Will you respond when calamity knocks? When a poor child has no defenses? When she’s cornered by the bullies of poverty?

Remember my story about how much it blessed me to spend time with Richmond? Well, guess what – that opportunity is knocking FOR YOU!

As part of our Moody Scholarship program, the students have opportunities to speak at various events throughout the country. (If you’ve ever had the chance to hear them, then blessed are you! If you haven’t – I hope you have an opportunity soon.)

Summertime is especially busy for our young speakers because they have a break from school and because summer is when many events and festivals occur.

Anyway, the challenge we face this summer is to find housing for the students. We’re collecting contact information for folks who want to help by hosting one of these amazing Leadership Development Program graduates.

If you are interested in hosting a student during the summer or during an upcoming school break, or even just being a friend to them while they are studying at Moody, please e-mail me at moodymasters@us.ci.org. I expect we will have two students to host for the entire summer and, hopefully, three students for a few weeks at the end of the summer.

We prefer that you live in Colorado Springs or Denver because we want the students to be close to our Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs, but if we can’t find help in our area, then we’ll have to find help somewhere else!

As I mentioned before – everything with the Moody Scholarship program is brand new, so we have a lot of learning to do and lots of ground to break! Please consider this your formal invitation to grab a shovel and help us break some ground.

Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers, doesn’t mention Compassion once. But it’s all about what Compassion does: We transform lives by giving children in poverty opportunities to succeed.

Outliers are men and women who do things out of the ordinary. And in the book Gladwell delves into what makes outliers successful.

Conventional wisdom says success comes from drive, skill and talent, which is true, but not by themselves. Drive, skill and talent aren’t worth a dime without opportunity. Success is a team sport.

“When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It’s because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances.” – Malcom Gladwell

Outliers looks at the success of geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars, athletes and software programmers. And the common denominator in all the examples of success Gladwell gives, the foundational bedrock in EVERY SINGLE CASE, is that an opportunity was made available – because of geography, timing, economics, circumstance, etc.

But you shouldn’t have to read Outliers to see that. You can keep reading this blog … because opportunity is what Compassion is all about.

• Lives Transformed
• Geography Lessons
• It’s About More Than Survival
• Leadership Development in the Dominican Republic
• Anthony Njoroge: a life changed by opportunity

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P.S. Outliers is a fun book to read. It’s quick and engaging. The stories are extremely interesting, and Gladwell is a smooth and persuasive storyteller. I enjoyed this book more than The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I liked.

In the high mountains of Northern Thailand lives an extraordinary tribe who have no written history and whose way of life is disappearing with the forests.

They knew only how to survive in the deep jungle, building homes from fresh banana leaves. They would sleep on the leaves and use them as a roof to protect from the rain and dew at night.

If they could not find food in the area nearby, they would move on deeper into the forest. They would wander in the forest, staying together in small groups. Education, a house, and clothing were of no value to them, as they had no use for these things living in the forest.

The isolated tribe was also afraid of strangers. If they met any outsiders, they moved away immediately, like spirits. They lived like this for centuries, the last nomadic tribe to survive in the northern forests of Thailand and Laos. (more…)

Poverty is multi-faceted. It is much more intricate than just a lack of money.

And like many other aspects of poverty, HIV and AIDS have the ability to take a frightening toll on children.

Today is World AIDS Day, and I’m taking it as an opportunity to let you know how committed we are to fighting the disease.

It begins with our AIDS Initiative program, which is working on a grassroots level through the local church to take on the AIDS pandemic, one child at a time.

Ok, pause.

AIDS Initiative, pandemic, poverty . . . I don’t like throwing around these words. It is easy to just roll over the keyboard and punch out the words. But can you imagine? I mean really, can you even imagine what it is like to be infected with HIV or affected by AIDS?

To better understand the effect HIV and AIDS have on people, particularly people in the developing world, and to get a better glimpse into what the Lord is doing through Compassion, I think we need to unpack a few details. I hope your mind is engaged and your heart is prepared because I am about to give you just that.

Now, as I was saying, our AIDS Initiative works to aid one child at a time. For example, this child:

(more…)

Last week, I was in Mexico. On a sponsor tour. And I saw the deepest, darkest poverty of my life.

But I didn’t have to travel to ME, the abbreviation we use when referring to Mexico, to see it. I only had to look at me.

I was in Mexico for the wrong reason. I didn’t go for the children, to become a stronger, more passionate voice for them. To serve them better. To serve you better. I went because I like to travel. I went for me.

There certainly are solid business reasons for me to have gone on the trip, but I didn’t get out of my own way long enough to realize them. I hate that.

How do I redeem the opportunity God gave me and that I squandered? (more…)