.gif)
Mood:
happyTopic: Family
I blogged recently about all of the friends that I have been reconnecting with - mainly on Facebook. Friends from high school, friends from college, camp friends, Florida friends...you name it. Some names I have had to look twice at because they have gotten married and some names I didn't recognize at all. One of those names was Kees Boer. One day I got a notification that Kees (Kees is Dutch) wanted to be my friend on Facebook. I recalled hearing that name before, so I thought that it must be one of my college classmates that had been in one of my classes or something, and that it would come back to me. So I accepted him as my Facebook friend. Well, it never came back to me! I kept trying to remember. I read his profile and racked my brain, but nothing. One day Kees began to talk with me through Facebook's chat feature. I found out that he graduated from Florida Bible College a few years before me, and had just befriended me because we were both FBC graduates. Boy what a relief. I thought I was becoming senile.
Anyway, I had noticed that Kees was a big supporter of Compassion International and asked him about it. Compassion is one of those groups where you can sponsor a child from an underprivileged country for about a dollar a day. Sarah and I had toyed with the idea of sponsoring a child before, but were hesitant because we weren't sure which organizations could be trusted. We had a friend who had gone to work for a similar non-profit group only to leave nine months later because that particular group wasn't all that it claimed to be. After some discussion with Kees, and some research on my own, we found that Compassion International was an organization that was trustworthy. Kees had asked us to pray about sponsoring a boy from Bolivia whose previous sponsor had to drop him. After much prayer, we decided to apply. It became official today... 12 year old Marcelo Quispe is our new child! We feel like adoptive parents.
We cheated a little. Kees was making a trip to Bolivia to visit some of the kids that he sponsors, and said that if we wanted, he would take a packet of things along with a gift to Marcelo while our paperwork was being handled. So, a couple of weeks ago we hurriedly made a short video for him and sent it along with some pictures, a letter, and some Hot Wheels cars for Kees to take to Bolivia. Kees wasn't sure if he could actually see Marcelo or whether he would just have to leave the packet with the area representatives to give to him later. Last week, Kees was briefly on Facebook and told me that he was going to actually meet Marcello and perhaps even be able to make a video of him to send to us when he got back into the states. We are all very excited and can't wait to hear from him. Marcelo's picture is posted below. Please pray with us for him. All we know right now is that he is 12 years old, lives with his mother, father and two siblings in a small shack in the slums of La Paz, Bolivia and likes to play with cars, sing, and play with marbles. Compassion requires all sponsored kids to write to their sponsors at least three times a year so hopefully we will learn more about him through his letters. They also encourage the sponsors to write as much as they can, but they won't have to worry about reminding us! The kids are already planning letters and deciding what to tell him. Compassion may have to tell us to slow down.
Compassion International is a definite Christian organization that sets up "projects" all around the world. Our understanding is that to qualify as a project, there has to be a good Bible believing church with some type of a program where the kids are fed, tutored, and given Biblical training. I will tell you more as we learn more, but check out their website by clicking on any of the Compassion International mentions throughout this post. Pray about sponsoring a child. We have just begun, but we know that it will be a life changing experience for our whole family and a life changing experience for Marcelo as well.
