A Sponsor Perspective

By Juli Jarvis
Compassion Sponsor, Advocate and Area Coordinator

I had the pleasure of returning to the Dominican Republic, having gone there in 2002. On my first trip, I met a precious boy named Francisco who was in need of a sponsor. His neighbor told me his family desperately needed Jesus, and especially needed help at that time because they were very poor and the father had just been severely injured in a motor scooter accident and could no longer work.

As a member of the Advocacy Network for Compassion, I told the neighbor I would pray and look for a sponsor for Francisco. Soon, God led me to some friends of mine, Mindy and Richard, even though they already sponsored a child. I asked if they would sponsor Francisco, and they said yes and then Mindy said she would like to sponsor a little girl in Haiti too.

Five years later she asked me to go with her to the Dominican Republic in order to introduce her to Francisco. I thought Richard should be the one to experience this great blessing, but God had other plans.

I came to the country wondering why I was here, and every single day He gave me a specific reason. Each reason is connected with the face of child, a member of the country staff, a Leadership Development student, a project worker, sponsor, or a Child Survival program participant.

I have learned over the years that although the poor certainly need us and we are so happy to be able to bless them with  support, I need them every bit as much. I am far more blessed by their lives than they are by mine — in their joy, contentment, spiritual depth, prayers and self-sacrifice.

God has once again filled my heart to overflowing by the love, presence, joy healing, and friendship that He showered upon us in the Dominican Republic.

P.S. Everyone in Francisco’s family is a very vibrant, beautiful, caring and courteous Christian now. Compassion works!

Praise be to Jesus.

View all the photos of sponsors meeting their sponsored children.

Mindy with her sponsored child Francisco.

 

Back From Our Barahona Visit

Today we returned from our visit to projects in Barahona. These projects had never had sponsors visit them before so it was very exciting. View several photos from the last two days.

We split up into three groups. One went to the Haiti border and two others visited projects in Barahona. I was in one of the Barahona visits.

This project was so excited about having sponsors visit that that they had all 165 kids in the program come to the project for the whole day. Let’s just say it was full. Full of people of course, but most evident was was the energy and joy all the children and staff had. We even had the opportunity to help feed all the children during lunch.

This project has only been open for seven months. But the director told us that the impact on the children has been evident. She says there is story after story of how children are bringing their families to church and making their parents pray before meals and bed.

In our visit to a families home on the way to Barahona the child their that was in the program was named, Katalina. When we asked her to tell us her favorite thing about going to the project she said, “Learning about God.” When we pressed her more about what other things she liked…. she still answered…. “Learning about God.”

I am hopeful that several sponsors will be making some posts soon to share the powerful stories of how God is moving in them and in the children they have met.

 

Meeting Our Sponsored Children

Today we all got to meet our sponsored children. Many of us were very nervous. What would we say? Would we recognize them? Would they recognize us?

My wife and I will never forget the moments before we were introduced to Winifer, our sponsored child, for the first time. We started crying watching the others meet theirs and we thought, how are we going to not just start balling and lose it when we meet ours.

But some how God helped us hold it together. We hugged, we introduced ourselves to her mom, Sylvia, and the we pressed on towards the other adventures of the day. We were so glad her mom got to come.

All the sponsors loaded up the bus with their child and we headed to a little amusement park with animals, a pool, and variety of other outdoor games.

The bus ride was an hour long and helped us break the ice…and trust me… by the time we got the park the children were ready to play. Our sponsored child and her mom began their travels at 4 am. . . we got to the park at 10:30 am.

I am going to sum up the day by saying this…We played games, had long conversations, gave them and their families gifts, and we prayed together. And by the end of the day we didn’t want to leave each other’s side.

The last words from Sylvia, our sponsored child’s mom, still ring in my head. “Will we ever get to see you again?”

My wife could only answer, ”We hope so.”

We may not have internet access until Friday…we’ll have to wait and see. (see the Itenerary)… Thanks for your prayers.
– Dustin Hardage

View several photos from today.

Below: Mary Ann Hardage, Dustin Hardage, their sponsored child Winifer Tejada, her mom Sylvia, and the Compassion project director, Jesus.

 

Letters are a Ministry

The title of this blog comes directly from the mouth of a formerly sponsored child that spoke to us this evening. He was referring to letters that sponsors write to their child. This child is now in the Compassion Leadership Development program attending college.

The experience today can be summed up in a word, WOW!

We started off with a devotion and a praise and worship service at the Compassion DR office. WOW! We heard from three LDP students who have graduated and they now work at the office. They shared powerful testimonies of how God has changed their lives through their involvement with Compassion.

After a wonderful lunch with the entire DR staff we headed out to go see a Child Survival Project. These are projects that work with mothers (prenatal to 3 years old). This was an amazing place, WOW.

Then we we split up into three groups and went to visit families in their homes. The situations we experienced overwhelmed us all. These families were desperate. I plan to share more details of the home I visited tomorrow.

Tonight at dinner we heard testimonies from 5 Leadership Development students. Again…WOW. My words could never do justice to the way God has delivered them and moved in their hearts. There was not a dry eye in the room. . . WOW. 

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY. We all get to meet our sponsored children. The anticipation is extraordinary!

  View several photos from today.

PS – I had big plans to upload a couple of videos for today…but again… the internet connection is SO SLOW… this post was lucky to happen at all. God bless and please pray for our day tomorrow.

 

First Day in the DR

After most of us got a good solid three and a half hours of sleep we all joined up in the lobby ready to face another exciting day of seeing Compassion at work.

Our first visit was to a project where the children put on great performances of singing, sign language and one little boy even recited all the books of the Bible. This church has a special gift… there was a person their named Rosa who started a sign language ministry to children who were deaf. There were probably around 20 deaf children or more at the service giving their praise to God.

We had an interesting conversation with them after the church service….we asked questions in English, got it translated to Spanish, then signed to the kids, kids signed back, then got translated to English, then we had a sponsor on that is also hearing impared that needed to read the lips of the translator. VERY FUN.

Then we went on to visit several other projects and heard the testimony of Anabel, a Leadership Development student who is now a doctor.

One of the most moving parts of the day was wen we visited Anabel’s father’s church and he led us through a very poor neighborhood to see where he first built the church. It has since moved into a better neighborhood but is close enough that all the children can still come.

Gotta get to sleep…internet connection is not as good as hoped… having problems just making updates and uploading photos in painfully slow.

View all our photos on flickr. A couple are below.

(Above) Sponsors as the walk into the one of the poor areas of the Dominican Republic near Anabel’s father’s church which is also a Compassion project. (Below) Child from the project and a sponsor who are both hearing impaired. They enjoyed communicating via that crazy translation process I mentioned.