I feel incredibly lucky that my family and I can afford to sponsor two children in other countries. Every month we pay £50 to Compassion.org so that two children can be part of a Christian program which enables them to be schooled, enjoy fun activities, attend life skills courses, benefit from supplemental nutrition if they need it and receive gifts on important dates.
I often find that when I mention child sponsorship most people agree that it is a wonderful thing to do and then they quickly tell me how they wish they could afford it. Let me just assure you we are not rich, not by any means. In fact I'm wiling to bet that we earn less than 90% of you reading this but we are all different and we make our own choices and that's OK. So as I say we are not rich, well not in a monetary sense anyway, we are however incredibly rich in all that we have in our life and particularly being able to support these two children.
Carl Henri, from Hiati has been a part of our lives since 2005 and through his letters and photos we have watched him grow and mature. He is now 15 and when his most recent letter arrived I cried as it was such a blessing to hear him say he loved us and prayed for us. He then updated us on his news and asked for prayer and talked about his church and the choir he belongs to. Like us he goes to a Baptist church and it felt special to know we have this common ground. From the immature drawings of a red car that we often used to find on our letters to the letters he now pens himself and requests our prayers in he is growing into a lovely young man.
We also sponsor Priya but this only started in 2012, so this is a relatively new relationship and I feel we are still in the early stages of developing a bond. Priya is 10 and lives in India and we choose her as she shares a birthday with our JJ and my dh had just returned from a mission trip to India.
As a Christian we believe that tithing (or giving) is something which is of the utmost importance and it is something we do before we have met our bills and thought about the 'norms' of our everyday life, like whether the girls can do a dance class (they don't) or JJ can attend judo (he doesn't either, but he hopes to). We like to have the children involved by getting them to do drawings r help to write the letters, this gives them a sense of what is happening in the world and helps them to develop their compassion for others.
We sponsor through Compassion as we are Christians and it is important to us that we invest our money in an organisation that we believe to be honourable and working to the same life principles and ethos as us. Some people are sceptical of child sponsorship programs but there is evidence to suggest the schemes work and certainly we feel comfortable with our decision to spend money in this manner.
Other large reputable providers of child sponsorship include - Plan UK, World Vision and ActionAid
I'd urge you to think about what a difference you could make to a child living in poverty. Some of the schemes start from as little as £3.50 per week.
This post HAS NOT been sponsored in any way.
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