Last week a small group of us stood in Juan’s yard in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, to learn more about him and his family’s life. This was part of a sponsor tour home visit and seven of us branched off from the rest of the group to visit Juan.

The air was hot and still with some pesky flies and mosquitoes buzzing around. Juan’s wife, Brenda, did most of the talking. They have three children, and all of them were sponsored in the local Compassion child development centers. Three is the maximum number of children from one family that can be enrolled, so that alone told me they were in a desperate situation.

A few from the group sat in some plastic chairs in front of their 12 x 12 single-room house made of scrap boards, cinder blocks and a rusting tin roof. We asked questions about their kids, their jobs, their hopes and dreams, etc. One of their sons and two other local boys were high above us in the branches of the mamón tree, gathering the small fruit to eat or sell, causing small branches and leaves to fall around us from time to time.

At most homes we visit on these trips we are welcomed inside. It was different here. Brenda was embarrassed about how little they had, ashamed of their poverty. We all knew that Juan and his family were not less than us; they just have less than us. Despite that, their poverty has begun to work in their minds and hearts to cause feelings of shame and embarrassment over their situation.

When we realized this, it was uncomfortable, and we quickly tried to lighten the conversation. We asked how we could pray for them and specifically for Juan — and even then it was Brenda who answered for him. Not wanting to make the meeting so one-sided, we encouraged them to ask questions of us. Most times, the questions we get are pretty light: does it snow where we live, what church do we attend, etc. I wasn’t prepared for the weight of the question when Juan finally spoke:

“For you, when you help take care of our children, is it easy for you, or is it a sacrifice?”

It’s easy to get caught up in life in America, the richest country and culture in the history of the world. And by American standards, perhaps I am sacrificing to help children like Juan’s. We don’t have cable, we own and share one car, and we try to curb our desire for new clothes and other things, buying stuff second hand when we can.

But looking at Juan and Brenda and all they have to do to care for their children, the truth, the absolute truth, is that I know nothing of sacrifice. I have never faced the choices they face daily, and I probably never will. I don’t have to choose between medicine for a sick child and food for the rest of the family. It wouldn’t even cross my mind to sacrifice my young child’s education to get him out earning money for the family. I brush up against poverty on these trips, and we sponsor several children and donate in other areas, but looking at their lives it is clear that what we do is easy and requires no true sacrifice on our part.

It is I who should be embarrassed and ashamed, not Juan and Brenda.

Lord Jesus, show me more and more how I can serve you with all that I am, how to truly sacrifice, how to truly lay down my life for others, for You.

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Meet Jeffry. He lives in Nicaragua . . . uh, wait a minute. We’ve explained that already.

From left to right: Mark Hanlon, Compassion’s senior vice president of sponsor and donor development, Jeffry and Jeffry’s grandparents

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Meet Jeffry. He lives in Nicaragua. He is our one millionth registered child.

A registered child is different than a sponsored child in that the registered child doesn’t have a sponsor . . . yet. Once the registered child gets a sponsor, that child is a sponsored child. Makes sense, right?

The registered children are the ones whose pictures you see on the sponsor a child page at compassion.com and in the child packets at concerts and other events, such as Compassion Sunday.

The registered children are the children who are waiting to be chosen by a sponsor and who the Unsponsored Children’s Fund assists until that sponsor comes along. The Unsponsored Children’s Fund bridges the gap between registration and sponsorship. It allows the registered child to have all the same benefits as the sponsored child.

We don’t have one million children waiting for sponsors. Jeffry is the one millionth child concurrently registered. More than 850,000 of those children already have sponsors. And since Compassion began in 1952, nearly two million children have been part of our programs.

That’s a little context for this post that Mark Hanlon, Compassion’s senior vice president of sponsor and donor development, submitted from Nicaragua yesterday.

It was like so many other Compassion child home visits I’d done before (and in my 28 years at Compassion, I’ve done a few!), but this one seemed to hold a bit of extra anticipation and excitement for me.

I happened to be in Nicaragua two weeks after we had registered our millionth child for the very first time. It turns out that this millionth child is a little 3-year-old boy in Nicaragua. The office staff there was so excited, and they set up a home visit for me to meet little Jeffry.

It was kind of strange because Jeffry had no idea what a historic milestone he is in the history of Compassion. In fact, when I got there with several of the Compassion Nicaragua staff and some of the center staff, he was totally overwhelmed. Too much attention by too many grown-ups all at once - and he did what many normal little 3-year olds do - he covered up his eyes with his hands (a la “see no evil”) and pretended we weren’t there! When his grandmother (who is his caregiver since his mother now lives in the U.S. and couldn’t take him with her) tried to get him to take his hands away from his face, he ran away crying.

That was OK. We shifted our focus to the grandmother and asked her questions about the impact of having Jeffry registered in the program at the church. She talked about the hope and a future she had for Jeffry to get through high-school and maybe even go to university. She expressed concern over his health and the health of her husband who has diabetes. She talked about the challenges of supporting a household of 17 adults and children in her dirt floor, cinder block structure in the heart of economically challenged Managua. Her husband (the diabetic) and her three sons work hard as day laborers - when there is work - and they have terrible difficulty in making ends meet. She wanted better for her little grandson, Jeffry.

Then it struck me that this visit indeed was like most other visits I’d done. Parents (and grandparents) worldwide want the same thing for their children - a better future than what they have. It didn’t matter one bit to Jeffry or his grandmother that he is Compassion’s millionth child. What did matter is that they now have some hope. And now, I really was excited to be there! Not because I got to meet the millionth child in his home, but because I got to see something that Compassion gets to be a part of with the local church every day. Releasing a motherless child, living in extreme poverty, living with 16 other people, from poverty in Jesus’ name. Now that’s something to get excited about!

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