I can’t get this photo out of my head. In my job each day, I look at tons of photos from the field, but some stick with me.

Edwin Estioko, our Communication Specialist living in the Philippines, took this picture of the Camilo family. A family of eight who share this little home together. What you’re seeing is their whole home. There’s not a sitting room hiding just at the edge of this photo. That’s it. Those little children sleep lined up by each other like sardines each night.

When I was a little kid I had a nickname: Heater Legs. At night, my legs would reach roughly 375 degrees and, allegedly, flail wildly all night. My sisters would fight over who had to sleep next to Heater Legs on vacation, ‘cause it wasn’t gonna be a fun night.

I wonder if one of these cute little kids is a Heater Legs. Or a Snorer. Or a Bed Hog … umm, I guess that would be a Ground Hog in this case. And yet despite this sleeping situation, here they lie smiling. Some days this family only eats bananas. Some days they don’t eat at all. And yet when Edwin asked them to show him how they sleep, they rushed to their places, laughing and pushing each other playfully. They don’t mind it because they keep each other warm.

It reminds me of something Paul Henri, our communications specialist in Burkina Faso, said to me. Paul Henri just recently started working for Compassion; he goes out to the projects to get those great stories about how children are affected by Compassion’s ministry. And this is what he had to say about the kids he gets to meet: “Something great that I have learned from children I interview is their happiness despite poverty. They seem not to be affected by poverty. When I talk to them, I usually see a large smile on their faces. This makes me remember Jesus, who was sleeping in the stern of the boat while a storm was raging.”

These children in the Philippines and Paul Henri in Burkina Faso sure give me perspective. It’s hard to keep up my attitude of grumbling when I remember those little faces lined up on the floor. Faces that reflect joy despite the storm they’re in.

It’s not that we don’t have real problems here, too. We might be facing unemployment or divorce or infertility or cancer. Our problems are real and hard. But what I’m learning from the field is that I can’t wait for life to be perfect to live in Christ’s joy. I sometimes think that if only this one thing happened, I’d be happy. But I can’t wait to have joy and peace until my storms have passed.

Oh, for the day I can become like a child — to live each day with a kid’s playful smile on my face. To have Jesus’ peace and joy today, despite my worries, just like those cute little kids in the Philippines.

Popularity: 35% [?]

As I was perusing the news feed on my Facebook profile the other day, I stumbled upon a note posted by one of my co-workers, Greg Birgy. (Greg is Compassion’s Area Director of Advocates and Church Relationships.)

I was moved by what he wrote and thought it was worthy of reposting. So here it is,
in Greg’s own words:

I have friends in the Philippines right now. As I spent some time praying for them this morning, a strange conviction hit me.

Recently my wife and I were lamenting some of the shortcomings of our present home. We’ve been married for nine years and this is our fourth home (in our fourth state), but this is our first home without a basement. We’ve never had elaborate basements, never a fully-finished one, typically just a cement area with storage, mechanicals like the furnace, and laundry. It’s the storge space we were really missing. We like to think we live modestly, if not simply … yet we do have boxes and crates of “things” that we have to store … things like Christmas decorations, keepsakes, seasonal clothing that doesn’t fit into our closets, kids clothes that we pass from one child to the next, extra items that we don’t have space for in our kitchen cabinets, and so on.

What we do have is a crawl space under a portion of our home … a crawl space we were feeling was rather inconvenient and inadequate. This morning, in my prayer for my friends in the Philippines, I was reminded of my own visit to that country last Fall. While there I visited two different homes that required me to crawl to enter them … a first for me in all my years of visiting the poor. Two homes in which I had to bow my head even while sitting so as not to scrape the ceiling (standing wasn’t even an option.) Two homes that easily could have fit together inside the space of my “small” crawl space. Two homes that collectively had fewer light bulbs than my one crawl space. Two homes that had far fewer possessions than the “extras” I store in my crawl space.

My crawl space doesn’t flood when it rains. I’ve never seen a mouse in it, much less a rat like the one I saw while visiting one of the homes in the Philippines. While I’m sure it is inhabited by an occasional spider, it isn’t infested with cockroaches like the tiny home in Manila. The temperature in my crawl space is always moderate and vented with fresh air. In the homes in the Manila slum, the air was stagnant, humid and swelteringly hot.

I was humbled today, knowing that my crawl space is palatial compared to the homes I visited in Manila. My inconveniences are born out of my abundance … can they really be considered inconveniences? How easy it is to lose perspective and take things for granted. I’m thinking my family wouldn’t last a day trying to “live” in our crawl space together, and I wonder how long we could go on living without even missing the things we have stored there?

Thank you for the lessons in humility and gratitude today Lord … may they permeate my choices, my lifestyle, in order to love you and your people better.

It’s so easy to lose perspective, isn’t it? Especially living in a country so full of abundance. Hopefully posts like this one can help us keep a true perspective on reality and our place in this world.

Do you have a story of how God used a small, seemingly insignificant moment to radically change your perspective? I’d love to hear it!

You can also read others posted on Compassion’s Web site in the Share Your Heart section.

Popularity: 37% [?]