With today’s economy and political debate going haywire, it’s more important than ever to buttress our commitment to the children we sponsor. It’s as vital as connecting other, unsponsored children with sponsors.

When God puts a child on our hearts, it is easy to answer His call … at least initially. However, it can be difficult to remain invested in the commitment over time. And current economic circumstances aren’t making this any easier.

Sponsors at my church have been experiencing financial hardships with gas prices, unemployment, and the overall cost of living. We’re just squeezing by, paying what is necessary, but mostly going about things without passion.

I’m not sure if you’re experiencing this same tension, but I suspect that with finances being tighter, some of us are investing less time or financial support in Compassion’s ministry to children in poverty. We’re having to reassess the decisions we’ve made about our time, talent and treasures.

I held a Compassion Sunday at my church, but given the tough financial times my pastor and I felt it would be best to not participate in next year’s Compassion Sunday campaign. We wanted to give full attention to the needs among our congregation.

Taking our church’s situation into account, my pastor suggested that I continue to encourage existing sponsors within our church and community. That way, when we do give another presentation, we will have more families who can testify to what a wonderful organization Compassion is and encourage others to sponsor children.

So after meeting with my pastor and my advocate coach, we began to implement activities to help keep sponsors engaged and keep Compassion’s ministry present at our church.

I also came up with some strategies to welcome new sponsors and acted as their contact person should they have any general questions about the ministry. Here are some of the ideas we have started or are in the process getting off the ground:

• Welcome Kit for New Sponsors

  I purchased pocket folders in bulk. They were inexpensive and served as a nice addition to the child packets sponsors receive upon beginning their sponsorship.Inside each folder, I included quick facts about poverty, information about Compassion’s financial integrity and its holistic child development model, and a few other pamphlets affirming the new sponsor’s decision to get involved.

  

  One new sponsor told me she was impressed to see how Compassion is committed to serving Christ and serving His children. She mentioned that she keeps the letters from her sponsored child in the welcome-kit folder I had given her. 

• Compassion Board

  I purchased a world map from Barnes & Noble to create a Compassion board in our church gathering area. I then called Compassion with the names and numbers of the children who are sponsored from our church. Compassion sent us pictures of the children and we posted them on the map near each child’s location.

  

  The Compassion Board encouraged others to be in prayer for the children. We also placed a brochure display in the gathering area should someone wish to start a sponsorship.

• Compassion Sponsors’ Letter-writing Potluck

  Any time you can involve food, you can get people to come and fellowship! The idea is to get sponsors together once a quarter for a letter-writing potluck.

  In addition to bringing their favorite dishes to share, participants also “potluck” letter-writing supplies. For example, one person brings envelopes and another brings a variety of stationery.

  Others bring small items we can include with our letters, such as stickers, paper frames to put pictures in (construction paper cut into the shape of a frame with contact paper around it), paper dolls, small children’s magazines, etc.

  The potluck creates a place for everyone to give updates about their children and to encourage one another as we continue our relationships with our sponsored children through Compassion.

• Bible Studies/Book Groups About Compassion 

  I was doing a Compassion-related Bible study on my own when a friend asked about it. As I described Compassion’s commitment to releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name, she mentioned that she wasn’t in a place where she could financially support a child sponsorship, but that she would like to do so in the future.

  

  I told her she could pray for children in poverty and that God’s hand would be upon the Compassion ministry. She asked if she could borrow the study after me. We also plan to do one together.

I know that God has pressed it upon the hearts of others to explore ways to keep the Church involved and to encourage existing sponsors while looking for new ones. It would be great to get fresh ideas to use. What are some ideas you can share with us?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Maria Le has been a sponsor for two years and a member of our Advocates Network for one. She lives in Minnesota, where she teaches first grade.

If you’re interested in writing a guest blog post, we are happy to consider publishing it. Read our guest blog post guidelines.

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

Every day as I get the mail from our mailbox, I’m hoping for a letter from one of my sponsored children.

Letters connect me to their worlds and engage me more deeply in the sponsorships.

It didn’t use to be that way. Sponsorship was about writing a check and maybe sometimes sending a letter.

Three years into my sponsorship a change occurred; I met my sponsored child and in that moment my focus was forever altered.

I learned that sponsorship, when fully embraced, changes both the child’s and the sponsor’s lives.

There are simple things you can do to make your sponsorship experience more rewarding.

Seven Ways to a More Rewarding Sponsorship Experience

1. Take a Sponsor Tour

   I realize everyone can’t afford to do this, or simply may not want to visit the developing world, but if you can visit your sponsored child you will blessed.

   I traveled to Honduras in 2007 on a sponsor tour. The day I met Linda my heart broke – in a good way.

   She was dressed in a white dress and took one look at my wife and I and burst into tears. I felt the love she had for us. I felt a love that was unconditional and without bounds.

   My heart broke not because of her poverty, but the fact that “we mattered.” I will always remember when she explained that since her father had died she considered me “like a father.” How humbling and life changing that was for me. She had just turned my world upside down.

2. Write Those Letters

   There is nothing more heartbreaking than to visit a child development center or to meet and have children ask you to tell their sponsors to write.

   Letters are the key to sponsorship. The children do not understand the financial aspect. It is about knowing that there is a person who cares for them, is encouraging them and is praying for them.

   

   On my second trip to Honduras in 2009, Linda showed me all the letters my wife and I had ever written her. Nothing was more valuable to her than our letters.

   Set a goal and write your sponsored child regularly. I made the promise on my first trip to write monthly and have kept close to it. Every other month or even quarterly may be your goal – just do it!

3. Faithfully Pray

   When I began to pray daily for Linda and her family, I began to think of them as part of my family. I now have four sponsored children in Honduras that I lift in prayer.

   One of the things I did on that first trip was buy a map of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. It is hanging in my downstairs hallway. I have marked the areas that my children live in, and as I pass by I say a prayer for each of them.

   I have pictures of all of my sponsored children throughout the house as if they were my own children.

4. Find Out More About Your Child’s Country and Customs

   I have read about the history of Honduras, and I subscribe to a newsfeed from Tegucigalpa via Yahoo! News. I also have a weather app on my iPod so daily I know what is happening in their area.

   My wife and I make it a point at least once a week to have a cultural meal. In fact we happened to recently stumble upon an authentic Honduras restaurant in our town.

   Immersing yourself like this will keep things current and exciting for you. It will also give you topics to write and pray about!



5. Become an Advocate for Compassion

   Speaking out for the “least of these” is very rewarding and is a way to keep your children in the forefront of your mind.

   The Advocate Network encourages you to use your spiritual gifts to promote awareness of the poor and the needs of children. I enjoy working concerts and events and telling others about sponsorship.

   You may enjoy speaking to a church group, organizing a fundraiser, or blogging about Compassion, There are other ways to “speak up” as well, via Compassion’s street team and 58:.

   I encourage you to explore the options and deepen your ministry.

6. Connect With Other Sponsors

   Sharing ideas and communicating with other sponsors is another way to energize your sponsorship experience. Compassion has its own sponsor community, OurCompassion.org, which provides an opportunity to connect and share ideas.

   I have found it enriching and rewarding to get new ideas about writing letters and sending gifts from fellow sponsors.



7. Share Your Ideas

   These aren’t the only ways to a more rewarding sponsorship experience. There are as many ways as there are personalities. What appeals to one person may not appeal to another, but we can make this list a lot longer and we can make it a relevant resource for others, if we just share ideas with one another.

   So get started by leaving a comment about how you have found the rewards in your sponsorship.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chuck Guth lives in Abingdon, Maryland, and is a member of the Advocate Network. He sponsors five children and writes about Compassion and other stuff at sharingcompassion.blogspot.com.

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

1. The primary effect of Jesus’ healings was to include social outcasts into community.

   Jesus’ healings restored outcasts to community by removing the obstacle that made them outcasts. By eating with outcasts, Jesus welcomed and accepted them just as they were.

   With the temple incident He critiqued a system/structure that excluded outcasts on the basis of their race.

2. Jesus touched those whom He healed. He was willing to get dirty and even become unclean by touching them.
• Lepers (Mark 1:40–45)
• Bleeding / Hemorrhaging Woman (Mark 5:24b-34)
• Jairus’ Daughter (Mark 5:22-24, 35-43)
• Physically Disabled (Mark 2:1-12; 3:1-6; 7:32-37; 10:46-52)

As Compassion Child Advocates we are critical in the work of restoring social outcasts — children in poverty — to community. While I can’t say that I’ve ever healed anybody in Jesus’ name (I’ve tried), I do believe that Jesus is bringing healing through our advocacy — a healing that gives children a voice and that begins to take the poverty out of them.

What I’m especially convicted by is Rindge’s second observation about Jesus’ physical touch. Jesus got dirty, even unclean, according to Jewish law, by doing so.

I confess that a lot of my advocacy hasn’t gone that far.

Wess Stafford, our President and CEO, regularly shares that his mission is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

I love this statement. What’s also true is that the comfortable may afflict you right back. They did Jesus when they denounced Him for reaching out to social outcasts. And if my advocacy doesn’t result in me being marginalized myself, it’s lacking.

As you “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” are you encountering resistance?

If you are, it’s probably because you look a lot like Jesus.

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

Just crossing the finish line of Colorado’s U.S. Trail National Championship June 29 in Steamboat Springs was quite a feat on its own. Winning an age-group division in this 12-kilometer race was even more of an accomplishment. But what really qualifies Tim Smith as a champion is succeeding in all this with a symbol plastered across his chest to represent the millions of impoverished children around the world.

Tim is a Mail Services Specialist at the Global Ministry Center (GMC) in Colorado. As he says, he is “deeply passionate about and committed to our work … to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.”

Tim is a prolific runner and runs as passionately as he works. He approaches both his job and his races with fervor because in his mind these two worlds are not isolated.

The U.S. Trail National Championship was the 10th race he competed in since March 2007 while wearing his jersey and representing Compassion — clearly Tim utilizes running as an opportunity to speak up for children living in the bondage of poverty.

How many eyes saw his Compassion jersey as he warmed up, raced and recovered?

How many individuals wondered about Compassion or for the first time considered the harsh reality of poverty that affects so many today?

Neither Tim nor anyone else may ever know the results of his choice to race in that jersey. All Tim can stand on is that we are all called to “seek justice,” “encourage the oppressed,” and “defend the cause of the fatherless” (Isaiah 1:17) in every area of life. The results are not our responsibility.

Tim’s grass-roots advocacy captures the core of Compassion’s desire: to break hearts for the poor in a way that permeates who we are and causes us constantly to remember the voiceless.

Not only that, but as Tim explains, “I wear the Compassion shirt because my desire is to honor Compassion and the ministry. … I use the shirt as a platform upon which I can witness to other athletes that I come in contact with.”

Not only could his jersey cause people to consider the poor, but it presents an opportunity for Tim to share with other runners the purpose Christ has given his life. Wearing a Compassion shirt is a simple act, but God uses nonglamorous obedience to further His kingdom.

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

And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. – Luke 21:1-2 (NKJV)

The Perfect Gift — Generally Speaking

The perfect gift comes from the heart. Love drives us to it, and despite the fact it might mean sacrifice, love compels us to give it anyway. We know it’s perfect when in love it is accepted — love always fits and need never be exchanged.

The perfect gift is also one that keeps-on giving; it has ‘staying power’ and continues to give long after it is received. Furthermore, the perfect gift provides the one thing that the receiver is unable to obtain for him or herself. Frankly, if they were able, they would have already gotten it.

Finally, the perfect gift is a blessing to both giver and receiver.

The Perfect Gift — Specifically

The perfect gift is sponsoring a Compassion child. How can this be?

Love is the driving force behind such a noble thing. For the giver, it’s the kind of love that says, “What would I sacrifice in order to save a child’s life.” For the recipient it says, “This gift is better than any material thing I could have ever received.”

Child sponsorship is the gift that keeps on giving. Decide to sponsor a child and you provide educational opportunities, regular healthcare, food and clothing if needed, and an opportunity to hear the Gospel message and to be discipled in the faith.

The perfect gift provides the one thing a person cannot obtain themselves, and in the case of a child living in poverty, that one thing is HOPE. Until someone steps up to help, these children wallow in despair.

Finally, the perfect gift is a blessing to both the giver and the receiver. As you can imagine, a child who is given the opportunity to escape spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty is forever grateful, but so often it is the giver who comes away feeling ‘more blessed’ then the recipient. How so? I’m not sure — except to say I am confident it is a God thing.

Compassion Dave is a member of the Advocates Network. He writes a personal blog, Jesus and Compassion, solely dedicated to getting more children sponsored. The blog is an outgrowth of his highly successful MySpace group of the same name, through which he has connected 40 children with loving sponsors.

Dave has been an advocate for six years, and in that time, has found more than 600 children new sponsors.

This year, Dave has scheduled three Compassion Sunday events:

• April 13: Calvary Baptist Church, Little Egg Harbor, NJ
• April 20: Chesapeake Christian Fellowship, Davidsonville, MD
• May 18: St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, Washington, NJ

If you’re interested in knowing a little more about Compassion Dave, you can read about him at The Round Table.

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

The Compassion Advocates Network is made up of an amazing group of sponsors that want to do more than sponsor a child. They want to help get children sponsored.

Advocates give of their time, their talents and their money (e.g. like driving to work at a Compassion booth during a Jeremy Camp concert). They talk to anyone they know, and even don’t know, about sponsoring a child.

And each year we have a lot of sponsors request a planning folder for Compassion Sunday. The planning folder gives you everything you need to plan your event. But a lot of people stop there. They get sidetracked, nervous, or convinced by the Enemy that they should not participate.

Enter our amazing advocates. They again give of their time and their talents to call these sponsors to encourage them. And what do we get?

E-mails like this:

Howdy in Christ, Mark. I just got a return call from a potential Compassion Sunday’er, who I had left a message with earlier during the sponsor, pre-Compassion Sunday calling campaign. She was so-o-o happy that I’d called! She was bubbling and described how she had received the CS Planning Folder and had even sent in a completed Materials Order Form, but was having serious self-doubts about following through. The Enemy was tossing roadblocks in front of her wherever she turned—and flaming darts at her confidence that she could actually do this thing. Then she received my encouraging phone message. When she called back, we talked about presentation possibilities, helpful videos, my experiences with Compassion Sunday events, and ideas for increasing the effectiveness of her CS. (Adding a signup table, bulletin inserts, maintaining the signup table for a few weeks after…) Her excitement is renewed! The Holy Spirit left me feeling I’d soaked in a hot-tub of heavenly joy. THIS is why we’re making these calls, right Mark?
- Jeff Carpenter, Volunteer Area Coordinator

Amanda Ceren is a project specialist for the Advocates Network. She helps fight poverty by providing advocates with materials to connect a child in need with a loving sponsor.

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

Compassion Sunday is a nationwide annual campaign to raise awareness about the needs of children in poverty. It’s a day for you to speak to your church about poverty and how your church can rescue children in need. It’s not about you “convincing” anyone to sponsor a child. It’s just you sharing your heart, sharing God’s heart for children in need, and letting the Holy Spirit do the rest.

Last year, your willingness to host Compassion Sunday at churches nationwide resulted in more than 21,000 new sponsorships. Now, it’s time to speak up again – to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” (Proverbs 31:8, NIV).

To get started, order your planning folder today. It will give you ideas, help you get organized and will walk you through each step of the planning process. Plus, we have employees who’ll be here to answer any questions you have. Not me though, I’m on the web team.

This year, Compassion Sunday is April 13, but you’re free to choose any day that works best for you and your church. Thanks for partnering with us and for opening your heart to serving children in poverty.

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

I read Gerald McBoing Boing (my personal favorite), Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?, and, of course, the ever-popular, Green Eggs and Ham. 

I don’t know what it is, but it seems that when I open up a Dr. Seuss book, I immediately become a child myself…and the children I’m reading to are transported to a magical world where non-sensical rhymes suddenly make sense…and imaginary characters come to life.

As I was reading to the kids, I wondered what it would have been like if Dr. Seuss had written some stories about children in poverty. What a great opportunity to teach kids today about the conditions that their counterparts in other parts of the world live in!

What would that look like? Perhaps:

I do not like that the Sneetch children cry
with empty star bellies that growl all night
I do not like that they can’t drink
of water as clean as I have in my sink.

I don’t like famine, disease and war
I wish they didn’t exist anymore.
I don’t like the heartache, come to think of it,
I do not like poverty,
not one little bit.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dr. Seuss book if it just focused on the sad. No, indeed the Cat in the Hat turned dreary, rainy days into wonderful, happy, if not misguided, adventures. Maybe something like this:

Then all the Sneetch children would wipe away frowns
To laugh with each other on Flozzle playgrounds
They’d swing and they’d sing and they’d dance in a ring
‘Tis the end of poverty–what a wonderful thing!<

Unfortunately, we don’t have such a book. Perhaps it’s because poverty is far too real and dark to capture in whimsical rhyme. 

But maybe, just maybe, we can all be a Dr. Seuss by rewriting the stories of real children in poverty. It’s not that hard actually.

Sponsoring a child gives you the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty for a child. It gives them the chance to believe in a world where poverty comes to an end. And that is a wondrous thing indeed. 

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