The Compassion project we visited today is near a port in a community outside of Santo Domingo. This port is one of the major areas for industrial companies in the Dominican Republic (some owned by Americans) and the contamination from these companies has infected the water supply and the beach. Most of the children have lesions and fungus on their arms, legs, and torso from the infected water.
We just finished a great day where we met with Natalie’s (our youngest daughter) sponsor child, Reyna. I have met Reyna once before but this was Amy’s first time meeting her. Reyna is very shy and took a little while to warm up but then her sassyness and personality came out. I learned quite a bit more today about Reyna’s home life and struggles and I now know how I can help and pray for her family. Here are some pics from the day.
Dominican patty-cake.
Self photo by Reyna.
I taught Reyna how to use the zoom. I’m not sure it does my stunning good looks justice.
I will write more about this later but the church Compassion project we visited today was in the middle of the country’s largest city. However, this church has a program where it teaches its members and the Compassion parents how to do ‘urban farming’ to help sustain the food needs in the family. The garden in this picture is on the roof of this 3 story church. It was an inspiring idea and is having amazing results.
We are here. We are safe. We just had a great day at a local Compassion project. I will hopefully post some pics later tonight.
Tons of traffic - first customer was at 6:04am. The people today bought more for less but we still finished the day with…$786.27. That is great! I have lots of people to thank but I need to pack for the Dominican Republic first.
We are in the middle of our Adoption Yard Sale Day 1. Friday has been a little slower than expected but we have already made close to $300 and we will stay out tonight until about 8pm. We expect tomorrow will be much busier. I need to go just in case someone shows up to buy the 1974 Nordic Track that was donated to us. I think I can squeeze $3 out of some poor soul.
UPDATE: We did not make it until 8pm but we waited until about 6 to shut down. We made $381 today and expect tomorrow to be even better! If you live in the Nashville (especially Spring Hill) area, stop by and say hello.
The kids made over $100 of that with their cookie and lemonade sale. Who can say no to a sweet 7 year old girl without her front teeth asking you to help her get enough money to bring her new brother or sister home?
This is a great video.
I paid $4.29 per gallon for gas last week and I was ticked. In fact, I moaned and griped to myself the entire time I was pumping the gas.
We have been sponsoring Jehu (above) through Compassion International for the past few years and in January I was able to meet Jehu and his mother. The kid is a stud. He is confident, good looking, smart, and polite. He looked me in the eyes and told me how much he loved his Mom, Jesus, and football (soccer). He told me he wanted to grow up and be an engineer so he could build better roads and bridges for Port-Au-Prince and all of Haiti (if you have ever been to Haiti you realize the need for this type of dream). He thanked me for sponsoring him (my oldest son is actually his sponsor) and he promised me he would keep studying, keep going to church, and keep obeying his mother. He smiled and and you could see an entire world of hope in him.
However, Jehu had no idea that in a few short months he would have more right to be ticked about my $4.29 a gallon gas than I ever do.
I spent most of my life in a naive state of bliss. I just figured what happened in my world stayed in my world. A trip to Uganda in 1997 changed that for me and I realized how interconnected the entire world really is. You see, our high gas prices are a pain for us but the reality is I still fill my car up and drive off upset but with a full tank of gas and usually a Mountain Dew to go with it. The reality is that the rising cost of oil is crippling the poorest of the poor throughout the world and forcing families to go to bed hungry every night. That truth makes my frustration about the price of unleaded just plain ridiculous.
In Haiti, Jehu’s home, the price of rice went up 78% in less than a month earlier this year. In Ethiopia, the cost of buying the ingredients for their staple food, injeera, doubled in the last few months. In Bangladesh, 90% of the children Compassion serves are being directly affected by rising food prices.
Haiti is almost entirely dependent on imported food items and when the price of oil increases, so does the cost of feeding their families. Compassion Haiti is estimating that it will take 2-6 million dollars over the next few years to keep the Compassion children and their families fed to avoid malnutrition.
We are in a global food crisis and there does not seem to be an end in sight. It is time for us to take action. We do not live in a vacuum. What we do affects Jehu.
What should we do? I am a practical person so I can’t help but to give you practical advice.
PRAY - Compassion has set aside today to fast and pray for those being affected by the food crisis. Visit the Day of Prayer site for Compassion and see how you can join thousands of others praying for this crisis.
LESS - Just do less of everything. Drive less. Consume less. Eat less. Spend less. Our excessiveness only prolongs issues in developing nations. When you do less of everything you will find yourself with more to give to those in need.
GIVE - One of the sobering realities of this crisis is that these countries being affected by the crisis will need millions upon millions of dollars to feed these families over the next few years. Compassion has been, and always will be, committed to long-term holistic child development but there is also a time for immediate response to an immediate need. Unless we feed our children and their families, malnutrition will run rampant. So, Compassion has set up a Global Food Crisis Fund to address immediate food needs and to purchase farming equipment in countries where this will help alleviate some of the issue. Here is what your giving can do for a child:
$13 will feed 1 child for a month
$78 will feed a family of 6 for a month
$520 will feed 40 children for 1 month
$3,250 will feed 250 children for 1 month
BE CREATIVE - Discover ways to give beyond what you are already doing. Be creative in how you spread the word about this crisis and what we can be doing to help. Last month my family decided to start “Rice For Dinner” where we have just rice and water for dinner once a week so we can focus on what is going on with other families involved in this crisis. At that dinner we talk about and pray for a specific country being hurt by the crisis. I create an information and prayer guide and we spend the entire meal talking and learning about that country. At the end of the meal each of our 4 kids pray for something very specific regarding the country. We take the money we would have spent on that meal (average of what it costs for us to eat out is about $30) and we give it directly to the Compassion Global Food Crisis Fund. Right now almost 20 families are doing “Rice For Dinner” all over the US and if you want the weekly info and prayer guides, email me at bseay@us.ci.org
We can’t ignore Jehu. We can’t ignore our role in this crisis. And we can’t ignore our ability to do something about it.
Here is a video from Compassion’s President, Wess Stafford, talking about the Global Food Crisis.
Go read My Friend Amy today for the 40 Day Fast.
I am starting a pretty busy week and my blogging may suffer. Here are some highlights of my upcoming week:
- Compassion Artist Relations/Speaker meetings in Nashville. Our entire team is meeting in Nashville for 2 days worth of meetings starting tonight.
- Write my post for the 40 Day Fast. My assigned day is Wednesday.
- Finish adoption dossier and send it to Washington, D.C. to be authenticated. We have to finish a picture book of our family, home, etc. but we also found a typo in one of our documents over the weekend and this may delay us a week or so
- Huge Yard Sale on Friday and Saturday to raise some money for the above adoption.
- Get prepared to leave for the Dominican Republic on Sunday. I am leading a trip of 17 people to the Dominican Republic next week. I am pretty excited about this because my brother, Robbie and his wife Liz, will be on the trip. But I am really excited because Amy is going with us and this will be the first time she has seen Compassion’s work up close. We are also meeting our youngest daughter’s sponsor child, Reyna, while we are there. I met Reyna last October but this will be an amazing experience for Amy to meet her.
- Our oldest 3 are at church camp until tomorrow (they went yesterday) so it is just me, Amy, and Nathaniel in the house. Since Nathaniel is our stealth child, it almost seems eerily quiet.
- I finished the 5th Harry Potter book last night and will hold off on starting the 6th one until the flights to the DR on Sunday.
