Kenya

I've been meaning to post this all week, but somehow the week has gotten away from me.

I'm sure some of you already know about this, but Compassion International has, fairly recently, started sending bloggers to the countries that they work in to see and blog about the work they're up to and how life changing it is for a child and their family and their village when someone sponsors them. And I think it's such an awesome idea. And, I would LOVE the opportunity to go one day--especially if the trip is to Paraguay or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so we could meet our little boys! :) Unfortunately, you have to have something like 30,000 hits on your blog each month to be asked to go, and since I have like 30 on a good month, haha--I probably won't be asked.

So, I'm living vicariously though the people that are going--and there's a group that just left Kenya yesterday who's experiences I've been reading about. None of the children Landon and I sponsor live in Kenya, but my little brother Matthew sponsors a precious little 4 year old named Joel, who does live in Kenya, so it's been enlightening to read about where he lives and imagine him there.

It's also made me realize how much a child sponsorship can change a child's life. So often I send off the check or watch the money being drafted out of my account each month and feel all good about myself, but don't do much else. And seeing the children these people meet and hearing stories about how kids know their sponsors names and keep their pictures and hold on to the letters makes me realize how flippant I am with something that I shouldn't be flippant with at all. Because it's not about the money--or not only about the money--it's about a relationship. A relationship that's worth investing in because it's with a real living, breathing child and family and town halfway across the world. Seeing the people on these trips meet their sponsored children has, in some weird way, made the children we sponsor seem so much more REAL.

In case you'd like to read any of the blogs, I just thought I'd post a couple of links. These are the two I read--I love their words and their photography. They're both beautiful.

http://www.thisisreverb.com/

http://www.mycharmingkids.net/