Compassion

Train a child in the way he should go,

and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Proverbs 22:6

I sometimes find myself in awe that God gave us the privilege to raise these 4 children He has greatly blessed us with. I also must admit that I sometimes wonder whether we are worthy of such an incredible task. The answer is no, but by God's grace, we are given this enormous task of raising our children according to His will. All this said, today we are starting a new journey in the lives of our kids (at least the oldest two - for the time being). Ryan and I have been sponsoring a child named Genesis, through Compassion, for about 6 years, but are having troubles getting the boys to understand that many children all over the world go without the basic necessities of life - food, education, clean water, and health care (all things I, most of the time, take for granted). So we decided to partner our boys to a sponsor child of their own, in the Dominican Republic (where Genesis is from). The reason we chose the same country is simple; if we ever have the chance to meet our sponsor children, we can travel to one country and hopefully meet them all! We tried to match our boys to a child who was as close to their age as we could find so that they could spend their growing up years, growing up together. Brady's child's name is Andy who just turned 7 this past November and Kadan's child's name is Juan who just turned 4 this past January (two months after Kadan). Funny, when we signed up for these two boys, their location was not mentioned, but today when we received their information in the mail, I curiously looked up where they were from (as many of you know I taught in the DR for a year) and they live within kilometers of each other! How fun is that? Here are their precious matches!

Our hope and prayer is that our children will learn that they can make a difference in the Kingdom of God in response to the Great Commission that He has called us to do. We hope and pray that through prayer, finances, letters and gifts they will not only show compassion on these boys until they are all adults, but learn how to show compassion wherever their lives lead.

I'll keep you posted as to whom God matches

Zachary and Abigail up with in a couple of years (the youngest sponsor children are 3).