God has truly blessed us over these past 6 months and we wanted to share some of our blessings with those in the world who are less fortunate than us. Back in September we began sponsoring our first child through Compassion, Ruth who lives and Ghana. Over the past 9 months we have enjoyed getting to know her better and be able to help her life be a little easier. I won't lie that the "get to know you" process is easy, it isn't. Communicating through letters across cultural and language barriers takes time. A hard thing for us Americans in the technology age to understand, but it's happened and we look forward to getting to know Ruth even better.
Compassion International was a charity I heard of as a teenager at church. It seemed like something that would be a great experience, not only for the child whose life you are changing but for your own but I never seriously considered it since we were never in a financial position where I could make the ongoing commitment. Then things began to change, mostly in my heart, but I began to realize I didn't have to wealthy or have everything figured out to change a child's life. When we began to sponsor Ruth our financial situation was improving but nothing to the degree it has now. Instead we took a leap of faith and decided to sponsor her and have loved every minute of it. Also, reading about Kristen from We Are THAT Family's trip to Kenya with Compassion really put the idea of sponsoring a child on my heart again. And now Kristen has started her own charity, a maternity home in Kenya. It is amazing the things God can do with one little person!
After our experience with Ruth and experiencing all the blessings that have came our way over the past 6 months, God put it on my heart to sponsor more children. I thought my husband would think I'm crazy and say no. Things are going well for us but we still have a ton of student loan debt to pay off and lots of financial goals to meet ourselves. But guess what, hubby didn't bat an eye, he said, "I think that is a good idea" and here we are today with the two newest members of our family.
Maite, age 4, Bolivia, shares a birth date with Phoenix
Samuel, age 11, India, shares his exact birth date with Brennan
Ruth, Maite, and Samuel, on our fridge as our daily reminder of their presence in our lives.
I don't know what God has planned for my life. I'd love to change the world in big ways! I've thought about starting a local non-profit, I've thought about a lot of other things, but for now I am okay with making big changes in a few children's lives. We'll see what the future holds.
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