Have you ever attended a Christian event where people walked around the sanctuary or auditorium holding up a packet asking if anyone wanted to read the story of a child from El Salvador? Or have you had a mission-focused service at church where there were tables set up at the end with stacks of folders about impoverished children from all over the world? If so, you have probably connected with someone from Compassion International.
If you aren't familiar with Compassion International though, they are a ministry which seeks to aid children in poverty across the world by providing sponsors to these children to financially and spiritually support them. So in the instances described above, the envelopes that are being presented enclose a specific child's name, age, photo, and home country and invite you to sponsor that child through monthly giving, annual Christmas and birthday gifts, periodic letter writing, and prayer.
I definitely experienced situations like the above on multiple occasions over the course of my teenage years. I never really felt comfortable agreeing to sponsor a child in the moment, using the excuse that I needed to do research and pray before making the decision. Then, of course, I never actually did the research I swore I needed to do first and thus, never ended up sponsoring a child after the fact either.
However, I had a very cool experience my sophomore year of college that got my wheels spinning. The church that I was attending had advertised an event they would be hosting in the fall called the Compassion Experience.
The Compassion Experience
Basically, Compassion sends people all over the country to set up big tents in church parking lots and they have one or two different paths set up where you put a headset on and follow the tent path and learn about the real experience of a Compassion child that had been sponsored. The rooms are designed to look like the slum the child grew up in and the Compassion school they attended. You get to hear and see what it felt like for one child to be sponsored which is echoed by thousands of others. It was an incredibly cool and encouraging event.
At the end, they bring you out to a final section where hundreds of children's pictures are hung on the wall, and you can, again, choose to sponsor a child right then and there. And one of my friends actually did! I still couldn't get myself around to doing it, but it definitely stirred something in me. I knew that I was working and earning some income. I knew that I wasn't a member of a church and therefore tithing infrequently. I had money to spare for a good cause, but I just couldn't get myself to do it that day.
Well that feeling didn't go away, and months went by where I considered it over and over again. But without the immersive Compassion Experience or the impact of seeing other people sponsor children, I was not feeling super compelled. Until I met my, now, husband!
Sponsoring a Compassion Child
Soon into dating, my husband and I had a conversation about Compassion, and he divulged that he had been sponsoring a little boy since he was only a boy himself. His parents had helped him sign up as a kid to sponsor a boy that was several years younger than him, and he had been providing for this boy ever since. I trusted his judgement, and so I started to feel more comfortable with the idea of sponsoring a child myself, and the spark had returned.
Fast forward to January 2020. I wanted to do something good in the new year. So I pulled up Compassion International's website and scrolled through the many kids listed who still needed to be sponsored. My husband sat with me as I made a very tough decision of which child, out of the many in need, to sponsor. I finally allowed myself to narrow down my list to teenage girls because I felt that older children probably got picked less and that I could write letters more easily to an older child - and the letter writing was the most exciting part for me!
I also narrowed it down to West Africa as my husband's child was from a West African country, so we thought it would be cool to stay connected to that part of the world particularly if, by any chance, we were ever given the opportunity to travel and meet our children, it might be easier if they were near each other.
Eventually I did settle on a child that met the above criteria, and I have been sponsoring her ever since. I feel very blessed to financially support her monthly as well as on her birthday and Christmas, and I also enjoy writing letters to her periodically! I love receiving updated pictures and information about her in the mail. I will absolutely be supporting her until she ages out; however, there are some things I want to address that haven't been as ideal as expected.
Compassion Let-Downs
The first thing that is no one's fault, yet has impacted EVERYTHING is, of course, Covid. Covid happened soon after I began sponsoring my child which meant lots of changes in the usual Compassion processes. The main one being letter-writing (which I was sooo excited for!). It normally already takes a few months at times to get letters sent, translated , and delivered, but letter delivery was almost completely stopped during the initial 6 months or so of the pandemic. This meant that I wrote my sponsored child practically monthly but didn't hear a response back from her until months and months and months later.
Which brings me to my second slight frustration. I was so excited when I finally received that first letter response to my 6! I was excited to hear this thirteen year old girl's answers to all of my questions about her life and hear her ask me in return about interesting things in mine; however, that first letter did not live up to my large expectations.
While my husband received full page, handwritten letters from his sponsored child, I received a template with filled out answers from mine. And, more recently, I received a letter from the Compassion workers at her center on her behalf because she was elsewhere for school. I understand that my child may not be at the same reading and writing level as a similar thirteen year old here in the US, but I still wanted handwritten, freeform responses.
I mainly wish I understood why and how this differed from country to country or if it's based on the child. I, of course, still love hearing from my child, but I send incredibly personalized letters and receive very formulaic ones in response with none of my questions ever answered.
In the End
While I have my minor frustrations with the process of letter-writing and Covid's impact, I do believe that my money and love are going toward supporting a child in need. The Compassion Experience convinced me of it, and mine and my husband's experiences continue to solidify those feelings.
Are you interested in learning more or sponsoring a child? Check out the Compassion International website here. Do you already sponsor a child but struggle to know what to write to them? Check out this link for ideas, and let me know in the comments if you want to hear about my formula for letter writing!
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