Kumar and Alfred…

This title isn’t the same of a buddy sidekick movie, though it might sound like it at first. =) These are the names of our sponsored children through Compassion International. Both are 4 years old. Kumar lives in India, and Alfred lives in Uganda.

We started sponsoring these children this year, and it’s already been an interesting experience. We’ve gotten letters already from each of the children, and Alfred dictated his. He’s got quite the little personality, and he was even able to write his own name!

Christ calls us to look out for the poor, but this has been my first direct experience of doing so. It is a good thing to see their little faces staring at me on my fridge door. 

I know there may be some of you out there who’ve had good intentions to do this in the past, but you just haven’t taken that step. Well, now’s as good a day as any. =)

When you go on the website to select a child, it can be totally overwhelming. There are soooo many. How can you pick just one or two? The need can burden you into paralysis. Well, if it does, and if you’re not feeling a specific leading from the Holy Spirit toward a certain little face, you can try to narrow it down a bit.

Here’s how we did that: We picked two boys whose birthdays were very close or identical to our boys. We tried to get the ages close as well, but that wasn’t terribly important. We figure that this way, we’ll have more to talk about with the boys in our letters, and we’ll be able to remember their birthdays more easily. It’ll be easier for our boys to relate to them when we get letters, and they can pray for them about some of the things that they all have in common.

Compassion is a very reputable agency that has been around for many years. They get directly involved in the lives of the children they sponsor by sending them to local church schools and checking in on their families to find out their needs. And they make it easy to sponsor. You can do direct deposit of your sponsorship money each month…

And here’s my favorite feature: You can email your sponsored child! The email is printed off and translated for them. If you’re horrible at writing regular letters and actually getting them in the mail, this doesn’t have to hold you back any longer.

Now, if any of you actually go out and sponsor a child because of my 5 minute plug here, please let me know in the comments. It’ll make my year. =)