Compassion Confession

Have you been read the Compassion bloggers who were in Kenya? They are such moving posts. You can read my favorite here. It is about Kristen spending a glorious day with her sponsored children.

We sponsor a child through Compassion. His name is Pablo. He lives somewhere in South or Central America, I don't even know where. And that brings us to the confession part of the post. You see, we chose a particular Compassion child awhile back. I thought he was cute and I liked his name. Although, I can't even remember what it is anymore. He was on our fridge. We prayed for him as a family. Before too long, Compassion contacted us saying that his situation changed and he was no longer in need of a sponsor family. I think this is good news.

So they sent us Pablo's information. He was not smiling in his picture the way the other boy was and embarassingly, we had a bit of trouble transitioning to having him as our sponsor child. One of the kids kept replacing Pablo's picture with the first sponsor child. We prayed for him a few times, but it wasn't the same. It didn't have the same feel since we didn't "choose" him. We've never written him. And in a very short time, he disappeared from mention in our prayers, from our thoughts and even from our refrigerator.

What happened? I guess I wanted a cute, smiley picture of a happy needy child. One that I picked out of a pile because I was drawn to something in the picture. Those things would make me feel better about the sponsorship. As if sponsorship was all about me feeling better???? I am gagging myself right now.

But as I reflect on it, I think it is cool that we didn't choose Pablo. Instead, God chose him for us. And He chose us for him. We get each other, in some little way. So, tonight as the kids were going to bed, we prayed for Pablo. And Emmie reminded me that he is from Guatemala. Maybe he was not as far from her thoughts as he was from mine.

Next order of business, we're going to get our markers out and send that boy some letters. I want him to know that he means much more to us than just a check each month. I want him to know that I'm glad God brought us together. And I'm going to go through some piles to find his picture. His precious little non-smiling picture that belongs on our fridge. Though I know sponsorship is more than a picture on a fridge, we have to start somewhere. So we're going to start right here.