It’s hard to believe my boy, Edison, is 13 months now. He’s toddling around the house at different speeds with various amounts of control, experimenting with new and unusual crash techniques. It’s quite entertaining.

He can talk now, too. Hat, book, what and it’s impossible to forget his absolute favorites, hi, dog and ruff-ruff (of course spoken with a slight growl). I wish you could hear his little kid voice yelling all these words with abandon to anyone who will listen.

He uses his favorite words at very specific times. Whenever out and about, most anyone anywhere will hear his request for attention from strangers because of his very loud and clear hi!

But his real favorite is dog. It’s usually the first thing he says when he wakes up in the morning, and just to make sure I understand what he said, he will add a ruff-ruff for good measure.

It’s amazing to think that just a few months ago he literally couldn’t do anything.

Over the last several months, since I entered back into life after Edison’s birth, I’ve been volunteering in my church’s nursery. I typically take care of the newest babies, which is a great reminder of how far Edison has come, but even more it’s a great reminder of just how vulnerable babies are – which brings me to Carmen.

I met Carmen after a hike up a steep hill on a dirt path in the outskirts of Lima, Peru. All the while I was going up I kept wondering how far I would have to traverse to actually make it down the hill without falling.

Carmen knows this path well. She climbs it often. She climbed it when she was pregnant and she climbs it now with a 5-month-old in her arms. She climbs it because it is the only way to get to her house. (more…)

Martha sits on the chair facing the window, arms crossed, and gives a great sigh of relief.  She looks at her big tummy and realizes that the days have advanced very quickly. Not many days are left before she visits the clinic.

Martha is six months pregnant. She is expecting that perhaps this time she will hold a baby in her hands, and be able to breast-feed it until weaning age. If this happens, the baby will be her first surviving child. Martha has had two pregnancies at an interval of three years, but neither of the children were delivered safely.

She lost her first child through labor complications because she could not reach the maternal clinic early enough to get medical attention. Her second child died a few days after birth because of lack of proper care and medical treatment.

Martha is so alert and aware at this time to do all she can to have her child survive. She cannot withstand the horrible idea of losing her third child after nine months of painful pregnancy. And she wants to be respected and not mocked in the village and in the family of her husband. She hopes the child inside her will reverse this. (more…)

Below is an excerpt from an e-mail that Paul Moede, the leadership development marketing director for Compassion U.S., sent to his family last week and also shared with his co-worker, Gayle White.

Paul is currently traveling in Uganda.

Today we visited a child survival program deep in a rural area. Sometimes it boggles my mind to see the joy of little kids who see a bus. They run alongside the road waving and laughing. Closest I’ll ever be to a rock star. Unbelievably chaotic roads, traffic that is harrowing and market stalls that defy description. Sides of meat hanging in the sun. . . . fresh fruits and vegetables . . . and people thronging everywhere.

Thought I would tell you about a home visit today with a single mom and three children — and infant and two toddlers. The mom, Sauda, has recently been abandoned by her husband, and has no source of income at all — just a plot of garden from which to feed her family. I could tell you more, such as the day her mud and thatch hut caved in on her from the rain and she had to build a new hut by herself. About 7′ by 12′ for four people.

After we spent time with her, we left gifts for her children as well as a tub and bag of staples. Never in my life have I seen such a response to a gift — joy that she could not contain. She covered her face as she knelt before the food and started to sway back and forth. And then she erupted from the ground, raised her hands and started dancing. Now I’m not talking about subtle. I mean clap your hands, shake your booty, turn and sing at the top of your lungs dancing. And she went on for two minutes. The joy was so contagious all we could do was clap along with her and choke back the tears.

Unbelievable.

Anyway, all is well. The poverty and chaos is bleak. The infrastructure is rotting away, but the church gets things done.

Paul

What do you “half” to say about this?

The Child Survival Program . . .

I was driving to work the other day and was blessed to hear one of my favorite songs, “He Reigns” sung by the Newsboys. I’m not sure how old the song is but every time I hear it I actually see in my mind the African plains.

For some reason the song just reaches all the sensory parts of my brain. I can smell the Amazon rain and hear the song rising over the noise. It makes me want to sing louder and love deeper in a way that I don’t always connect with on a daily basis.

Why? I don’t exactly know, but there is something extremely powerful to me in this song and the thought of coming together with other believers around the world in a grateful choir singing “Glory, Glory, Halleluiah, He reigns, He reigns.” It gives me chills.

It’s the song of the redeemed rising from the African plain.
It’s the song of the forgiven drowning out the Amazon rain.
The song of Asian believers filled with Gods holy fire.
It’s every tribe, every tongue, every nation, the love song born of a grateful choir.

(chorus)
And all Gods children singing glory, glory, halleluiah, He reigns He reigns. (2x)

Let it rise above the four winds, caught up in the heavenly sounds.
Let praises echo from the towers of cathedrals to the faithful gathered underground.
With all the bells rung from the dawn of creation some were meant to persist.
With all the bells rung from a thousand steeples, none rings truer then this.

And this is my favorite part.

and all the powers of darkness tremble at what they’ve just heard, cause all the powers of darkness can’t drown out a single word.

On that particular morning, the lyrics choked me. I kept picturing myself singing “glory, glory, halleluiah, He Reigns . . .” as a part of the grateful choir around the world like I normally do. Only this time I was holding my 16-pound little boy, Edison who is four and a half months old and standing next to a woman from West Timor holding her 15-month-old little girl, Maria, who weighs 10 pounds and hardly has the strength to eat. I couldn’t even sing with this thought in my mind.

I probably should have pulled over and parked so I had the time to sob before Jesus about this powerful picture and ask what He would have me do about it today, in this moment. Sadly, I didn’t take the time to do that as I was in a hurry, of course . . . but I suspect it won’t be long that I can outrun that time with Jesus. I know it’s coming.

For now I’m ever more grateful that Compassion allows me to do something for the women standing beside me (figuratively speaking) around the world with their babies . . . other women who don’t even know Jesus yet, women who can’t write their name and have to beg for food to feed their babies or worse than that have to watch their babies die from starvation, malnutrition, diarrhea, or whatever other illness claims their lives.

I know that I can love these women in a tangible way through Compassion’s Child Survival Program. I know that I can help churches in their area reach out to them and offer not only needed health resources and nutrition but a different life, an opportunity — and not just one but multiple opportunities. Opportunity and success helps women become more confident and confident women can raise more confident children.

Thank you Newsboys, and whoever wrote that song, for staying open to the Spirit of Jesus. I think somehow it is a picture of heaven to me. I know that I want more people in the grateful choir with me holding cute babies.

There’s a journal sitting on the table next to my bed. There’s also one sitting on the table next to the rocking chair in Edison’s room. I have one to write my thoughts and feelings through my pregnancy and the other to journal through the first few months and years of Edison’s life.

Would you be surprised if I told you they were both empty?

Maybe someday I’ll regret not writing more during my pregnancy and this time as a new mom, but right now all the inspiring thoughts I can get out of my pen go in Edison’s baby book . . . and most of the rest of my thoughts, before he was born, weren’t that inspiring.

For some reason I just can’t write about how awful I felt trying to sleep every night in my bed with my every craving available in my refrigerator downstairs, or at the very least, at the neighborhood grocery store. I seriously don’t even want to try to remember the number of nights I tried to sleep in a sitting-up position in a soft comfy chair because my nose was so stuffed up I couldn’t breathe — and I didn’t even have a cold. As much as I want to complain, and probably did at the time, I know I really had it easy.

And the stuff I want to remember . . . like how cool it was to feel him kicking around inside me and how it is just a little freaky and amazing that God can even do such a miracle in me . . . would be really hard to “get” from words on a page. Right now, I remember these things every time I look at my son’s face and see that he is growing right before my eyes.

So, who am I to regret not doing something so indulgent as writing all this stuff down when most of the new mothers around the world can’t even read, let alone write their own name? Many of these women wouldn’t even believe that their words counted or their thoughts mattered. And I wonder, is it possible to raise a child with self esteem if you don’t have it yourself?

And really, how am I so different from them anyway? Don’t all mothers everywhere want the same things for their children? I still remember the first time Edison smiled at me on purpose. Now I even get to hear him laugh. Can you imagine not hearing your child laugh?

Child Survival Program multiplies the amazing sound of laugher around the world. It is the sound of health, it is the sound of life, it is the sound of Love . . . the kind Jesus was known for.

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.)