Guess what I got?

A new letter and photo from Heidi (the little girl we sponsor through Compassion International,) that's what! I get so excited when I see the envelope that I know has a letter from her inside. Here's her new photo:

Look how she's grown in a year!

She has a birthday in October, when she'll turn seven. I love watching her get older. Each drawing gets better and better, and there's even some of her handwriting on this one (she's too little to write us letters by herself!) What a gift for us as her sponsors when we saw her first written words to us:

Can you see it? It's Genesis 1:1, written in her native Spanish: "En el principio creo Dios los cielos y la tierra." In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

How awesome is that?

That's just a tiny snapshot of the joy I get from being a sponsor. It's not about me, but about her, and all those other impoverished children. I may get a smile and a warm fuzzy feeling from her letters and photos, but she's getting warm meals, an education, and an exposure to God's love that she will never forget.

If you'd like to make a difference for a child in need, I wholeheartedly believe in Compassion International. Here's a bit about them, and what they do....

Compassion International ministers to over a million children in 25 of the world's poorest countries through its Child Development Sponsorship Program - what you may know already as simply "child sponsorship." With the support of sponsors, Compassion is reaching through the hands of local churches to release children from their spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty.

Compassion International invented child sponsorship and it has proven to be a successful child development strategy. This ministry hinges upon the relationship between one sponsor and one child. That relationship goes both ways. Sponsors correspond with their sponsored children and support Compassion's ministry to children for $32 (USD) every month. Sponsors also receive letters from their sponsored children, watching them grow toward physical and spiritual maturity. Sponsorship is a relationship that transforms both sponsors and children.


There is a tremendous need for new sponsors. Compassion International is growing, moving into new countries (children will soon be sponsored in Togo) and expanding the reach of its ministry to children in many others. Every child Compassion ministers to needs a sponsor and at the moment there are thousands who do not have one. Many of these have been waiting for a sponsor for over six months. These children need words of encouragement and Compassion needs the cost of their care sponsored so that the ministry can continue to expand.

I'm asking you, my readers, to begin your own relationship with a child in the developing world by becoming a sponsor for a child who has been waiting more than six months to be sponsored. You can find them here.

For more information about Compassion International's Child Development Sponsorship Program, you can find it here.

If you would like to blog for Compassion like I do, and for banners and widgets, you can check out Compassion Bloggers.

Hop on over and read Compassion's blog for an inside look at the ministry and our people around the world here.