Moody Bible Institute scholar Tony Beltran shares his amazement and excitement about a child he met who was determined to help others, just like Tony’s sponsor.

Christian child sponsorship: kids get it.

Last week we asked if you’d be interested in receiving a Compassion magazine for kids ages 8 to 12. Many of you said, “Absolutely!”

Because of your responses, we’re moving forward and mailing our first issue this January.

And now, we’re inviting your kids to submit the following materials for a chance to be published in the magazine.

We’d like your kids to:

• Write about something special they did for their sponsored child.
• Tell about a letter they received from their sponsored child. Or share pictures.
• Describe what they have learned from their sponsored child. For example, what kinds of homes do the children live in? What do they eat? What games do they play? What are they learning in school?
• Write a poem or draw a picture related to poverty and tell us what it means to them.
• Tell about creative ways to write to their sponsored child.
• If they have a recipe or craft from a country where Compassion works, send it our way.
• If they’ve visited their sponsored child, we’d love to hear the stories and see the pictures.

You can e-mail your materials to compassionkids@us.ci.org or mail them to:

Compassion International
Attn: Magazine Editor
12290 Voyager Parkway
Colorado Springs, CO 80921

We’re excited to bring you this new magazine and excited to see the great material your kids will submit!

Let’s find out.

Beginning today and continuing through this Friday (Sept. 25), we will send out tweets about specific children in need of sponsors.

And we’d like you to retweet them for us.

When you do, you’ll be eligible to win your choice of some free Live for Him* apparel:

• T-shirts
• caps
• rings
• wristbands

Every retweet counts as an entry, and winners will be randomly selected.

Once that child is sponsored, we’ll tweet information about another child, and we’ll follow that process for the duration of the week.

UPDATE: 9:05 a.m. – When you click on the child link in a tweet and you don’t see the specific child’s biography, it means that somone is considering the sponsorship. If the sponsorship isn’t finalized within 50 minutes, the child will be visible again.

We’re developing a kids’ magazine designed to educate 8-to-12-year-olds and develop their hearts of Compassion.

This free publication will teach kids about poverty and other cultures, and encourage them to engage with children in need.

They will enjoy photos showing what a day is like for kids in other cultures, tips for writing to their families’ sponsored children, recipes, games from other countries, and more.

They will also have opportunities to contribute to the magazine by submitting their own pictures and stories.

If this sounds like something for you and your kids, please let us know. Send an email to compassionkids@us.ci.org with your contact information.

We need to hear from you soon, because we hope to launch our first issue in January!

Some of you might remember an old television show by Bill Cosby called “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Cosby interviewed kids and they described things in very lively and many times funny ways.

It wasn’t so much to have fun at the child’s expense, but really a celebration of the innocence and beauty of a little child. So, I’m curious about some of the funny things that your children have written to you.

I’ll start off with something my little 6-year-old Sheyla from Peru wrote me:

“I didn’t know you taught math; I have a question: ‘Do you like ice cream?’”

Now it’s your turn.

Are your children pretty web savvy? Do they spend a LOT of time online? I mean are they typical kids?

How about you? Are you a kid at heart?

If you said yes to any of these questions, we have some exciting news just for you.

We just launched our new kid’s Web site, Quest for Compassion, and we think that it is not only engaging but entertaining too! We love it, and are confident that your kids will as well. Not only is the site fun, but it’ll educate your youngsters all about the ministry of Compassion.

The site is designed for children between the ages of 6 and 10, and it provides a virtual opportunity for them to travel around the world — to four different countries where we work:  Ghana, Bangladesh, El Salvador and Brazil.

It helps your kiddos experience a Compassion child development center and the surrounding community, and will give them perspective on what a child’s life in the developing world is like.

Each child will “build his or her own buddy” to travel with — by choosing gender and skin color – and will be able to give the buddy a name. Then they can pick a region of the world to travel to.

Each town and country is filled with objects to click on and games to play. And with the help of their “buddies,” your world travelers can also learn key words and phrases in each country’s native language. Through these various games and fun facts, your children will get to see and hear about the life and culture of our Compassion kids around the globe.

We created the Web site through the use of real-life still shots taken in the countries where we work, which we brought to life through the use of animated children, teachers and animals that your children will meet along the way.

This is a new, fun and safe way for children, and even for you, to learn more about our ministry.

Visit the site today with your children to discover who and what awaits you! And be sure to tell us what you think.

Last week, I visited a local elementary school to read to kindergartners through second graders for the National Education Association’s Read Across America campaign. It’s the 5th year that I’ve been invited to read Dr. Seuss classics to kids. It is seriously one of the highlights of my year.

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 you open up a Dr. Seuss book, you immediately become a child yourself…and the children you are 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. Sponsoring a child gives them the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty. It gives them the chance to believe in a world where poverty comes to an end. And that is a wondrous thing indeed.