5 Bible Verses About Hope for Hard Times
Life is hard, and in troubling times, hope can feel impossible. Luckily, in those moments, the God of hope is near to us, ready to lift our heads and turn our eyes to the brighter future ahead. If you’re struggling, there’s hope to be found in God’s Word. Below, you’ll find five Bible verses about hope in hard times and learn how to apply them in any situation. A
Continue Reading ›By the Calendar: 12 Ideas for Writing to the Child You Sponsor in 2022
As the new year begins, I’m always thinking about the calendar. It’s probably because of the yearly planning we all tend to do. (Got to get after those goals, am I right?) Or maybe it’s because every year for the past 16 years I’ve received a wall calendar for Christmas from a dear friend. Whatever the case, a good wall calendar or even a digital calendar that you keep up-to-date online can help you prepare for the year to come. Here’s how keeping a calendar helps me figure out when it’s best for me to write to the child I sponsor.
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What Happens When an Unsponsored Child Needs Emergency Care?
Here’s how ministry supporters helped Compassion to step in and offer support for 4-year-old Yoskiel and his family in Indonesia when he was diagnosed with eye cancer at age 3 — just a few months after he joined our program and didn’t yet have a sponsor.
These Aren’t Your Mother’s Child’s Milestones
Whether they are from the United States, Brazil, the Philippines or Ghana, every child in the world has at least this one thing in common — they grow up! And as they do, according to their culture’s customs and traditions, they celebrate and memorialize certain rights of passage or milestones. These celebrations honor the transition from one stage of development to the next.
Children’s Birthdays Are a Big Deal — and Not Just for Kids
Kids sure do love their birthdays. As I write this, my wife and I are in the midst of planning a birthday party for our two sons. They are turning 9 and 7. Their birthdays are within two weeks of each other, and since they are so close in age, they share many of the same friends. So, we’re able to do a bit of a two-for-one deal.
4 Ways Letter Writing Benefits You and the Child You Sponsor
OK, so I need to make a confession … I’m not as good as I should be at writing letters to my sponsored child. And I make all sorts of reasonable excuses for it, too:
“My life is already so busy with my work and kids that it’s hard to find the time.” “I feel like I just wrote a letter a couple months ago.” (It was 10 months ago.) “I need to wait until I have more to say.” “My letters don’t really matter anyway.”
This is What Happens When You Send a Letter to the Child You Sponsor
In the United States, we don’t really think about it much because it’s so easy — you mail a letter or a package, and a few days later it arrives in the mailbox or on the doorstep of the person you sent it to. But mail and package delivery in the developing world is quite a bit more complex. And because we take child protection so seriously, there is a series of checks and hand-offs that happen at the national Compassion offices all they way down to your child’s local center.
Why Aren’t My Sponsored Child’s Letters as Engaging as I Hoped?
Why are some letters from sponsored children personal and relational while others feel formulaic and impersonal? In this article, we think through some of the reasons this might be your experience and refocus our hearts on the purpose of letter writing.
8 Verses to Pray Over the Child You Sponsor
These are uncertain times. Here are eight scriptures to guide you as you pray for the faith, safety and strength of the child you sponsor.
How NOT To Help Kids in Need
What if, in our desire to help kids in need, our efforts actually hurt children living in poverty? Here is how NOT to help kids in need.
Strangers Shared the Love to Mend Her Broken Heart
This past Valentine’s Day, 12-year-old Irene in Burkina Faso had a broken heart. But she wasn’t the only one. In fact, her mom, dad, brother, grandmother, aunt and her friends felt hopeless and grieved. They all believed this radiant and loving young girl might soon die.
