The Most Precious Children in the World

For over two years we've sponsored Abhinav through Compassion International.  Through sponsorship children living in poverty are able to have access to education, health and dental care, and most importantly, the gospel of Christ.  For two years we've been writing letters to Abhinav every few weeks, getting to know him and what life is like for him in India.  More recently, we've started sponsoring Jeevalakshmi, and we have treasured getting letters from her as well.

Ever since we first became sponsors we'd dreamed that someday we would meet our kids in person.  This was the reason behind our trip to India, and what a great experience it was!  Abhinav lives in Trivandrum, a fairly small city in the southern part of India, right on the coast.  Our translator from the child development center picked us up from our hotel and we drove out to meet him and his family.  We were told that all the children from the center would be there as well.  I wondered if I would be able to pick him out of the crowd of children, and when we got there I had no trouble knowing who he was.  I can't even begin to describe how my heart felt the moment I laid eyes on Abhinav for the first time.  I was overwhelmed at the reality of meeting him in person after so many letters and prayers.  There's just something special about meeting someone you've been praying for for years.  He doesn't speak English, so we had a translator with us the whole time to facilitate the visit.

All the other kids from the center were there too, and were so excited for us to be there.  They all wanted to shake our hands and ask us how we were doing.  We'd been told that we were only the second set of sponsors who had come to that center to visit the kids.  There were 314 children there, so this really broke my heart.  What also broke my heart was hearing that many of the children rarely or never receive letters from their sponsors!  Sponsorship is so much more than sending money every month, and the part that really makes an impact on the child is knowing that someone out there really loves them and is willing to take the time to write to them regularly.  So if you're sponsoring a child now, I hope you'll write to them often!

We had a chance to visit Abhinav's home and meet his mother and younger brother Abhijih.  The boys were so excited to ride in the car to and from their home.  He lives near a canal in the middle of a palm tree jungle.  While there are beautiful surroundings, the living conditions are hard to imagine.  They were all excited to show us the items they had been able to buy with Christmas money we had sent.  It struck me that they were able to do so much with a relatively small amount of money, and it meant so much to the whole family.

We were able to have lunch with Abhinav at the center, then visit the Neyyer Dam nearby, which is absolutely beautiful!  Unfortunately it started raining so we weren't able to stay long.  The end of our visit came too soon, but we were grateful for every minute we had with Abhinav.

The next day we took the train to Chennai so we could visit Jeevalakshmi.  You could see in her eyes how excited she was that we were there to see her!  I was blown away by how beautiful she is, especially because she was dressed in her nicest clothes with flowers in her hair.  The other children were in school that day so we had a much quieter visit with her.  We got to see the center where she goes everyday after school for Bible teaching and help with school work.

We walked across the street to see Jeevalakshmi's home, and many neighbors were there to greet us.  Apparently she'd been so excited that she told the whole neighborhood about our visit!  As a gift to me, Jeevalakshmi's mother gave me bangles to wear on both wrists.  All day long I jingled whenever I moved my arms.  Our next stop was Jeevalakshmi's school, which was still in session.  It was so fun visiting her classroom and meeting her teacher.  I'm looking forward to sharing those pictures with my students when I go back to school this week.

Both of these visits were such a blessing to us, and our prayer has been that the children and their families would be blessed through it as well.  Actually being there and seeing everything that Compassion is doing makes me proud to be a sponsor through their organization.  Christ is truly being exalted among the nations and among the poor because of the work they are doing.  If you are sponsoring children through Compassion or any other organization I would highly encourage you to try to visit them.  You have no idea what an impact it can make on their lives, and what a blessing it is to know that someone really cares about them enough to visit their country!