Wednesdays in the Word

Speaking of Compassion, these are the verses the Lord showed us when He put sponsorship on our hearts after the birth of our first baby.

"Blessed is he who considers the poor. The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive. And he will be blessed on the earth. You will not deliver him to the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him on his bed of sickness. You will sustain him on his sickbed."
 Psalms 41:1-3

We believed those verses and prayed that as we supported a child on the other side of the world, that God would, according to these verses, be with our child in sickness and heal him when need be.
But God took that one step further, and that baby (who is now 21) was rarely ever very sick. He's only needed to see a doctor for illnesses a handful of times!

That doesn't, of course, count stitches! :-)
~Becky

Girls' Night Out...with the Hubby

I mentioned recently here, that we have been Compassion sponsors for a long time.We love Compassion and believe in the integrity of their ministry. We've had  three children at different times. Two of them disappeared due to the unrest in their countries, which was so sad. Our present 'child' is from Nicaragua and she is 16 and we've had her since she was in preschool!  So, when Compassion contacted us to help represent them at a Chonda Pierce concert in our area, we said YES!

We knew that Chonda Pierce is a Christian comedian but we've never been to one of her shows before. In fact, we were so focused on Compassion being the reason we were going that we didn't really give any thought to the show because we were just there to work at their table in the lobby. As it turned out, we were able to sit in on the show until the intermission.

And that, my Friends, is how it came about that Hubby ended up being at event that was called

  Girl TALK! 

Bless his heart!
We didn't actually know the name of the event so, he started getting nervous when we pulled up and saw 200 women in line and not one single MAN. Not one.
In fact, he got so flustered he left the Prius on when we got out of the car. And now we know for sure that we can leave it on for 4 and half hours with the lights on WITHOUT the battery dying! LOL!

As we were waiting to enter the building, I was standing behind a woman who was obviously wearing her pajamas and I got a little concerned about her mental state.Then while standing at the Compassion table we kept seeing more and more women in their PJs and realized it was a thing!
It was definitely a Girl's night out and that is how my Hubby ended up in a church with 2400 women listening to jokes about lipo, menopause and Spanx! (he leaned over at one point and told me I would have to explain "Spanx" to him later) ; )
 Poor guy! I felt desperately sorry for him! We did actually see another man in the audience and he was actually came in his PJs too. Not sure what to think about his mental state. LOL

While we were learning the ropes at the Compassion table, we were asked several times how long we have been sponsors. This made us feel very old and very young all at the same time!!! We said we became sponsors after the birth of our first baby and they asked us how old our baby is now and we said 21! They didn't think we looked old enough to have a 21 year old, but of course we are... So, that was fun!
But helping 117 children from all over the world receive sponsors that night, was the best fun of all! : )

~Becky 

Some sad news

Today I read two letters from our Compassion child.
Dayana is 16 now and we became her sponsors when she was in preschool. The first letter said that her mother had an overdose of the medication the doctor gave her for an illness and it took the 'strength out of her muscles.' (and gave her another condition, the name of which seems to have been lost in the translation process) So, this dear girl was making regular trips with her mother to the doctor by carrying her. So sad! And the next letter said that her mother had passed away. Tragic!
Her father left them and moved to another country last year. -Thankfully, he has been visiting her regularly. I believe she is living with her older sister now.

I wish I could do more than pray. We decided that we would send an extra donation specifically marked for her family and the good news is that the company my hubby works for, will match our donation, because they are awesome like that. Yay!

In her letter she asked me if I'd ever lost a loved one. I can definitely relate to her pain since my mom died when I was seven. I'm praying that the "God of all comfort" will be with her as He was with me, way back then.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." 2 Cor 1:3-5

He is faithful!

~Becky

Making a child smile

We've been blessed to be sponsors with Compassion Intl. for many, many years now. We think they are wonderful!

We've had 2 children who dissappeared from the program because their countries had a civil war... That was sad. The first one that happened to had been our 'child' for such a LONG time that is was really hard not knowing what had happened to her. Our other child hadn't been 'ours' long when the same thing happened again to him in his country. But, I'm happy to say that our third child has been ours for a number of years now. : )

As much as we enjoy reading our child, Dayana's letters, we are really bad at writing back! I always have guilt because I really stink at the correspondence aspect of the program. (I do remember Christmas gifts but I just don't write regularly) -Until lately!

I think what changed things was when my hubby got really energized about having us pray for her. Then we all started writing her together with everyone adding some imput. When her letters arrive, we read them while sitting around the dinner table. So, we are finally getting better at this after ALL these years!

Our latest picture of Dayana arrived recently and really touched all of our hearts. She wasn't smiling, at all. Her smile became our prayer.

And God answered it we believe. It all happened with something as little as a page torn out of a coloring book! One of our kids had the idea to send one of those in our last letter to her. The next letter that we received sounded like it was from a different child. She sounded so happy and she sent us her love (which she always has done) but this time she added her "kisses." It was so sweet. I hadn't thought about how something so simple could bring her such joy. (maybe because we have SO much and they have SO little)

I'm looking forward to meeting her one day, in heaven where I KNOW she'll be smiling all the time.

~Becky