Recently, we gave you the chance to ask Edwin Estioko, our Field Communication Specialist in the Philippines all your burning questions about himself, the Philippines and Compassion in the Philippines. Here are his answers …

1. Can you tell about the time when you first decided to work for Compassion? (Catherine)

Before Compassion I was production manager for OMF Literature (the biggest Christian publisher in the Philippines) and a writer of children’s books. I grew up at church serving and teaching little children; playing with them and just enjoying their company. When I saw the ad for a Communications Specialist for Compassion International in the Philippines, I was literally drawn in. Feeling a strong sense of peace and confidence that the Lord was calling me to this beautiful ministry for children, I applied for the post and on the same week filed for resignation from OMF despite not knowing for sure whether Compassion would hire me or not. Thank God they did.

2. What goals do you hope to accomplish in your area? (Jason)

I hope that through the photographs I take and stories I write about Filipino children I could reach as many readers as I can around the world so that more and more people would stand up for children and advocate for them, so that more and more could see that thousands of children and families here in the Philippines truly lack opportunities for a better life (or simply for a livable minimum) despite the fact that they are hard working and full of faith.

What drives me is Proverbs 31:8, “to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

3. What have been the toughest times of your life, and what have you learned from these trials? (Juli Jarvis) (more…)

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You know all those precious email forwards you get from your great aunt brimming with puppies and kittens and babies? The ones with soft music playing in the background and inspirational phrases slowly fading in and out of the screen, which you quickly delete from your inbox?

Well, I delete those too, but I think there must be something in the water here at Compassion, because I think I might be becoming one of them! Each time I receive a cute baby picture from one of our field countries, I call my cube mates over to my desk so we can ooh and ahh over their chubby cheeks. And these babies each have an incredible story behind them — babies whose lives have been changed and even saved through Compassion’s Child Survival Program.

So I couldn’t help making my very own cute baby montage for your viewing pleasure. (And I won’t make you listen to any soft elevator music … but I can’t promise that there won’t be puppies.)

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Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in the country where your sponsored child lives? What it’s like to work for Compassion? What gets the people going who do this work each day? If so, now’s your chance to “Ask the Field!”

Ask your burning questions of our staff from around the world about their country, their work — whatever you want to know. I’ll choose 10 of your questions for them to answer. (Being the protective mother bear that I am, I’ll make sure to choose culturally appropriate questions. What’s polite dinner conversation in the U.S. may not be appropriate in their country, so keep this in mind as you ask.)

I’d like to introduce to you Dennis Tumusiime and Edwin Estioko.

Dennis is a native of Uganda and works as a tours and visits specialist for Compassion International Uganda. (Did you know that Compassion doesn’t send a bunch of Americans over to other countries to minister to the children, but works through natives of that country so they can culturally contextualize the ministry? That’s pretty cool.) Anyway, Dennis has been working for two years with Compassion to coordinate and plan visits from sponsors and donors to Uganda. (So, if you visit Uganda, you’ll probably get to see that smiling face!) Coordinating all these trips means he’s quite an adventurous man.

Edwin Estioko began working for Compassion six years ago and is originally from Quezon City, Philippines. He is Compassion’s Field Communication Specialist in the Philippines and writes stories about and takes pictures of the ministry that is happening through Compassion International Philippines. He is married with no kids, so he and his wife can easily consider all the Compassion children as their own.

Dennis and Edwin are excited to answer your questions, so ask away!

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In response to the global food crisis, Compassion International has begun interventions for the countries we serve.

Last week we received this photo from Haiti, where they have begun distributing food kits for temporary relief to the families who have been hardest hit. These parents are waiting in line to receive their food kit vouchers from the Compassion Haiti staff.

Seeing this photo affected me. Looking at the parents, I was struck by how they look so, forgive me, normal. I know how wretchedly condescending that sounds. No matter how much we intellectually agree that the people in poverty are no different from us, there’s still this little piece of our psyches that can have an us/them mindset.

The problem with this is the disconnect that happens. When we think of “the poor,” we get this hazy picture in our mind of children with bloated bellies and flies in their eyes. And although this picture in our minds is thoroughly pitiable, it’s utterly unrelatable. We don’t think of them as we would our aunts or neighbors or nephews. We think of them as people we feel bad for, even very bad for, but can’t really understand or relate to. We disconnect. An iron wall slams down in our minds separating us from them.

And so it can become easy to glaze our eyes over, move on, and forget. We don’t connect with those individuals suffering as our fellow humans, but as a big crowd of foreigners somewhere else unknown and unseen.

Look at that woman in the yellow dress. Look at the dignity in her face. Look at that man in the blue shirt. His eyes seem to look right through me. I don’t think any amount of intellectual striving will get me to the point where I view the people suffering around the world as I ought. But rather, we need God’s Holy Spirit to transform our hearts and minds, to help us to view each individual the way He views them.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless.” —Matthew 9:36, NIV

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How can I help fight poverty? What in the world can I do? The problems are just so big, and I’m just so small. I want to be used by you, God, but I just don’t know what to do.

I’ve thought and prayed these things many times. When viewing this world with its huge statistics of dread that loom over us (one BILLION people living in poverty), have you ever just felt stuck? Paralyzed? Anaesthetized? Confused? Helpless? Hopeless?

I’ve felt all those things. Usually when I’m looking at two things:

• The enormous earth, jam-packed with dreadful statistics, and
• Me

They both seem like depressing prospects.

Thank God this is not about me or you. Thank God for His grace. When the Lord called out looking for someone to be his messenger, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8, NIV), He didn’t say “Whom shall I send who has a doctorate degree? Who will go for us who’s a super-swell, smart, sophisticated, experienced guy?”

No, God doesn’t put the same prerequisites on his servants that we put on ourselves. He seems quite eager to use each one of us as his servants, just the way he made us.

I recently wrote a book about responding to poverty, Hope Lives, and between you and me, this is a bit crazy. Don’t tell anyone (especially my marketers), but I’m just a goofball from Colorado who loves donuts and reality television. But I’m a goofball who (quite audaciously) called out to God, “Here am I, send me!”

And you know what? God (quite audaciously, in my opinion), said “OK.” I’m tempted to think He might need a stricter HR department, but those are just the lies of the enemy. God wants to use each one of us (I mean you) to reach out and help His hurting world, no matter how insufficient we think we are.

We might not all be missionaries or nurses or have doctorate degrees in poverty, but God did plant a little seed, a little talent, in each of us that He wants to use and grow. There’s a guy who works here at Compassion whom God gave the talent of rapping. Yes, rapping. And he’s using it to speak out against poverty. There’s a woman who loves to write letters, and she’s using this gift to write letters of encouragement and hope to dozens of children in poverty.

Maybe you can’t write or rap, but what can you do to serve others? Bake? Fix cars? Persuade? Sew? Tap Dance?

No matter how small (or random) our talent seems, God can use it. He can multiply our offering that seems so measly and make it into something incredible, just like the little boy with the two bitty fish that God used to feed 5,000 (John 6). God gave me the gift of writing.

The small step of faith I took in this has now been multiplied by God, through Hope Lives church kits which guide churches through a five-week journey of exploring how God wants us to respond to poverty. Now how crazy is that?

I believe God is waiting for each one of us to look past the looming, seemingly impossible statistics, forget ourselves and our own insufficiencies, and simply say: “Here I am God, send me.” And I bet we’ll be flat-out flabbergasted by what he does.

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I just got this cute, cute picture of Pamela at her child development center, viewing herself on the blog from Wednesday’s post! Samuel says she was embarrassed at first but couldn’t help smiling once she saw it.

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Have you ever wondered how your sponsored child’s letter gets to you? The long journey it takes from Tanzania or Thailand to Connecticut or California? There’s a lot more to it than you might think!

Samuel Llanes, Guatemala’s Field Communication Specialist, gives us a peek at the journey of one letter from Guatemala to a sponsor in Australia. (Did you know that Compassion International has sponsors all over the world from Australia to France to South Korea?)

Pamela, a little girl sponsored by a married couple in Australia, says, “I love writing letters to them! When I write my letter, I wish I was right there with my sponsors.”

She has received two letters in the two years she has been sponsored, and she keeps them safely at home. She knows who they are and what they do, and she prays for them before bedtime each night.

When Pamela receives a letter, it has gone through a long journey. First the letter is sent from Australia to the Compassion International field office in Guatemala. Each country Compassion works in has its own field office. The letter must then be translated into Spanish for Pamela to understand.

“Translating is such a blessing to me,” says Julia Zepeda, a pastor’s wife and translator who has been working for Compassion International Guatemala for eight years. “I have taken this as a ministry that helps children, and I know is worth it.”

The translators are given one week to complete all the translations once they’re given a group of letters. The average number of letters that must be translated a week in Guatemala is usually around 180 to 200! After translating, the letters are brought to the student centers where they are distributed to the children. Receiving a letter is a special moment for children — they know that someone out there cares about them and is praying about them.

Letter Day
“Letter day” happens every four months. Pamela, along with all the other children at her Guatemala City student center, writes a letter every four months, though her sponsors may not write her that often.

When Pamela writes her letters, she uses a notebook to write a first draft. She does not want to miss anything that her sponsors asked her in their letter. Pamela’s tutor reads her sponsors’ letter to her, and as it is read, Pamela answers all the questions they asked. If they have sent something special, like stickers, she makes sure to thank them. Then once she has decided what her letter will say, she writes out her final draft.

Letter Day is an exciting day. The student center celebrates all the children for their efforts in writing letters on Letter Day. They give prizes to celebrate every child — and sometimes they even have a clown and piñatas!

Once Pamela’s letter is written, she gets to take her letter from her sponsors home, which she gets very excited for.

On Its Way
Once Pamela’s letter and all the other letters are written, they are brought to the Guatemala field office and translated into English. The packages of translated letters are then labeled and sent to be processed at Compassion International’s Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The children’s letters are sent from Guatemala to Colorado once a week.

Each week, child letters arrive in large boxes in Colorado Springs from all over the world to be tracked and sent on their way.

First, the letters are sorted by where the sponsors are from. All the letters going to U.S. sponsors are grouped together, all the letters going to the United Kingdom are grouped together, and so on.

Each letter is then scanned into a database, using the barcode at the top of each child’s letter, so Compassion can track all of the letters that are sent.

Once all the letters have been recorded in the database, they are bound together according to the letter’s destination country, and shipped out every Tuesday.

So the letters that our sponsored children write to us have been through a long process, passing from one hand to another until they arrive in your mailbox in that envelope saying, “A Message From Your Sponsored Child.”

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Here are some numbers for you to chew on today.

The Barna Group did a survey asking “born-again” Christians and other Americans what they had done in the past 12 months to help those in poverty. Among the results were:

• 75 percent of born-again Christians gave material resources, not including money, directly to the poor.
• 74 percent of other Americans gave material resources, not including money, directly to the poor.
• 50 percent of born-again Christians donated time to personally serve needy people who live in the community.
• 45 percent of other Americans did the same.

Hmmm … That’s not a big difference. Regarding the statistics, David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group said,

“Given the extensive comments in the Bible regarding the importance of taking care of the poor, we expected to see a larger distinction between the responses of born-again Christians and non-Christians.”

This isn’t a beauty pageant — we’re not competing with those around us for “Best Do-Gooder.” But one would expect the followers of Jesus — the most compassionate man who ever walked this earth — to be a bit more radical in their compassionate deeds, a bit more out of the ordinary.

I think America is a pretty compassionate country, thanks in part to its Judeo-Christian roots. So I have to ask myself: Is my compassion just a result of my do-gooder culture? Or is my compassion a radical outpouring of following Jesus, knowing him, and becoming like him?

What matters isn’t how I measure up to the average American around me, but whether I’m seeking Christ and following his example, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6-7).

What do you think? Are you culturally compassionate? Is your compassion an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in your life as you follow Jesus?

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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.

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I was feeling very bad for myself last week. My car broke down on the side of the road late one night. That same day I had picked up my car from the mechanic. And poor poor me, my husband had taken our other car to the shop that day — so he couldn’t come to my rescue as I froze on the side of the road late at night.

Ricot, my coworker in Haiti, was asking how I was, so I launched into my tale of woe. To Ricot. A Haitian. Who two weeks ago couldn’t go into work because hungry mobs were throwing rocks through the windows of his office. Who, as part of his daily job, visits children who live under scraps of aluminum and eat whatever few bits of food their parents can scrape together that day.

The silent tsunami. That’s what they’re calling it. Those living in extreme poverty often spend more than 50 percent of their income on food. When food prices rise 83 percent in three years, as the World Bank estimates they have, it is like a unstoppable wave towering over and crashing down on these precious creations of God (for that is what they are). Those who ate three meals a day, now eat two. Those who ate two, well, it’s hard even to think of it.

And here I am (in my best Valley-Girl voice), “Yeah, my car broke down, and like it’s really hard, ’cause like, my other car is in the shop, and like if I want to go to the mall, I’m going to have to call a friend, and like I just ate 4,000 calories at Carrabba’s last night on like fried zucchini sticks and lasagna, and I’m like so full, and yeah, my life’s pretty hard.”

Ricot, in turn, doesn’t say: “Let me get this straight, I’m living in a country where 8 out of 10 of my countrymen live on around 90 cents — 90 cents! — a day and are eating mud cakes and you’re complaining about how your two cars — two cars! — are giving you trouble?!!!”

No, he didn’t say that. First of all, I don’t think Haitians say, “Let me get this straight” — that’s a little uptight for an islander. Instead he said, “It’s really funny!” (That is me, with two broken cars is really funny.) “I laugh a little bit, but I am so sorry.”

There you go. Grace from a Haitian. I’ve got a lot to learn around here.

The global food crisis is a really complicated issue, involving things such as globalization, trade law, land use, and so on — a lot of stuff that, honestly, is a bit opaque to me. And what in the world can I do about it?

I can learn. I can remember that these aren’t just numbers I’m reading about, but precious children of God. And I can pray.

• Pray for the world leaders to make wise, sound choices that will honor God’s will on this earth.
• Pray for the children and families who are right now experiencing the immediate affects of this crisis.
• Pray for the honest collaboration of governments, organizations, and people to reach out with that cup of water (or rice) that Jesus says his followers will offer to those who are hungry.

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