Benson wakes up at 6:00 a.m. every Saturday excited that he will see his friends and learn Bible lessons. On this particular Saturday, the children at his child development center learn a life-lesson, and child development director, Mercy, takes them through the devotion.

It’s chilly and the teacher starts the lesson. As drum beats fill the air, children fill with excitement — the right mood for a story.

Teacher Mercy starts,

“Once upon a time there were two buckets that hung by the Simenya Well. They kept on being drawn by the residents of Simenya. One late afternoon, tired with the day’s work, they took time to rest and spoke to each other.”

At this point Teacher Mercy coughs and holds two buckets as visual aid while pointing them to the children.

In the background, one hears a symphony of coughs and sneezes from the children because of the weather. Her “classroom” is outside.

She continues,

“One of the buckets was always grumbling. It never looked at life cheerfully. On this particular day, as it rested outside the well it said to the other bucket, ‘I am tired of the life we lead. However full we are when we are drawn up out of the well, we are sent back empty again. This makes me disappointed and dissatisfied.’

The second bucket looked at life differently. It did not grumble because it looked at the positive side of life. It said, ‘That’s true, but I always look at it this way — that however empty we are when we are set down, we are always full when draw up.’”

Teacher Mercy declares the end of the story, looks at the children, sees the cloudy skies, and whispers a prayer to God, “Please Lord, help us build classrooms to house these children.”

For the last three years, trees randomly placed in the Simenya Child Development Center church compound have been serving as “classrooms” for the children. Unfortunately the days can be nightmares for some of the children in the center, especially when they come to the wall-less classrooms, during extreme weather conditions.

According to Mercy,

“The long rainy seasons fall in March to May, while the short rainy seasons are during the months of August to September and sometimes trickle into October.

These are dreaded months by children, teachers and parents alike. One is likely to meet children shivering in the chilly days with hands tightly clasped across their chest, to preserve the little body temperature.

It is during this period, we have seen children affected by periodic fever. These are the times when we see children walk out of class or even stay away from the classes, with parents citing fear of fever attack.”

During the hot season months, we have not been spared either. This area has characteristic dry spells, which leaves the indigenous trees without leaves. Scorching sunbeams through the sketchy branches penetrate the out-door classes. Because of this, Simenya Child Development Center has made numerous efforts to address this immense challenge.

(more…)

After seven years of selling music on those little silver discs, I’m giving it away. My new song, “Kingdom Coming,” is totally free. But it might cost you something else.

Let me explain.

When you download the song you will not be asked for any money, or a friend’s e-mail address, or to fill out a survey.

“Kingdom Coming” is totally free. Truly! No strings attached.

But the song, I hope, will move many who hear it to give to those in tremendous need around the world, and right next door.

“Kingdom Coming” was inspired by my many years of partnering with Compassion to release children from poverty in 25 of the world’s poorest countries.

Four years ago, after seeing for myself how far a little goes in the developing world, my wife and I were inspired to sell our house, cut off the cable and make several other changes in an effort to simplify our lives so that others could simply live.

Because of those changes our expenses are so low that we’ve been able to do nothing for the last four years but sing and speak (100 times a year) and blog on behalf of Compassion, at no charge to the public.

In that time thousands of children have been sponsored through Compassion and have been educated, fed, healed, played with, and told about the love of Jesus as a result. This free download, and the ones to follow, are just the next logical progression for us.

When you visit http://www.shaungroves.com/freemusic, you’ll see a small link to compassion.com. My hope is that thousands of you will download “Kingdom Coming” for free, enjoy it, and then click that link and decide to meet the physical and spiritual needs of a child through a local church in the developing world by sponsoring them.

Helping me spread “Kingdom Coming” and the free music download page is helping bring the Kingdom (God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven) to the developing world.

Please, e-mail this song or link to a friend, use it at your church, play it on the radio, make a YouTube video, let your Facebook friends know about it. I own this song and all rights to it, and you hereby officially have my permission to use it in anyway you’d like as long as no one’s being charged to hear it.

Thank you for listening, giving and passing this music and message on.

Please let me know if I can ever serve you in any way.

- Shaun

Hi, my name is Stephan Archer. I joined Compassion a few months ago as the U.S. Communication Specialist. Although I am in the business of communicating from day to day, this is my first attempt at blogging, so bear with me as I try to figure this out.

My calling to Compassion was really a journey that began at home, and it began with two small children — my own.

You see, my wife and I are homeschoolers. Our two girls, ages three and five, are now in preschool and kindergarten. Like other children this age, they have a million questions, most of which I struggle answering.

• Why is God invisible?
• Where does the sun go to bed at night?
• Why are yummy things bad for you and yucky things good for you?
• Why won’t Bambi see his mother again? (Those of you with young children who have a movie collection that teeters heavily towards the cartoon genre will appreciate this question.)

But while our children ask many things, there are many more things they don’t ask that they need to know.

For example, in such a richly blessed country as America, I don’t suppose too many kids learn on their own what it means to be thankful and content. Yet this is so important for children to understand if they are to grow up and be the adults we want them to be.

Thus, like many homeschoolers in search of ideas, my wife and I turned to the internet and started Googling — using words such as “contentment,” “thankfulness,” and “compassion” for those less fortunate.

We came across Compassion’s website and were so moved by what we saw that we immediately decided to sponsor a little girl named Kimberly in Guatemala.

Sponsorship has been nothing short of a wonderful experience for my entire family, as both my girls pray for Kimberly regularly. My oldest even draws pictures for Kimberly and sends encouraging notes with them.

I went one step further and read Wess Stafford’s book, Too Small to Ignore. After reading his book, I was more motivated than ever to be a part of this ministry.

During this time, God led me on a six-month employment-seeking journey as I communicated with various people at Compassion. I was able to examine my own heart and pray for God’s leading.

Now that I’m here at Compassion, I can say with confidence that this ministry is everything it purports to be.

Like any ministry or church body, the day to day things are managed by human beings, and with that, comes challenges. However, everyone here knows that God is ultimately leading this ministry. I’ve never seen a leadership team more dedicated to God’s will than I’ve seen at Compassion.

I’ve enjoyed reading what all of you think and would love to share with you from time to time what’s on my mind. Sometimes, I’ll jump in on your conversations and share my personal thoughts on the matter as well. Either way, I’m looking forward to being blessed by our discussions, and my hope is that you benefit as well.

The Maasai community has been rearing cattle for years, all their known lifetime and history.

In fact, there is a joke that goes around Tanzania about how the Maasai people claim that all the cows in the world belong to them, and the Maasai have the duty to return the cows to their natural home, in the Maasai community, which is why in the past there has been cattle rustling in the community.

To Maasai, cattle rearing is an adventure and keeping cattle is more than just an economic activity. Rearing cattle is part of the culture.

To have cattle is a symbol of prosperity and respect among the community members. Maasai are famous for their cows and goats that keep moving from one place to another in search of a greener pastures and water. Because of soil erosion and an effort to protect the environment, there has been a great and forceful campaign from the government to encourage soil conservation and land management.

The Maasai are being encouraged to keep few animals and sell the rest to improve their lives and escape the risk of losing them in times of droughts and famine. And as part of this, a new thing has been born in Likamba.

A sponsor of several children at the TAG Likamba Student Center visited them, and she was moved to do something to bless the children and support the families in their struggle against poverty.

But she actually decided to do more than just touch the lives of the children she is sponsoring. She was moved to respond to the people’s need and to the hundreds of children and adults in the community. She helped provide goats to all the families in the child development center. (more…)

This is Emelia. She is a sponsored child in Ghana. And obviously, she’s praying.

We don’t know what she was praying for in the moment the photo was taken, but if she’s anything like us, it might’ve been for the photographer to hurry up and take the picture.

Will you join us and Emelia in prayer?

Leave your prayers as comments to this post. They can be prayers for the children we serve, for Compassion as a ministry, for our country staff . . . they can be prayers about anything you want.

Just open up and speak to the Lord.

Story by Delanyo Tenge, Compassion Togo program communications manager, and Barb Liggett, Global Strategy Office intern

September 17, 2008 was the day the staff of Compassion Togo (CIT) had prepared fervently for, and the excitement had reached its peak. As Compassion’s newest country, the staff began registering children in Compassion Togo’s first child development center.

At MESA (Ministères Evangeliques pour le Salut des Armes), the partner church for Togo’s first Compassion children, Pastor Happy and his entire congregation are enthusiastically helping CIT become deeply rooted in Togo.

“We want to equip the local churches so they can minister to their community holistically and win them to Christ. We want to help the church turn their community into a place of hope for the future,” says CIT Country Director Mawuna Lawson.

The first child registered in Togo was David. The second was his sister, Gracia. When asked what he hopes to be when he grows up, the quiet David whispers “a carpenter.”

Even though it was the first registration, errors and omissions were few. CIT has set a goal to register more than 2,000 children the first year. There are currently 10 partner churches and six staff members in the county. Compassion Togo faces a steep road, but the hard work already done and the passion displayed in the ministry make it clear that much should be expected from the new Compassion country.

Another pastor shares his joy,

“We have been asking God how better we can help our children grow up and become good Christians and responsible adults, occupying good positions in our country; it has always been a burden on our heart. So when CIT came, we knew they were God sent, we didn’t need to ask how, when or why they came, all we needed to do was to thank God and to embrace the task he had laid ahead for us to do together with CIT.”

Photo by Delanyo Tenge

Two skinny mutts fight at the door of a church the color of mud. Children are waving off spare roosters and playing pat-a-cake with one another in the Dominican heat.

As our bus of foreigners pulls up and spills out like a car full of clowns, the children spot the cameras and jostle to pose and mug for us singing out, “una photografia!”

Soon a cacophony of arms is grabbing and hanging on me. Like my own barrelful of monkeys, reaching in my purse and pulling my hair. Soon, they’ve discovered the secret stash of suckers in my purse and a chorus of “un ballon, un ballon” surrounds me.

I visit the house of Yanelis, a girl who would be president of the drama club, if schools around here had drama clubs. On the way to her home, she skips ahead as we pass an elbowing line of moms and young men carrying buckets and jugs. The water truck has come. They haven’t had water for two weeks. At the front of the line a fight breaks out. We keep walking.

When she was younger, Yanelis would walk in the morning with her three brothers, searching for green bottles poking out of the litter-strewn ground of the batey, the old sugarcane plantation they live on.

They wouldn’t make much from the trash they found and recycled, but at least a few coins to plunk into their mom’s hand, as she scraped to feed her six kids on the six bucks her husband brought home each day. Mami would cook one big pot of rice on the stove each day and they would eat it ’till it was gone.

But Yanelis doesn’t go out to work with her brothers anymore. Now she dreams not of picking up green glass for a living, but of being a doctor. She was registered at the Compassion-assisted child development center near her home. Her mother now has hope for her daughter. She waves toward her son sitting in the corner, “My sons are already done. It’s too late for them.” We encourage them that it’s not, in fact, “too late.” But Yanelis is now the hope of her mother.

When we ask what it is she hopes for, she says, “I hope Yanelis won’t have to live the way I have lived.” Yanelis’ facetious grin assures us of this. She’s a young girl of extreme confidence who has firmly grabbed hold of the idea that she can accomplish anything with God.

Before we go, we pray for the family, for their home. The mother hopes to patch up the home of corrugated tin and scrap wood so it won’t leak so much. Backing toward the old stove to take a picture of the family, I step in a mud puddle. The mother is tidy, but that’s just how it is when you live with a leaky roof.

As we walk back to our car, we pass four women sitting on a dusty porch. They call out, asking for me to take their picture — they’re the ones who didn’t get any water again this week.

The situation on the batey is still hard as the dirt ground, but there are now a few shards of hope gleaming out of it, like the green glass bottles poking out that Yanelis hunts for no more.