My name is Peninah Esianoi Pashile. I was a sponsored child at Imaroro Child Develoment Center in Kenya. I would like to share my story with you and hope that it will be an inspiration and encouragement to all who are dedicating their time and resources to releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

Your work is not in vain; your acts of compassion are changing the world day by day.

I was born in 1982, the fifth of seven children in the household. I was born and brought up in a remote village of Empuyiankat in Kajiado district, Rift Valley province in Kenya.

My father is a polygamist, married to three wives with 24 children. My father and his wives have no formal education.

As a girl in the highly patriarchal Maasai community, my chances of attaining an education were dim. Girls in my community are raised to be submissive and dependent upon men all their lives.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriages of 13-year-old girls to men decades older than them characterize the lives of 99 percent of Maasai girls. A gender-oppressive culture, few and understaffed education facilities, and long treks from home to school and back across the vast savanna plains full of wild animals are some of the challenges girls in my community endure to access education.

I started school at the age of 6 at Imaroro Primary School. My enrollment to school and the Compassion program was the defining event of my life. (more…)

Another clip from our video interview with the Moody Bible Institute scholars.

After watching it, will you sponsor a Leadership Development Program student? You can do so by yourself, but you can also do it as a group, with family, friends, co-workers, your small group, etc.

So, an emperor, a chief and a queen are all in a room together. The emperor is from Uganda. The chief is from the Dominican Republic. And the queen is from the Philippines. Who’s in charge?

You can also view the Who’s in Charge video on YouTube.

Kenneth Kataryeba, a learning and support specialist for East Africa, shares the story of a girl in a wheelchair whom he just met, and how bringing joy to children and helping lift them from the misery of poverty is how he really gets paid.

In late July we interviewed our Moody Bible Institute scholarship recipients using questions you submitted here. We filmed the interview and will be sharing clips from the session with you over the next few weeks.

In this first clip, which is just over 13 minutes long, you’ll get to see how Richmond, Tony, Michelle and Jimmy interact with one another.

You’ll get a taste of the strength of their relationships with one another and with God.

And you’ll get a little insight into what Jimmy probably asked his sponsor when they met at Catalyst 2009.

Beyond getting to know them a little better, by learning what these agents of change are studying at Moody and why they chose their fields of study, you’ll also hear, among other things:

• Tony speak about his call to serve teenagers
• Michelle and Richmond share about their desires to develop strong Christian leaders in the Philippines and Uganda
• Jimmy relate what life was like before he was sponsored

Enjoy.

As I write this, there are tears splattered on my keyboard and mascara smeared on my cheeks. I’m not much of a crier, perhaps being desensitized as a result of reading painful stories every day. But this video of Jimmy Wambua meeting his sponsor has made me cry like a baby. 
 


The reason why is I know Jimmy. Jimmy stayed at our house for two weeks, so he went from being a formerly sponsored child, an African, and someone with a different culture and accent, to being a friend. To a human.

 
As much as we don’t want them to, our differences — culturally, geographically, economically — can separate us. “Others” can seem so very other. So unlike us. So “unrelatable.”

Yes, we have compassion for them. But it’s hard to really relate to them. Understand them. View them the same as we view ourselves, our neighbors, our family.
 


But Jimmy is my husband’s age. The two of them sitting on our couch talking about girls made Jimmy so utterly real to me. He’s someone who despite all our differences is so like us.
 
Someone who simply had a sponsor who loved him, who told Jimmy that Jesus loves him, and set his life on an entirely new path. 
 


So when I watch this video, I don’t just see some African who some Canadian “saved.” What I see is myself in another situation, another time, another circumstance. I see that this could have been me. And I see that this can be my sponsored child.

Dan Trumble, a managerial accountant in Finance Business Partner Support, tells a story of one man’s salvation brought about in a way that only God can orchestrate.