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.

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Visitors to Recife, Brazil, have the opportunity to enjoy all this tropical paradise has to offer. This port city on the northeast coast of South America’s largest country has also been called the “Brazilian Venice” due to its many rivers, small islands and more than 50 bridges.

Not far, however, from the sandy white beaches is Olinda, a slum where families struggle to stay together and stay alive.

Walking through the unpaved streets of Olinda, the strong odor of raw sewage running down gutters on the side of the roads pervades the community.

Children are often seen playing in alley ways, and one may have to avoid cyclists coming down the roads as they carry empty soda bottles in large racks tied to the back of their bikes.

Many in the community are also seen standing in the doorway of their homes to escape the midday heat.

You wouldn’t know that just a few hours before, someone was shot and killed in the street. The body was dragged away hours before the police would arrive on their motorcycles. Life goes on.

In the middle of this broken community lives a 9-year-old boy named Tales. Born to a young woman who found herself caught up in the world of drugs and prostitution, Tales appears to be yet another victim of circumstance destined to be a product of his poor surroundings.

However, the boy’s grandmother won’t allow for that to happen. She, too, is a victim of the drug trade in her community, having lost one of her four children, a son, to the dangerous business.

Even though the boy’s grandfather sent his mother away due to the drugs, his grandmother looks after him. Tales, however, is scared of his grandfather, a man who manages to pull out a meager existence as well as support an alcohol habit selling inexpensive toys over the weekend.

Because the boy is afraid of his grandfather, he lives with his father, now divorced from his mother, who lives just a few blocks away. Although Tales has little stability in his life, he has more than others, but he needs more.

About two years ago, Tales was introduced to Criancas do Reino (Children of the Kingdom), a local church program that partners with Compassion.

At the child development center, a transformation began to take place in the life of this young, shy boy. The boy who used to cut himself and suck on his own blood was now learning Bible stories. He began opening up more, and started playing soccer with the other children, a sport he enjoys immensely.

He also discovered he’s good at math and enjoys it.

At the child development center, Tales also participates in workshops designed to teach him skills he needs to be self-supporting or to help support his family after high school.

While in attendance, he also receives a meal. But Compassion’s child development center gives Tales something else that many of the other children in the community don’t have – hope.

Hope is crucial in Tales’ neighborhood. In a world where drugs and violence are the standard, there’s not much else to cling to.

In place of a strong parental figure to look up to, Tales has the police as his constant source of order and control. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he gives an answer that is all too familiar coming from the lips of the other children living in Tales’ world.

“I want to be a policeman,” Tales says, with little enthusiasm.

Law enforcement – while a noble profession – is not what Tales wants to do when he grows up. It’s math he loves, but the police are all he knows.

Maybe someone will show him how much potential he truly has. Maybe he will become an engineer or a doctor.

As for Tales’ mother, she’s no longer involved with drugs or prostitution. Her son’s attendance at the child development center has encouraged her to start turning her life around. She now lives with her mother again and is able to take a more active role in her son’s life.

Certainly Tales has already achieved more than most in his little corner of the world. He’s been a role model to his mother. Maybe this same strength his mother saw will be enough to propel him out of the vicious cycle of life he’s currently living in.

Maybe.

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Foreigners and Brazilians go to Recife to travel and to rest. But hidden behind the great avenues and beautiful places is another Recife: the Recife of violence and drugs, with broken families because of the troubles that drugs bring together; the Recife of gunfire that scares children and kills innocents.

“I still have no emotional structure to even listen to fireworks,” says Adriana, director of Centro de Desenvolvimento Integral Vida 1, which lost an employee to murder last year, a victim of a gang war. “There was so much shooting, so much shooting!”

The employee’s name was Alexandre, and he was killed as he was leaving the center to exchange a crate of soda. A drug dealer suddenly grabbed Alexandre and to protect himself from gunfire coming from another drug dealer. It was urban warfare, and an innocent died.

Inside the center, the children could hear the shooting and were scared and started crying. They lay on the floor in fear after the gunfire began.

“It was a terrible time. It was difficult to explain to the children that God was in control. We lost a friend. Alexandre was loved by the children.”

If losing a beloved teacher is traumatic, imagine when a child sees his mother being arrested by the police?

Emídio is only 5 years old. He saw his mother crying, asking him and his siblings to forgive her as she was being arrested and taken to jail.

Michele left Emídio, another little child and two twin babies without a parent because of her irresponsibility keeping guns and drugs inside the house. She did it to earn some money, even though she knew it was illegal, and that the police could come any minute, just like they did when her partner was arrested for the same reason. (Emídio’s father was murdered in front of the development center while Emídio was still in his mother’s belly.)

After the arrest, it was not unusual for Emídio to arrive at the center worried about this situation. Even as a young child, age 4 at that time, he knew what consequences his mother’s actions could bring.

Emídio warned his mother many times and asked her not to keep drugs inside the twins’ socks or below the sink.

“She slapped me in my mouth every time that I warned her.”

The first time the police invaded the house searching for drugs and guns, Emídio’s mom hid them and the police couldn’t find anything. But before they left the house, they beat her in the face to try to get her confession. This shocked Emídio.

The second time, the police found the drugs and guns. Now Michele, who is only 23, is in jail. She might be free at the end of this year or in early 2011.

Each of Michele’s children is living with a different relative because no one relative can support all four. Emídio is living with his grandfather.

Emídio loves his mother, despite her mistakes. Once, Emídio asked for coins from a neighbor, and Michele didn’t like this. Instead of talking to him about it, she put a hot spoon in his mouth as a punishment.

The next day he arrived at the center with a big injury. At the end of the class, a teacher called him to talk and asked gently the cause of the wound. With maturity, the boy, age 5 at the time, answered:

“I would like to say to you what my mother advised me to say … but I can’t lie. I know that he who lies is the devil’s son. She told me to tell you that this wound was caused by hot soup. But the truth is that she put a hot spoon in my mouth.”

Adriana walks through the center slowly, watching each step taken by the children. She knows their names, their stories, their pain and fears.

The center is a safe harbor for the children. It plants the seed of God into the little hearts, and when a tragedy happens, like Alexandre’s death, the teachers talk to the children about sin, heaven, salvation in Jesus, and the love of Jesus taking care of them.

After the initial shock of Alexandre’s death, the teachers talked to the children about the resurrection and the hope for Alexandre’s recovery in heaven.

Emídio gets special attention at the center because of his story. When Michele was arrested, Adriana observed Emídio and noted that he was in depression, despite his efforts to stay strong and hide his sorrows and concerns. He refused to eat and struggled to play and participate in the classes.

“We saw his sad eyes and we missed his smiles. We prayed for him and always brought him over to talk. Here, at my room, he opened his little heart talking about his problems.”

Emídio was accustomed to looking after his three siblings, and he was worried when they had to separate to live with different relatives. Before Michele was arrested, Adriana says that once Emídio came to her room nervous, and vented:

“I can’t take care of my twin sisters anymore! If I hold one, the other starts to cry! I’m thinking about giving one to someone in the street! Teacher Adriana, please, would you like to take me to your house to take care of me? I need someone to take care of me!”

Emídio has a heavy burden and he vents the way he can. Inside the secure walls of the center, Emídio has the chance to show his feelings and to be a child, forgetting about his worries.

Emídio’s story represents the story of many children who attend Centro de Desenvolvimento Integral Vida 1. Children who are victims of the drug dealing, gangs and the violence hidden beneath the Brazilian Venice.

But the grace of God overflows in these places and in the lives of the little ones, through the actions of his servants, such as Adriana, the center staff and others.

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Sorry I haven’t contributed much lately. I’m still here and still handling crisis communications, in case you were wondering. There is something that has been on my mind that I feel compelled to share with you.

I’m gonna step outside my comfort zone for a minute to share this with you. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was diagnosed with it when I was 15, so I’ve had it for half my life, but you’d probably never know it if you met me. I don’t talk about it much. Most people I interact with on a regular basis don’t even know. In the past 10 years the medical research and pharmaceutical industries have come a long way in treating the disease, and this has allowed me to live to a virtually pain-free, symptom-free life.

But here’s the thing. I have a normal life simply because I happen to have been born in the United States. I have access to powerful drugs. I have insurance to cover the (outrageously high) cost of them. Certainly I am grateful for this, but lately I’ve been thinking about what my life would be like if I were born into poverty in a developing country. What if I was from rural Rwanda? Or a slum in the Philippines? Or a poor community in Nicaragua?

I’d more than likely be totally crippled by now. At 30 years old.

This thought really freaks me out, to be honest with you. I cannot imagine what it would be like to not be able to stand up straight, to walk, or to grip things. To live in constant, life-altering pain. I feel guilty for being happy I was born here. I don’t have to try to live with this disease without the help of drugs. I am not crippled. I assume it’s similar in a way to the guilt a person feels when they survive a car accident where the other passengers died . . . the ugly injustice of it. I understand that God’s ways are higher than our ways, but I struggle to understand why He chooses for some — why He chose ME — to be born into affluence and why He chooses some to be born into poverty. It’s not fair.

Nowhere is this injustice more evident than in the fight against HIV and AIDS. December 1 was World AIDS Day, and Brianne told you about our AIDS Initiative. The amazing thing about this program is that it literally restores justice to an unjust world. Without access to antiretroviral drugs, those battling AIDS in poverty-stricken countries fight an unwinnable war. By providing the antiretroviral therapy, Compassion allows children with death sentences another chance at life. A chance that, had they been born here, they would have had simply by virtue of their nationality.

If anyone is in the position to get this, it’s Godfrey. He understands that he is alive today because Compassion is fighting the injustice of HIV and AIDS in Uganda. His life is his testimony.

Compassion’s AIDS Initiative is more than just drugs. It’s nutritional support. It’s the critical laboratory testing. It’s psychosocial support. It’s treatment of opportunistic infections. It’s transportation assistance. It’s income generation. It’s housing repair. It’s all the opportunities that a person suffering from HIV here in the U.S. would have.

The AIDS Initiative essentially levels the playing field to give every victim of HIV — no matter where they were born — an equal chance to survive this devastating disease.

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Gualey, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Like in any place where drug smuggling is done, a strong clandestine support structure is needed. A list of packers, sellers, messengers, gunmen, guards, lawyers, policemen, drug-storage-home owners and front men are supposedly kept on payrolls, and the financial benefits are still enough to make the capos richer.

Gualey is no exception.

“Drug trafficking is a very strange behavior,” says Pastor Rodríguez of the Church of God of Gualey. “I’ve stayed worshiping over night at the church and seen the vehicles enter the community and leave. You can see the moves.”

The national anti-drug agency is constantly doing drug raids, and it arrests many involved.

In October of 2007, in only 24 hours, the Dominican authorities disbanded a total of 223 drug rings nationwide and stripped several kilos of cocaine, pounds of marijuana, hundreds of portions of crack, and arrested several hundred people.

A press release published by the Dominican government on June 21, 2007 revealed that since August 2006, the national anti-drug agency had performed 8,715 raids and confiscated 5.5 tons of drugs.

Sociologists believe that drug smuggling is like a symptom of a disease, and if you treat only the symptom and not the cause of the disease, you won’t get a real cure.

“This is the reason why ever since we arrived we made a proclamation that Jesus Christ is King and Lord of Gualey,” says Pastor Rodríguez. “If there is no transformation through Jesus Christ and through education in this barrio, we understand that there is no other way.”

Drug trafficking in Gualey seeks to perpetuate itself under the disguised face of a helping hand, and children are at the top of the list for recruitment as prospects. At Compassion’s partner Church of God of Gualey they’ve had to deal with attempts of traffickers to gain the kids for their network.

One of these events took place in 2007 while making arrangements for the summer break recreational tour for three hundred children in the community, for which a minimum sum of money is requested from the families to cover some costs of the trip.

“A lady approached and said to me that a drug trafficker near the river used to pay for the trip for 15 or 20 of the children down there,” reports Eugenio, 51, a member of the local church. “He did so to start to coax them into that atmosphere, and he also gave them 20 pesos so they could buy some ice cream on the trip.”

Drug traffickers in Gualey begin by giving 20 or 30 pesos to children for running small errands. Then they send them to deliver a package at the corner, and that’s when children become drug mules.

If the police catch the children carrying drugs, there is no criminal consequence for anybody, not for the child because he is a child, or for anybody else because they are prepared to cover for the supplier for fear they will lose their source of income.

“When a 12-year-old kid gets a 500 peso bill, he no longer wants to study or work,” says Robinson, an evangelist at the Church of God of Gualey. “But when that boy tries marijuana, and then he tries cocaine and then crack, that boy who was the one in charge of delivering the drug is now stealing, and if necessary killing people, in order to buy from the same guy who gave him the 20 pesos to deliver the drug.”

Robinson gives thanks to the Lord because He transformed him. As a former drug addict in Gualey, Robinson has a very clear understanding of the problem there:

“Drugs enter a neighborhood by helping those who don’t have food to put food on the table so they will be able to set up a quiet sales spot. They will pay for medical prescriptions for the sick and cover any other need. The lack of employment also makes the neighbors cover the drug sellers.”

The neighbors that don’t agree with that illicit trade will not dare denounce it because, if arrested, the sellers may be out of prison soon, and they will gain a dangerous enemy.

“Family values are put aside,” says Eugenio. “Drug traffickers use a system here. They give bicycles, dolls, shoes, a lot of food and money to the kids. The child who is hungry at home, they send him to buy a fried chicken for them and one for himself. At Christmas eve, they give the child good clothes for free and on the Kings’ Day they give him his bicycle. That’s how the child begins to cherish money with no sacrifice.”

Sometimes after the family provider is arrested for drugs, a close replacement will keep the business. “When the parents are arrested, the children will continue to save the drugs for the sellers, and they will even pack it, because they have seen their parents do it,” says Robinson. He has been a witness of how drugs influence the children.

“What all the young kids long for is wearing Nike Jordan shoes, 22 and 23, and then they see those people who buy those shoes five pairs at once and even wear two pairs a day. That traumatizes them and entices them into that lifestyle.”

Eugenio has witnessed how entire homes have been ruined by the scourge of drugs.

“Sometimes both parents have to go for work because they have many needs and they leave the children alone at home, and before they can figure it out they don’t have children any longer — what they have is monsters, and they have completely lost their family.”

Unfortunately, illegal drug consumption is one factor that sternly regenerates the cycle of poverty. It is a cause of crime and prostitution, resulting in early pregnancy, homes run by single mothers, and children living with relatives because one or two of their parents are in prison for drug trafficking. These events cause a lot of pain, especially in the children, who don’t understand what’s going on.

“Recently, the center director informed me that a child’s mother went to jail,” says Pastor Rodríguez, so, around three days ago we went to his home to see how he was doing. The father is in prison too. What did they tell the boy? That the police is the bad side because his parents were at their business and they were taken to jail. Hatred has been growing in the heart of this little boy; for this reason the church is taking actions to provide this boy with professional help so that he will be able to better assimilate why his parents are in jail.”

Gangs inspire fear in the residents of Gualey and neighboring communities. Sometimes they fight for the control in one area and start a dangerous shootout. In many needy neighborhoods, innocent people are injured and killed by stray bullets during these criminal shootouts.

This was the case of a daughter of one sister of the church. The young girl went out to rescue another girl who lay in the middle of the street, shot, but young girl was shot, too.

“That was a time when a gang from Las Cañitas and a gang from Gualey were so upset between them that they shot one another, even with M-16’s,” reports Pastor Rodríguez. “Our church sister’s daughter died.”

“I know a boy from the Compassion child development center whose father uses drugs,” says Eugenio. “His sister died during a shootout. A sniper from Las Cañitas shot her in the chest and killed her. The family is traumatized, the mother cries a lot, and also the boy has a violent attitude because his sister was taken way from him.”

In Gualey, having a drug-addict at home is a very tough situation. “When a family has a person who uses drugs, he will steal all the things that they have to buy drugs,” says Eugenio. “He will be very violent and aggressive and not understanding. He will be somebody with low self esteem, and his family will reject him.”

The phone rings at many homes at night. Those are the wives and youth coming back from work, and the children coming back from school. Many call when they are arriving to the entrance so that a mature adult will come for them, for fear that they might be robbed, or that the police might mistakenly arrest them in a raid.

“You cannot walk the streets at night because you are robbed or killed,” says Eugenio. “You have to be careful when walking in the streets, because you don’t know who is watching you.”

Extensive parades with placards, prayer campaigns, and child ministry with the support of Compassion International are some of the efforts that the Church of God of Gualey is doing to fight the empire of drugs. This church has gained the respect of the community since many of its members are former drug consumers and traffickers and lived a life of crime. The neighbors are never too tired to confess to them “God has changed you in deed”.

When Pastor Rodríguez was appointed Pastor of the Church of God of Gualey in the year 2003, the members of his former church in Gaspar Hernández could not believe it. “The change was as big as from heaven to earth”, testifies Pastor Rodríguez.

“In Gaspar Hernández the people run away from the bullets, and here, when there is a shootout with the police, the people run to see what is happening” (The Pastor paraphrases the well known saying that in Gualey the people run away from the rain but run towards the bullets).

The Community of Gualey

Some say that the first residents of Gualey settled in the 1950’s during the dictatorship of General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Gualey is located on the western bank of the Ozama River in Santo Domingo. It is a gathering of mostly poor construction homes built on hilly land. It has few paved roads, and most of it consists of a lot of narrow alleys and long and steep stairs that wander in a puzzled labyrinth of crammed homes down to the edge of the river.

When people say that they are from Gualey, a preconception arises in people’s minds. “When our youth go to a firm for a job, the first thing they ask is where they live. ‘Ah, in Gualey’, and they won’t employ them. They will believe they are criminals,” reports Eugenio.

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