It amazes me how often God uses the “least of these” among us to teach us valuable life lessons. Having worked here for a little more than four months, I have already experienced this phenomenon many times, as the children we serve “speak” to me about things such as hope, faith, love and trust.
Last week, they spoke to me again from a place where you wouldn’t expect to find much of anything at all except despair, doubt, hatred and cynicism. (more…)
Today’s blog post is actually a double – two stories written by Leura Jones, a contributing writer for Compassion who describes herself as “a 30-something mom of four kids who suddenly finds herself unemployed and wondering what’s next.”
Erina, a 32-year-old mother of five, used to ask God to kill her family all at once so that she would not die and leave her children to suffer alone. Three months after her youngest child, Ibrahim, was born, her husband left, taking two of their older children and most everything they owned.
“I would wash other people’s clothes or dig for food,” says the young Ugandan woman. “Sometimes our own clothes were not washed for a week because we had no soap. I couldn’t afford to buy firewood to cook our food. I had to walk 25 kilometers to look for firewood in the forest.”
But Erina has an aunt who encouraged her that God is good and will provide. When Erina looks at her baby boy, born healthy and with rarely even a cold, she believes this is true.
She had even more reason to believe when Ibrahim was chosen to be part of our Child Survival Program (CSP).
Through the program, Erina and her children received food, bedding, toys, and Christmas presents. Erina learned how to keep her home clean and healthy, feed her children nutritious meals, and to read and write. She is also able to earn reliable income by cooking for the church. And in April 2007, Erina gave her life to Christ.
“I have hope now. I am happy. I am alive and healthy. CSP has helped me with education, living with people peacefully, and starting up my own business so I am no longer helpless.”
She has also learned compassion for the suffering people around her.
“CSP fights for us. They check on us even though we are not home—they come back again. They don’t give up on us. This has helped me because now whatever I get, even though it is little, I can be compassionate to [others] who have nothing. I can help others as I have been helped.”
Ibrahim, now three, is thriving as well. Erina describes him as more intelligent and receptive than her other children because of the attention and help he has received.
When asked what he wants to do someday, the boy says he wants to be a doctor. His mother has confidence that because of his involvement with CSP, he will be able to attend school and achieve his goals.
He is the most remarkable storyteller there is. More than that, the brilliant author. He speaks and there is light. From His voice comes life.
His workmanship becomes ingrained within our being. He weaves stories into our lives. Stories of triumph, of sorrow, of sheer joy. Stories of hope.
Reading your stories of hope captivated me as well as resurrected a story of hope I have seen in my life, in a place before Compassion.
When He gave me this story, my life became enriched. My heart now scarred with such sacred radiance:
Two skinny mutts fight at the door of a church the color of mud. Children are waving off spare roosters and playing pat-a-cake with one another in the Dominican heat.
As our bus of foreigners pulls up and spills out like a car full of clowns, the children spot the cameras and jostle to pose and mug for us singing out, “una photografia!”
Soon a cacophony of arms is grabbing and hanging on me. Like my own barrelful of monkeys, reaching in my purse and pulling my hair. Soon, they’ve discovered the secret stash of suckers in my purse and a chorus of “un ballon, un ballon” surrounds me.
I visit the house of Yanelis, a girl who would be president of the drama club, if schools around here had drama clubs. On the way to her home, she skips ahead as we pass an elbowing line of moms and young men carrying buckets and jugs. The water truck has come. They haven’t had water for two weeks. At the front of the line a fight breaks out. We keep walking.
When she was younger, Yanelis would walk in the morning with her three brothers, searching for green bottles poking out of the litter-strewn ground of the batey, the old sugarcane plantation they live on.
They wouldn’t make much from the trash they found and recycled, but at least a few coins to plunk into their mom’s hand, as she scraped to feed her six kids on the six bucks her husband brought home each day. Mami would cook one big pot of rice on the stove each day and they would eat it ’till it was gone.
But Yanelis doesn’t go out to work with her brothers anymore. Now she dreams not of picking up green glass for a living, but of being a doctor. She was registered at the Compassion-assisted child development center near her home. Her mother now has hope for her daughter. She waves toward her son sitting in the corner, “My sons are already done. It’s too late for them.” We encourage them that it’s not, in fact, “too late.” But Yanelis is now the hope of her mother.
When we ask what it is she hopes for, she says, “I hope Yanelis won’t have to live the way I have lived.” Yanelis’ facetious grin assures us of this. She’s a young girl of extreme confidence who has firmly grabbed hold of the idea that she can accomplish anything with God. 
Before we go, we pray for the family, for their home. The mother hopes to patch up the home of corrugated tin and scrap wood so it won’t leak so much. Backing toward the old stove to take a picture of the family, I step in a mud puddle. The mother is tidy, but that’s just how it is when you live with a leaky roof.
As we walk back to our car, we pass four women sitting on a dusty porch. They call out, asking for me to take their picture — they’re the ones who didn’t get any water again this week.
The situation on the batey is still hard as the dirt ground, but there are now a few shards of hope gleaming out of it, like the green glass bottles poking out that Yanelis hunts for no more.
See the photo? The one at the top of the page. It was done by one of you.
Eric Chapman (aka chappyphoto) took it. He’s a friend we met by way of our Flickr group.
We liked his photos so much we asked if we could use one in our blog header. Then we asked if he wanted to write a post for us. We do that sometimes.
But enough of that. It’s time to focus your attention on what Eric says when he’s not behind a camera.
I’ll start by saying this: It’s very hard to explain impact a Compassion trip can have on a person.
For most of my life, the only thing I knew about poverty was the Sally Struthers commercials. You know, those spots from the ’80s with all the slow-motion shots of children crying. I have been given the opportunity to go with a video production crew to various countries to film the work of Compassion. In some way, I expected to see this Sally Struthers image. I was totally wrong.
I’m a sound engineer for Student Life. We produce large camps, conferences and a variety of additional resources for churches. About the time I started working there, Student Life had just partnered with Compassion. Since then we’ve always had a Compassion presentation at our events, and work to educate our attendees about what sponsoring a child means.
Last year we were sent to Uganda to interview students from Compassion’s Leadership Development Program (LDP). Our hope was that some of the students would travel with our camp teams throughout the summer and lead the Compassion presentation from stage. What better way to show the work of Compassion than to put living proof of that work on stage?
Before this trip I had already been on one Compassion video shoot, but it was a 48-hour whirlwind trip to Guatemala. It was a fast turnaround, and we were only able to see a few children. Our video focused on one child’s experience meeting her sponsor. I could see the impact Compassion was having on a single child, but what would the finished product look like? All I knew going into the Uganda trip was that LDP students had grown up through the Compassion child sponsorship program, graduated, and were then sponsored through college. These students were the cream of the crop.
We arrived in Kampala and tried to get some rest. The next morning we had our first LDP student interview. His name was James.
This was initially a typical setup for our team. We had done hundreds of interviews. What I did not know was that my life and perspective of Compassion would be changed forever by the testimony of this man.
James was more educated, well spoken and passionate about his relationship with God than I could say I have ever been. He described his childhood –- one that was riddled with loss of parents and siblings, leaving him alone to live with an aunt. He spoke of being malnourished and without hope. Then he said all that changed when he joined Compassion.
I could have probably predicted most of his interview to this point. We had asked most of the questions, and it was the picture of so many nonprofit companies and others who serve those less fortunate than most Americans. He was a child in poverty who was given a chance. It was his answer to our last question that stopped us all cold. (more…)
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