Last month, my church hosted an event for Compassion International. Basically, the Compassion team arrived with this cool trailer and set up shop in our church parking lot. This trailer transformed into a really cool, interactive experience. In some strange way, it reminded me of a haunted house. Nothing in the trailer was "haunted house" like, but the fact of walking through room-by-room, behind closed doors, gave me that instant "cautious" feeling. To be honest, I was bracing myself for some scary person in a mask to jump out from behind a door or curtain. It was the perfect set-up to catch unsuspecting guests on camera being frightened by scary dudes. Ha!
HOWEVER, it was nothing like that!!! The Compassion Experience was a display showcasing 3 children from various parts of the world. First, we chose a child to follow throughout our journey through the display. We could actually choose to follow all 3 children, by walking through the display 3 times. Robert & I decided to only do it once since we were pressed for time. After selecting the child who would be our guide, we were given some cool, noise cancelling headphones and a handheld device. Robert swore it was an iPhone. The device prompted us to walk through the display stopping in each room. The rooms were set up to resemble the actual homes, schools, and other environments that these children live, work, and play in every day. It was quite sobering to see how little people in other parts of the world really have. At the end of the experience, a room was designated for sponsoring a child. Hundreds of child packets lined the walls and shelves.
I already knew that I was going to sponsor a child. God had really laid that on my heart & prepared me over the last year. I told my husband that I really wanted to find a boy who had the same birthday as a baby we had previously miscarried in 2008. After walking in the sponsoring room, I found the boy we were going to sponsor. His packet was the third one that I looked at. His birthday is August 10th, which was our due date with the baby we had lost. I immediately fell in love with the little boy in the photo. I just knew he was the one! We immediately filled out the sponsor card and took our packet home.
Here's our little guy! His name is Bobby. He is a 9th grader who lives in the Philippines.
To sponsor a child through Compassion International, it costs $38/month. As tight as our family budget is (with 1 income), we decided that $38 is really a very small amount to sacrifice for such a huge investment in a child's life, as well as their family. To be honest, I don't care if we have to eat out less or sell something on Ebay, as long as little Bobby is getting his sponsorship each month!
So, we sponsored Bobby last month (March 2015), and we have already received our first letter from him! How cool is that!? I realize that just maybe, the organization has the children write their first letter before even getting sponsored. If so, that's perfectly fine with me. I am just so ecstatic to get a letter from him! I'm on cloud 9! I think that in the last 2 days of having the letter, I've probably read it 10 times! Not to mention, the countless hours that I have spent scouring Pinterest for letter ideas to send to sponsored children. Look for my first letter to little Bobby in my next post! :D
Can you tell that I'm seriously excited!?!
Links:
My church: www.therevolution.tv
Compassion International: www.compassion.com
The Compassion Experience (video): http://www.compassion.com/change/about-the-experience-video.htm
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