Frustration mounts as I open my car door and step into a large puddle that covers my shoes. The wind blows my umbrella inside out and I grit my teeth to keep my tongue from sin.

I can’t believe how much rain has fallen! The freezing wind bites, the cold rain soaks my clothes, and I am so over it! Weathermen may rejoice in breaking precipitation records, but I do not!

I turn the key in the security door, hit one button for light and another for warmth, change into slippers, and sort through the mail. I’m excited to see I have a letter from one of my sponsored kids.

I open it and see the familiar white and green paper that indicates it’s from Ethiopia, and I can almost quote what is written without reading a word. There’s the standard greeting, he’s fine, am I well, he’s being going to church, please pray for his studies, and please pray for rain for the crops.

I toss the letter on the couch and move on with my day. I’ve read it all before, and as a city girl the request for rain means little to me. I figure that maybe it’s just a sentence the teacher wrote on the blackboard and once again it’s been copied. A generic, meaningless, space filler.

I pray for this boy but forget about the rain for the crops, because surely the requests I can think of are more important than rain.

Sunday comes and the rain still falls. At church a sponsor targets me to ask what the ministry is doing about the drought and famine in Ethiopia and Kenya. I shrug and say I’m not in Marketing, but I’m sure we are there helping already.

Try as I might the Holy Spirit doesn’t allow me to shrug this off. So I Google Ethiopia and famine and read news article after news article about the years of drought and current famine invading Africa with its friends starvation and death.

I go to work to hear from the CEO that we are there helping, and I’m proud that we are in the middle of this crisis — but I’m ashamed of myself.

I may be a city girl and I may never grow a vegetable in my life, but this does not excuse me of pride that ignores my sponsored son’s request for prayer support for something so important in his life, in his country, in his family’s survival. May God forgive me of my arrogance.

Learn from my lesson. Always pray for the requests your sponsored children and students send you. Especially when they don’t make sense. Especially when you think you know better. Especially because they ask.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

A few weeks ago, Compassion supported TOMS Shoes’ worldwide campaign called “A Day Without Shoes.”

The idea was for each of us to take off our shoes for 24 hours to learn what reality is like for the 300 million children around the world who don’t have a pair of shoes, to raise awareness for these young ones, and to encourage individuals to get involved – either by buying a pair of TOMS (for every pair you purchase, they give a pair of shoes to a child who doesn’t have any) or by providing shoes to a child directly.

How was my day without shoes?

I hated it.

You have no idea how badly I want to sugarcoat the experience. Not for you, but for me. I’m totally ashamed that I spent the day feeling so miserable. But miserable I was.

The day of the campaign brought a morning of intense rain, crazy wind, and tornado watches in northwest D.C. Inconvenient on a good day. But did I mention that I don’t have a car? And that it was cold? And that I was scheduled to go to a policy briefing with political and academic leaders?

I didn’t go.

Yes, that’s right. A hardcore professional with workaholic tendencies, I played hooky that morning. All because I didn’t want to walk in the rain and show up at a briefing in my suit and drenched, dirty feet. I thought it would make me look bad.

But it gets better. I managed to not leave my house until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

What finally dragged me out the door? The rain had stopped and I desperately needed groceries. Stomachs are powerful influencers.

One other thing inspired me to go outside: people. Specifically, the people from all over the world who were manning up on a much grander scale than I was and posting stories of their experiences online.

• One lady went through airport security and traveled from the west to east coast, barefoot the entire time.
• One woman spoke of landing in her hometown in northern Canada and joyfully sprinting through the snow to make it home before her toes froze. (Joyfully was her word, not mine.)
• College kids shared about being harassed by professors and security personnel for not wearing shoes, and some were even getting kicked out of their classrooms for “lack of hygiene” or being “unsanitary.”
• A few people reported that they were denied access to grocery stories and other shops.

Everyone else seemed to be having the time of their life, so I decided I could make it half a mile to the grocery store.

Along the way, I realized something I should have remembered at the beginning of the day: I live in D.C. Most people are way too busy to notice that you might not be wearing shoes.

During the one-mile round-trip walk to the store and my time shopping inside, only one person noticed my feet — and this was a teenage girl who didn’t bother to ask me about it.

Maybe she was worried I would ask for money?

My initial fear of rejection and hypothermia out of the way, I grabbed my jacket and headed for the bus. I needed to trek across town for my small group that met that evening, and the metro stop I wanted to catch was two and a half miles away.

I waited for the bus for about 20 minutes. People definitely noticed my feet but no one said anything. I’m no germaphobe, but taking a public bus and a public metro rail in your bare feet will quickly change that. Where everyone else had walked that day was suddenly something I felt a need to speculate about in great detail.

I was annoyed that my feet were cold and wet from the rain. I was becoming increasingly paranoid that someone wouldn’t look where they were going and step on my feet. Mostly I was angry with myself for thinking that life without a car was a good idea, financial and urban-transit prudence aside.

I arrived across town in one piece, both feet still intact. Along the way I was a bit surprised to discover that escalators hurt your feet more than sticks and stones, and the mental trepidation of fearing that a 250-pound man will step on your foot is much worse than when it actually happens.

Armed with newfound faith in my ability to handle the streets with my feet a la carte, I picked my way around a winding sidewalk and across a large parking lot covered in gravel to the church where my group was meeting.

Ironically, the evening at church turned out to be the most difficult part of the day. Inside and warm, I was peppered with questions about why on earth I was walking around without shoes. As I energetically jumped into an explanation, I watched my friends’ faces take on that “We think you’re crazy but probably won’t say so out loud” expression.

I half expected, or maybe just hoped, that someone would offer me a ride home afterwards, but they all took one last look at my feet and  disappeared one at a time without saying anything more.

It was a sobering moment for me, wondering how my own church (which I love and know is filled with people who love Jesus and actively live that out in their love for others) would respond to someone who walked in the door with bare, dirty feet.

The end of the day found me walking two and a half miles home from the return metro stop. It was a nice night but, inconveniently, one on which half the bus drivers apparently didn’t show up for work.

Fortunately, by then I was coming to terms with what it means to walk barefoot through a big city and I was no longer trying to come up with excuses for why it would be wise of me to stop by a shoe store on the way home.

I can’t say that my day without shoes had much of an impact on anyone else.

It did, however, have a very significant impact on me.

Every single worry I had? I only had to deal with it for a day.

But on a daily basis, with no end in sight and no reason to believe their reality will ever change, how many people do you suppose stay inside and can’t go to work on days filled with rain or storms because they don’t have a pair of shoes?

How many kids are refused access to school or to a grocery store? How many kids end up with diseases that kill or seriously threaten their health, all because of a disease or fungus they picked up while navigating the streets in their bare feet?

One day before, I’d had this funny illusion that since I owned only about 12 pairs of shoes, I was living the simple life.

I am astounded by how much I take for granted. And I’m determined that life doesn’t have to be like this forever.

I am making a commitment to not buy another pair of shoes unless I also buy a pair for a child who doesn’t have any. Care to join me?

“The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth. The opposite of poverty is enough.” –Wess Stafford

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

This has been a busy year. Our world is in turmoil and much of that turmoil is affecting Compassion’s work.

Here’s a snapshot of the things I’ve reported over the past 11 months:

military rebellion, slum fire, dengue fever outbreak, H1N1 virus outbreak, flooding, strike, civil conflict, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heavy rains, political unrest, hotel bombings, protests and violence, typhoons, meningitis outbreak, polio outbreak, cholera outbreak, famine, landslide, tribal war, ferry sinking, riots.

As an organization entirely dependent on your trust, we have made a commitment to be honest and transparent in everything we do. This means, among other things, that we do our best to let you know as soon as possible when your child is affected by a crisis or disaster.

In a perfect world, here’s how the process would work:

• Within 24 hours of a crisis, our Field Communications Specialist (FCS) submits a crisis report via e-mail. This e-mail comes to an inbox that I check regularly.
• As soon as I receive this e-mail, I determine whether funds will need to be raised to provide relief, and summarize the report and e-mail it to our partner countries (the countries where the sponsors live).
• Meanwhile, the FCS is in contact with the Partnership Facilitators (PF), field-based staff members who are contacting our affected church partners.
• The FCS then submits a follow-up report via e-mail, with further details from the PFs about which centers are affected, how they are affected, and any other relevant details, photos or video.
• As soon as the church partners are able to provide specific information on registered children, the FCS e-mails that information to me. I do a quality check and then forward that information to the partner countries.
• Each partner country then contacts all the sponsors with affected children to let them know the status of their child.

Seems pretty cut and dried, right? And often, the process works exactly as I just described it.

However, as we all know, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes a disaster will wreak havoc on the field’s end, thus affecting our communications process.

Let’s take the recent typhoons in the Philippines as an example.

Typhoon Ketsana hit the Philippines on Sept. 26. Almost 17 inches of rain fell in 12 hours, halting any semblance of normal life, flooding everything in sight, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more.

Roads were destroyed, electricity was out and much of the country was underwater, neck-deep in some places.

Eighteen of Compassion’s staff members in the Philippines office (more than half) were personally affected by the flooding (including the FCS responsible for sending the crisis report).

After the typhoons, every single staff person in the Philippines office was involved in the relief efforts and for a time, Compassion’s entire staff put their regular duties on hold in order to help those in desperate need.

During disasters like this, while you are anxious to hear news about your child, keep in mind that many unforeseen and unavoidable things can occur, hindering good communication. Grace, patience, understanding and flexibility are critical.

Here are some things that might affect the communication process after a crisis:

• Getting information from the field to the partner countries isn’t always the No. 1 priority.

  After a disaster, the highest priorities are critical needs such as shelter, clean water and food. Communication sometimes takes a back seat to meeting basic needs in life and death situations.

• It’s not just the sponsored children who are affected. Sometimes the staff members themselves are in need.

  While our staff members are trying to address the immediate needs of our registered children, they also must take care of their own families and homes.

• Communication tools are not available.

  The infrastructure in developing countries is much less stable than in the developed world. For instance, telephone and electricity were out throughout Manila, remaining out for weeks in some places. Communicating with the church partners was difficult, and in some cases, impossible.

• Different cultures put different importance on time.

  Many countries where we work are not time-oriented the way we are in the United States. Time requirements do not have the same importance as they do here.

Despite this, you can be confident in our commitment to share accurate information with you as quickly as possible after a crisis. It’s just that sometimes this may take longer than we’d like.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Put simply, I don’t understand want. I learned that today.

I’m a member of a local CSA farm here in Colorado, which stands for Community Support Agriculture. You buy a “share” of a local farm for one season, supporting the farm and receiving produce each week, but also buying into the risk of farming.

It’s a great way to support small local farms, eat delicious melons, and attend fall pumpkin festivals at a farm.

If you’re from around here, you know that parts of Colorado are pretty close to a desert. Many people, upon arriving in Colorado (expecting to see green mountain meadows and purple mountain majesties), respond, “It’s so brown.” (I happen to love the brown, thank you very much.)

Until recently, we’d only gotten a little over three inches of rain all year long. Then, in just two days, we got over four inches and a hearty dose of hail for good measure.

And all my melons, oh my sweet melons, and luscious tomatoes and sweet peppers from my CSA farm were destroyed in one fell swoop.

This pains me. I live for tomatoes. Really. I get more excited about summer heirloom tomatoes and Colorado cantaloupe than many things in life. But now the crops are all gone.

I’m glad I joined this farm – it will help them stay afloat this year despite the hit. And if I really want a tomato or a melon, I’ll just go to the farmer’s market on Saturday and stock up.

Immediately after receiving the email about the hail on the CSA farm, I read a story of a farming family in Ethiopia. It’s been raining erratically there. And if the rain doesn’t come, they’ll lose all their crops too.

Only they can’t bike down to the local farmer’s market and just buy more if they fail. They can’t go stock up at King Soopers or Winn Dixie. That’s it for them. They really don’t know what they’ll do. They’re already only eating one small serving of injera, Ethiopian flatbread, a day.

I’ve never been in that situation. There’s always been another option. And I realize that I really have no idea what it’s like to want.

I just watched a cell phone commercial that leaned on the old cliche of not wasting food “because there are children starving in other countries,” likening it to wasting cell phone minutes, because there are others around the world who don’t have as many cell phone minutes as we do. Only in our very isolated, comfortable context could we make this comparison as a joke.

Hunger and want are so unreal and unknown to us that we don’t even blink an eye at it because the want in the world is unknown or unpersonal to us.

So what are we to do?

All I can do is ask God to help me to remember how blessed I am and that he blessed me for a reason. I can ask God to help me in a very small way to understand the plight of those around the world who know want all too well, and to have compassion for them.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Despite the fact that there are only three days left in this work week, it feels as though there is two weeks worth of work to be done. I will be putting the finishing touches on the proposal today and will be presenting it to the marketing “big-wigs” on Thursday.

The presentation is weighing heavily on my mind for a number of different reasons. For starters, it will be the first, and potentially only, chance that I have in front of such an influential audience here at Compassion.

Secondly, I simply want to do well. This project is close to my heart and I want to do it justice. I don’t just want to sell it. I want to inspire my audience to feel as passionately about it as I do and see the vision that I have for it. I don’t want them to merely associate this proposal with “the intern’s project,” but instead I want them to think that “this is where Compassion could go; this is what Compassion should do.”

While there are other matters that seem to float aimlessly around in my thoughts, the most important and imperative at the moment is the question of my immediate future. I have applied for several positions here at Compassion, but as of today, have yet to hear back. And waiting patiently is not my forte.

As is usually the case, the Lord revealed a scripture to me last week that has brought some much needed comfort and strength. In Isaiah 43:18-19 it says “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! … I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (NIV).

I don’t think we give God enough credit for being creative in terms of humor. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, while driving towards Denver, I made the comment to my friends that the terrain of Colorado was surprising in that it was much dryer and less lush than I envisioned it to be.

“That’s because this is desert land,” Molly said.

“But there are mountains,” I replied.

She half laughed. “There can still be mountains in desert lands,” she informed me kindly.

Not to be completely outsmarted, I Googled “Colorado topography” later that evening. Sure enough, the entire eastern portion of the state lies within the borders of the “great plains,” a large, high-plains region known for its dry, arid climate and lack-luster vegetation.

So what does Colorado topography have to do with my future?

In case you haven’t seen the weather channel, it has been raining here for the past week straight. This desert land has been recently refreshed. Standing water can been seen in the deep ravines by the highways, an uncommon occurrence here, especially during this time of year.

In the same way that the Lord rains down life and renewal to the earth in its time of need, so too does He promise to reign down the blessing of His perfect provision in our time of need as well.

I don’t know what door He will open in the coming weeks. I don’t know where He will lead me to work or what He will lead me to do. But I do know that in the midst of my Moses-like desert experience, He will bring forth water from the rocks and manna from the heaven.

In church this past Sunday, my pastor finished a sermons series on the twenty-third chapter of Psalms. In the last verse, David says that “surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life” (ESV).

The terms “goodness” and “mercy” will all mean different things to different people based upon their circumstances and what the Lord wants to show them individually. However, the universal message is this: surely they will come to all of us. Surely, Will, and All. Three big words. One big promise.

For those who have journeyed with me, thank you. I will continue to keep you posted on how things are going. Your company, comments, and words of encouragement have brought peace, joy, and hope that I can not begin to describe. My hope is that you continue to walk with Him, seek Him, and know Him more everyday. And if you find yourself in the desert one day, I pray that He would grant you the strength of faith to wait patiently for the rain.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates