In the midst of post-election violence in Kenya, one entire church was burned down. We lost all of our paperwork and child documentation — nothing was left.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Pastor Chris Seay invites you on a journey. A 40-day journey that will disrupt your habits and your rituals. A journey that will help you identify and connect with the poor and the suffering.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

We’re publishing pictures of poverty on a daily basis at picturesofpoverty.com. They are meant to show the dignity and hope which can be found in extreme poverty, if you look, despite the oppression poverty inflicts upon them

They’re also meant to show Christ’s presence amid the lie of poverty.

You are free to copy and distribute the images on picturesofpoverty.com in accordance with the Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported).

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

I stumbled across this video, and I think it’s worth every second of the 13 minutes it will take you to watch it.

OK, did you watch it?

This video resonates with me because as a marketing writer for Compassion, my whole job is to tell the successes of the ministry. And it’s great; I love it.

There are so many amazing stories out there to tell, that each week I have to cull through handfuls of stories and choose just one or two.

But what about the not-so-happy stories? What do we do with those?

In telling just the happy ones, do we unintentionally insinuate to you that your experience is going to be all roses and puppy dogs? I know from past posts that many of you have experienced what have felt like “fails,” such as when a child left the program and you never found out why.

I don’t think any sponsorship is ever a failure. Regardless of what happens five years down the line, the love a child experiences through sponsorship (whether from you or from the child development workers) and the opportunity to hear the gospel is never in vain.

But what about the times when the tangible “outcome” of sponsorship isn’t quite what we had hoped for?

One of my weekly tasks is to write the prayer requests that we send to our prayer partners in Canada. It breaks my heart every week to see the immense challenges facing the children.

Sometimes, we get prayer requests like this: “Pray for 15-year-old Jessica who is pregnant” or “Pray for Ian who is taking drugs” or “Pray for Daisy who was having suicidal thoughts and ran away.”

Sometimes we can paint a picture (intentionally or not) that if you sponsor a child, he or she is going to become a doctor or a pastor and live in a nice house and have 2.5 children and live happily ever after. But the truth is that these are humans, not automatons where we put a sponsorship coin in the slot and they come out shiny, happy people.

Just as we in the developed world can’t guarantee how our children are going to “come out,” we can’t control how a child in the developing world will “come out” (and who would want to, anyway?).

We need to be free to admit “failure,” because as the video says, that’s how we learn.

Maybe a 14-year-old boy left our program and got involved in drugs because he made bad choices, but maybe he also left the program because it simply wasn’t meeting his needs. (Or as they might say, “It was boring.”)

We need to be open to admit such a failing so we can fix the problem.

In this case, it might be that we really need some updated curriculum to engage adolescents in a way that’s fun, helpful and relevant.

(And guess what — our field offices are actually in the process of writing and implementing new curriculum for adolescents for this very purpose!)

But it also takes education — we need to educate you as the sponsor as to what the real needs are. And that takes honesty.

Many times the solutions to these issues aren’t “sexy,” as David in the video says. We might need a spreadsheet “sponsored,” or in this case, curriculum development paid for.

Just as it’s easier to get a well built than to get a spreadsheet sponsored, it may be easier to get a cute smiling child sponsored than it is to get a curriculum funded or a teacher trained.

This isn’t an ask to get you to start funding spreadsheets or curricula (though if you want to read about some of our Canadian office’s educational efforts, you can.) But it is to say: we need to be honest and open.

At Compassion, we fail. Things don’t always go the way we wanted them to or planned. We have to be discreet and discerning in what we share, but we also don’t want to paint the picture that we’re perfect. Because we’re not, and that perception only sets us up for even larger failures.

God has blessed us with amazing supporters who support us through thick and thin, and God continues to work through our ministry despite our failings, to our great honor. We humbly ask that you continue to walk alongside us as we strive, fail, and learn from our mistakes.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

In episode 17 of Missions in Action we meet former Leadership Development Program student, Blesslin. At 23-years-old, Blesslin has started her own company and plans to give back to her community as her business grows.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Today’s post is about giving you an inside look at how we, the third-largest producer of mail in Colorado Springs, handle the letters you write to your children.

To start with, allow me to introduce you to Joe Cammaroto. Joe is the correspondence supervisor in our Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs. His team is responsible for processing all the letters you write and all the letters your sponsored children write back to you.

“Since implementing the new online letter writing tool, we receive about 7,000 web letters each day compared to the 1,000 or so we received daily before the tool was implemented.”

To put those numbers into perspective, at least a little bit, here’s a glimpse of what Joe’s team sees everyday.

A portion of one day’s mail, ready to be sorted by country

Sorting bins for East Indonesia and Indonesia

Sorting bins for all 26 countries

Letters packaged and ready to be sent to our country offices via DHL. Letters are mailed once each week to our country offices, every Thursday. We send about 4,000 letters to each country office every week.

As Joe mentioned, we receive approximately 7,000 sponsors letters each day. It takes his team about 5 days to process a letter and get it ready to be shipped to a country office.

Contrast that with the 12,000 letters we receive each day from children to their sponsors. A year ago, it took us 14 days to process a letter after receiving it in-house. Now, after some major process improvements, it takes only about three days.

Before the letters arrive, a lot of work goes into getting them to Colorado Springs. Here's some insight from Abraham about what happens when your letters arrive in Bolivia.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

The past year we launched the 58: Initiative, engaging thousands of you in the movement to end poverty. This year we’d like you to join us on the 58: Global Impact Tour.

You can also view the Join the 58: Global Impact Tour video on YouTube.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Our ministry has the opportunity to grow, to reach more souls — to shape our world. To do this, we need a strategy, which is where Chuck Boudreau comes in.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

In episode 14 of Missions in Action we visit Nagpur India — the epicenter of the red-light district. In Nagpur, the mothers of these children are sold for sex for as little as 55 rupees or approximately $1.

There are over 200 children of sex-workers living in this community. Out of those 200 children, only 40 have sponsors. Will you prayerfully consider sponsoring a child in Nagpur?

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Your generosity is not only a blessing this Christmas but all year long. Today, as you celebrate the birth of our Savior we hope you feel the depth of His love and gratitude — and ours — for the ways you have cared for these little ones around the world…

Merry Christmas!

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates