Friday, August 10, 2012

Sponsoring a Child for Free {Compassion International}

I have always had a heart for children. I was a nanny for five years and taught for a year and a half. I aspire to be a stay at home mom and be able to raise our children with love and confidence.

I have wanted to sponsor a child for as long as I could remember. In high school, I considered it, but didn't have a steady income to allow me to do so. In fact, it took several years to be able to afford the $38 every month that it would take to sponsor a child.

When I met my husband and I started going to his church with him, I would see the board with pictures of children that the members of the church had sponsored. I wanted to have a child and have their picture up there. When we got engaged, one of the gifts that I said that I wanted for Christmas was to sponsor a child through Compassion International.

We prayed about it a lot and I would go to the Compassion table and look at all of the pictures praying that God would show me which child to choose.

In December 2010, we decided to sponsor our first child.
Tuyisingize

Tuyisingize lives in Rwanda and was only six years old when we started sponsoring her. The love I felt for this child the moment I held her packet was overwhelming. I have enjoyed sponsoring her, writing letters, and sending her birthday and Christmas gifts. She is so adorable and I am so excited to receive each and every letter that she sends.

About a year later, my husband and I discussed and prayerfully considered sponsoring another child. He was blessed with receiving a raise at work and felt that he wanted to use some of it to give back in a meaninful way. In November 2011, I decided upon a child to try to sponsor. None of the children made me feel the same way that Tuyisingize did, but I knew that God had a plan. We filled out the paperwork, sent it in, and was notified a couple of weeks afterwards that the child had already been sponsored. I was confused and upset until they told me that they had assigned me another child from the same country. She was the same age and gender as the other child and that I could log in to my account and see if I wanted to sponsor that child.

When I logged in and saw this girl, my heart melted.

Anisetha

I knew that this was the child that God wanted us to sponsor.

Anisetha is from Tanzania and is turning thirteen next month! I love writing to her and getting the letters she writes telling me that she is praying for me and getting her report cards from school.

Being a sponsor to these girls have meant so much to me. I am so excited to get letters from them and my husband loves coming in with the mail when he sees those letters.

Of course, I really want to sponsor more children, but financially, that is not an option right now. That's when I was looking online and found another blogger who is a Compassion Advocate and was explaining that you can sponsor a child for FREE!!!

I found out that you can be a correspondent sponsor for a child who already has a financial sponsor. For whatever reason, that sponsor can not write to their child and they are looking for sponsors to take on that role.

After talking to my husband about it, we decided that I would go ahead and call Compassion to be able to be a correspondent sponsor for a child! I called them today and they were so helpful, kind, and knowledgeable and said that they would send me a child! In fact, you can have up to three children to be a correspondent sponsor to and you are able to give financial gifts for birthdays, Christmas, or special occasions if you would like!

If you are interested in sponsoring a child by being a correspondent sponsor, please call Compassion at 800-336-7676.

Your letters could mean the world to a child who is desperately needing to feel loved.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I would love to talk to you about sponsoring a child through Compassion!

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