew from his bio that he helps his mom wash dishes and loves art, but I would hold that little picture in my hands and examine every detail, trying to glean whatever information I could.

What type of shoes is he wearing? Is that a scrape on his knee? What’s that expression on his face — fear? Indifference?! The thought even crosses my mind…is he even happy I’m sponsoring him? I know there are other sponsors who feel the same way. We cling to those pictures, so excited to be a part of a child’s life, so when we see that these little ones look scared or stiff or even aloof, we can’t help but think “what’s going on here?!”

Photo day is a big day for children being registered at Compassion-assisted child development centers. In the morning, they put on their bestest outfit, hold their mom’s hand as they walk the dusty road to the project, and get ready to face the camera. This is probably the first picture that’s ever been taken of them. Many are shy and scared of the stranger taking their picture. Many aren’t used to so much individual attention being given to them. Many don’t quite know what this sponsorship thing is all about yet.

Phew…So it’s not just me. It’s a new situation for these children, and their little cheeks will soon relax into chubby smiles. Imagine my delight when, after cherishing the first picture of my sponsored child who looked so tentative and unsure, I received this photo of a smiling, confident young man. And maybe, just maybe, he was thinking of me.

Popularity: 44% [?]