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…)

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Story by Barb Liggett, Global Strategy Office Intern

Just crossing the finish line of Colorado’s U.S. Trail National Championship June 29 in Steamboat Springs was quite a feat on its own. Winning an age-group division in this 12-kilometer race was even more of an accomplishment. But what really qualifies Tim Smith as a champion is succeeding in all this with a symbol plastered across his chest to represent the millions of impoverished children around the world.

Tim is a Mail Services Specialist at the Global Ministry Center (GMC) in Colorado. As he says, he is “deeply passionate about and committed to our work … to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.”

Tim is a prolific runner and runs as passionately as he works. He approaches both his job and his races with fervor because in his mind these two worlds are not isolated.

The U.S. Trail National Championship was the 10th race he competed in since March 2007 while wearing his jersey and representing Compassion — clearly Tim utilizes running as an opportunity to speak up for children living in the bondage of poverty.

How many eyes saw his Compassion jersey as he warmed up, raced and recovered?

How many individuals wondered about Compassion or for the first time considered the harsh reality of poverty that affects so many today?

Neither Tim nor anyone else may ever know the results of his choice to race in that jersey. All Tim can stand on is that we are all called to “seek justice,” “encourage the oppressed,” and “defend the cause of the fatherless” (Isaiah 1:17) in every area of life. The results are not our responsibility.

Tim’s grass-roots advocacy captures the core of Compassion’s desire: to break hearts for the poor in a way that permeates who we are and causes us constantly to remember the voiceless.

Not only that, but as Tim explains, “I wear the Compassion shirt because my desire is to honor Compassion and the ministry. … I use the shirt as a platform upon which I can witness to other athletes that I come in contact with.”

Not only could his jersey cause people to consider the poor, but it presents an opportunity for Tim to share with other runners the purpose Christ has given his life. Wearing a Compassion shirt is a simple act, but God uses nonglamorous obedience to further His kingdom.

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Have you been following the discussion on this post - Why We Can’t End Poverty?

It’s been lively, deep, heated, tense, stimulating, frustrating and just simply down home good. We like honesty.

The comment thread birthed a related, but new subject. We’d like to give our new baby its own home.

Welcome!

Let us know what you think. Why does poverty exist?

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Poverty is hard to grasp. Living amongst plenty, those seven letters (p-o-v-e-r-t-y) can be like abstract little bubbles floating in the air, not tethered down to anything real or concrete.

Have you ever experienced something here in the States that really made you get it?

Several months ago here at Compassion, we had a speaker at our weekly chapel. He had a pitcher full of 30,000 bbs. He told us about how 30,000 children under 5 die each day of preventable causes. Now, I’m no stranger to numbers. I could rattle off the numbers of poverty till your eyes cross.

But this speaker slowly poured 30,000 bbs into a metal basin as we sat and listened. Each ping that represented a life was like getting stuck by a pin. And they kept coming and coming and coming. Just as you thought there surely couldn’t be any more, that he must be nearing the end of the bbs, they just kept pouring. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.

And for all my knowledge of numbers, this left me undone. God used the experience to break through my heart’s armor of cold, sterile numbers to soften it to the reality of human suffering.

I wrote Hope Lives with a prayer that God would use it to soften others’ hearts toward what he cares about so deeply. Now I’m writing a follow-up to this book that will help small groups experience and pray for the needs in this world.

So I need your help! Have you experienced something at your church or with your youth group or with your family that really helped you empathize with those in need or understand what poverty means? For example, I know of some families who have tried to eat for one day spending just $1, the amount millions of families around the world live on each day. I know another Compassion employee who used this photo as the artwork over his dining room table.

What great ideas do you have that you would like to share? How did your experience effect you?

Fine print: OK, my publisher said I need to include this here: By sharing your idea, you’re giving me permission to use this idea in publication without any form of compensation, other than my deepest gratitude and eternal friendship.

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“The opposite of poverty is enough.”

Have you heard us say this before?

Answer first, before reading on. (more…)

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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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We get half as many visits on Saturday as we do other days, so we’re trying something new - half a sentence. Please finish it for us.

Poverty is . . .

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In an effort to keep you from becoming emotionally disconnected …

This video, featured on Washingtonpost.com, is the most effective video I have seen yet on the global food crisis, in terms of showing the awful reality of poverty.

As I learn more about this crisis, I am increasingly convinced that THIS - the global food crisis - is our opportunity to live out Proverbs 3:27-28.

Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbor, “Come back later; I’ll give it tomorrow” — when you now have it with you. (NIV)

Although Compassion does not currently work in Mauritania, we do work in 24 other countries where you can make a difference.

What will you do?

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I sponsor a boy in Haiti named Youvens. In the seven years I’ve sponsored him, I’ve never, ever seen him smile.

Even when I visited Haiti and brought him a soccer ball. No smile. He played soccer with me, ate lunch with me and never let go of the ball. But he never smiled.

It’s understandable. He lives in one of the most poverty-stricken places on earth. I’ve seen the devastation in that country, and I can’t imagine what he’s been through in his short life.

As I’m sure you can see, Youvens is a very sad, serious child.

This past January my friend Mark was going to Haiti and so I asked him to take a birthday present to Youvens.

A couple weeks later I got this photo.

That smile is all the proof I need that my sponsorship makes a difference.

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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. 

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