Arpita’s Miracle

Last summer, heavy rains poured into the village where 12-year-old Arpita lives. The ground, already saturated from previous rains, left nowhere else for the waters to go … so the entire village flooded. Muddy water, one foot deep, filled Arpita’s home.

When you live in extreme poverty, access to clean water is hard to come by, but filthy water seems to make its way to your door with great ease.

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Maila’s Dream

I’m willing to bet that every person, at some point during your involvement with Compassion, ponders some variation of the following question:

Does Compassion’s ministry really work? Compassion knows how to share stories, but how do I know it’s actually making the difference they claim?

Guess what? We’ve wondered the same thing. So 11 years ago we set out to get proof.

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For those of you who are new here, we’ve hand-selected a few of the older posts from our archives for you to read, respond to, chew on, digest, enjoy, etc.

Are You for Real?

It’s after work and I’m in my business casual, walking through the mall having just bought a not-so-scrumptious dinner of Sbarro’s pizza when I see a sad sight before my eyes.

A girl, probably about 12 years old, of the tomboyish type with short brown hair, is kinda hobbling along. Her left leg is in a cast of some sort. It crosses my mind that I’d seen this girl a bit earlier, walking in the same condition — looking rather lost with a super sad face. Destitute was the word that came to mind. Well, not really destitute as far as her clothes went, just the expression on her face was.

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I Didn’t Think I Would Cry

We arrived half an hour earlier than scheduled and did not expect for our sponsored child to be there. “Edwin!” I heard a staff member howl, and from the tone of her voice I knew right away that our child was already there waiting. She came an hour early. I looked to where the voice came from and there she was, smiling, walking towards me with a card in her hand. I walked to get the card and knelt before her. My wife followed closely behind.

“Are you Shan?” I asked.

She nodded and gave the cutest smile.

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Throw-Aways

I’ve been putting off writing this post. There are some things that are just easier not to think about.

They’re called “throw-aways,” people whom the world has no use for. Children who don’t have anyone to feed them, youth with no identification papers, people with no options. So the world finds a use for them.

There are more slaves in the world today than there were in the entire trans-atlantic slave trade of the 1800s. Approximately 1.2 million children are trafficked each year into exploitive labor, such as agriculture work, prostitution, or child soldiers. 2 million children currently are forced to work as prostitutes.

Read the entire post.

Have you ever heard of Atrial Septal Defect (ASD)? Apparently, it’s a congenital heart defect.

If you have a defect in your interatrial septum, the tissue that divides the right side of your heart from the left side, your blood can get confused. And if that happens, you end up with blood that goes where it shouldn’t. That’s bad.

In a normal heart, the left ventricle has to produce enough pressure to pump blood throughout the entire body, but the right ventricle has to produce only enough pressure to pump blood to the lungs.

In the case of a large defect, this pressure difference means that blood from the left atrium can flood and enlarge the right side of the heart and, if left untreated, can result in heart failure.

That’s ASD in a nutshell. And this is why I tell you.

Alexander is an 8-year-old Kenyan boy who has ASD. He is in the third grade and is the youngest child in a family of five. Because his heart has been pumping deoxygenated blood to his growing body for his entire life, Alexander is smaller than most children his age.

In August 2008, during an evaluation at the child development center, a pediatrician noticed that Alexander has a heart murmur. Follow-up tests in Nairobi identified the birth defect and recommended a cardiac catheterization procedure and open heart surgery.

But Alexander’s parents are peasant farmers, and his mother sells fruit at the market to earn extra income. They survive on $13.70 per month.

$13.70 a month is barely adequate to meet the family’s basic needs, let alone pay for open heart surgery.

At this point, heart failure is a real possibility for Alexander. However, studies have shown that patients with a surgically repaired ASD have an excellent prognosis, particularly when the operation is done before the age of 25.

But Alexander’s family can’t afford the operation. It costs $8,303.

Alexander has been waiting to receive the surgery for several months now, since early December, but he can’t wait any longer. His condition has recently worsened – which made me think of something Amanda suggested back in February.

“I am just kicking around a few ideas here. What if Compassion had a “Spotlight of the Week” – or “Spotlight of the Month?” It could be either a child (medical need?), family, or small community need. It could even be in the area of the global financial crisis, disaster relief, Child Survival Program, or some other facet of Compassion. For example, one week you could highlight the (global food crisis) need of a community in Uganda to have goats or seeds for crops (or both). After the donations have been given, you could easily follow up with a story in the blog to share the results of the giving.”

So, Alexander has a need. And our objective is to give him a normal heart. Can we do this for him?

Make a donation to help pay for Alexander’s surgery. (Update: May 21, 2009 – You did it! And more. You contributed around $10,000. I expect to have the exact amount tomorrow.)

Thank you for loving this child.

As I receive updates on how Alexander is doing, I will share them with you. I can’t promise you updates with any degree of regularity though. I can just promise that there will be a follow-up.

Hey! See that square thing on the left? The box with the blue “kid” in it. We call him “Skippy.”

Anyway, that thing is a gravatar … a globally recognized avatar. It’s an image, associated with your e-mail address, that follows you across the Web.

Gravatars help identify your posts and comments on blogs, in forums and … well, on any site that has the “technology.” Woooo!

If you’d like to join the gravatar fun by having a gravatar icon appear next to your comments on this blog, sign up for a free account, and let us see how you roll — gravatarly speaking.

Since April 26, and through May 2, five bloggers have been experiencing firsthand what Compassion’s ministry to children in poverty is all about.

Visit compassionbloggers.com to travel across the world to the impoverished neighborhoods of Kolkata, East India, and through their stories, pictures and videos rediscover hope.

That earthquake milkshake must have really shook us up because we totally forgot to give a shout out to these blogs for sending us so many visitors in February.

So this month, we have a combined list. For February and March, these blogs booked the most blog tourists to our refreshing blog destination.

• Sheep Droppings – 304 visits
• Girls Just Want to Have Fun – 195 visits
• Jesus and Compassion – 187 visits
• the Daily Durias – 153 visits

Raise your hand if you love Coke or Pepsi. Jenny, a Coca-Cola/coffee/dark chocolate addict, is craving caffeine for Compassion. See what it’s all about.

joanlyndapuckett provided us with our latest blog banner.

She took the photo while in the Dominican Republic for the Global Advocates Conference.

Hope you like it as much as we do.

Keep submitting photos to our Flickr group. We may choose one of your photos next.

Yesterday was our birthday, and “Today Is My Birthday” … so says our newest widget.

The “Today Is My Birthday” featured child widget is now available for you to use on your blog or MySpace profile. It’s not available for Facebook, but we do have a featured child widget you can use there.

The “Today Is My Birthday” featured child widget DOES work on wordpress.com blogs.

And it can also be used in your e-mail signature block.

<br /> <a href=http://share-compassion.org/m/bday><img border=0 src=http://share-compassion.org/m/b></a>

Here is our original featured child widget. It works in the same places the “Today Is My Birthday” widget works.

<a href=http://share-compassion.org/m><img border=0 src=http://share-compassion.org/m/c></a><br />