No Ceiling to Hope

1st December

I surprise myself sometimes. Today has been a really emotional day. We visited another amazing project this morning where 500 kids are in the child sponsorship programme have their lives transformed. We took the big blue elephant and had a wild time with the kids, 200 balloons and a camera crew trying to coordinate a message for Spring Harvest. It was beautiful bedlam. 

It was a total contrast to the kids we met in the afternoon by accident. Three boys who were hanging around on the streets where  we were trying to do some incidental filming. They were cocky at first, these teenage lads, and a bit hard but as they softened it became apparent that they live on these streets, that they don't have a home to go to, or a family to wonder why they are out in the dark. They don't go to school, they often miss meals and they look to each other for support. It was a tragedy right in front of us. Three tragedies and all we could do was give them a few coins and a can of coke. 

But that's not what made the tears fall. What makes me cry every time is the success stories. And there have been so many. Melodia yesterday who was a sponsor child and who now runs a sponsorship programme in her church, the leader this morning had also been sponsored and this evening we met with five young adults who are part of the Compassion Leadership Development Programme. These men and women have been sponsored since child hood and have been selected to enter this final programme because they show great potential and each of them has been enabled to go to university and mentored through it as well as being given additional leadership training. 

These people were amazing and I listened to their stories with tears rolling down my cheeks. It moves me so much to see that they have been literally taken from a place of no hope and put in a place where they can be a hope for their nation. It is an incredible thing. It is beyond words. One of the graduates of this programme now sits in parliament. How amazing is that! A boy who was so poor his own family could not support him, was given hope and a future, he was given an education,  he was taught about God, he was encouraged and discipled and now he influences government for good. Somewhere in the world, someone paying a few pounds a month enabled that. Wow. 

Child sponsorship is about giving people the opportunity to reach their potential, saying you were born for more than this, it's about letting anybody dare to dream big, really big. It's about saying there really is no ceiling to hope because we can change the world one child at a time.