Looking around and what do I see?
Dirt.
It's even on my dolly.
I cough as the dust of it enters my lungs.
It's hard to see with just the sunlight coming through the door.
I get up and walk outside.
The sun is blinding.
As my eyes adjust, my nose senses something.
My stomach growls in response.
Mommy is cooking rice!
Daddy must have gotten paid yesterday!
Mommy dips me out a spoonful of rice.
Sharing with 5 other people is hard.
I pick up my first bite.
I chew slowly to make it last.
What's that crunchy stuff?
Dirt.
It's everywhere.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I didn't have a party.
I didn't have a cake.
My friends and family didn't buy me gifts.
If I had a sponsor, they might have sent me some extra money.
If I was sent some money, I would buy a new pair of shoes.
I've walked holes in the shoes I have now.
The nice people at the Compassion center gave me this pair of shoes.
I loved them so much and didn't want to wear them at first.
It took me 3 weeks to wear them for fear of messing them up.
Maybe the next time I go, they'll give me a new pair.
I'd love that!
I don't like the dark.
Bad things happen in the dark.
People scream and cry.
Sometimes when I wake up, people are missing.
Maybe they got sick.
Maybe the bad people took them.
No one ever tells me what happens.
I'm scared that something will happen to me in the dark.
At night, I hide in the corner until I fall asleep.
Unless my sister's coughing keeps me up.
She's had that cough for 3 weeks now.
I wish it'd go away.
I wish it'd go away.
***
Obviously, I don't know if these are the things these children would say. I don't even like to imagine what life is like for any of these precious children. What I do know is that I can make a difference in the life of a child. I can give up eating out a few times a month. I can give up having a fancy cell phone. I can give up buying new clothes. I can give that up so that Alan and Malaiyarasi can have food, an education, and health and hygiene training. Most importantly, I can give those things up so that they can know that they are special and loved and that they can have a relationship with Jesus.
Would you be willing to help make a difference in the life of a child? You can sponsor Camila, Shasika, Benjamin, or any of the other children who need a sponsor today.
While I can only guess what one of these children might say, the people in this video have lived it. They were children growing up in poverty whose lives were changed because someone sponsored them through Compassion.
3 comments:
I love the poems!! Thanks for stopping by my blog!!
This is beautiful/sad. I've often thought about sponsoring a child, right now we send money to India to a pastor we're connected with over there who also runs several orphanages, and we send Christmas boxes every year. It's so fun to get photos/videos back of the kids opening up the boxes, and how excited they are over things we think are silly, like new pencils and little toys.
the services that Compassion provide are monumental and extra-ordinary. they turn impossible to possible and sponsoring a child or maybe more is something my family has always done and will continue to do because the light of Jesus and the hope he provides can shine through to these children
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