Changing The World One Child At a Time
Please allow me to introduce to you a new friend of mine, Rachel Paxton. When I learned that their family sponsored a child in another country I asked her to write a guest post for NanaHood. Her heart warming article follows. Please visit her site! She has tons of great information and articles.
World Vision: Changing the World One Child at a Time
by Rachel Paxton, http://www.christian-parent.com
For almost six years now, our family has been sponsoring a boy who lives in the village of Makungwa in Zambia, Africa. We met young Mathews through World Vision, when our church decided to adopt the entire Makungwa area that became known as the Makungwa Area Development Program.
World Vision (http://www.worldvision.org), like Compassion International, is an organization through which you can sponsor a child who lives in a third world country.
Through World Vision, more than 4,000 children in the Makungwa area have been sponsored to date. Our church received information and photos for many children from the village. My husband fell in love with a little boy who shares his same birthday month. At the time little Mathews was only two years old.
During the past six years we have received a lot of information about our child and his village. Every year we receive an annual progress report for the village and we also receive occasional updates about our child along with current photos of him.
Because our child is too young to write his own letters, he has someone help him write down his thoughts. In one letter he told us that he has a cow and that he likes to play football.
Mathews has two brothers and one sister and lives with relatives who are peasant farmers. His family grows groundnuts, maize, and cotton. He loves the taste of fresh groundnuts.
In the past several years much has been done to improve the living conditions in the Makungwa village. Children have been vaccinated against preventable diseases, key members of the community have been trained in HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and advocacy, and people living with HIV/AIDS and other chronically ill patients have been assisted with basic needs.
Because of World Vision, the children and all the families of the Makungwa community are now engaged in active and productive lives. Even people who are HIV positive are now able to lead productive lives due to treatment they have received. Because more parents are working, more children can now go to school and even spend time playing with friends instead of taking care of their sick parents. Children go to Sunday School and have Bibles to read.
It makes our family very happy to know that we are making a difference in the world. Even during tough financial times, it is rewarding to sacrifice in order to help others. The last letter we received from Makungwa through World Vision stated “As you give, my prayer is that God’s grace shall continue to abound toward you in all sufficiency (2 Corinthians 9:7,8)”.
Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of five. For resources for the Christian family, including parenting, toddler and preschool activities, homeschooling, family traditions, and more, visit http://www.Christian-Parent.com
We sponsor a boy, Ashish, in India through Gospel for Asia, in the Bridge of Hope program. He is 16 but looks like he’s 12. He writes us, as he knows English. I worked on a little picture book for his Christmas gift. We can only send items that are flat to get it thru customs. It is a joy to share with others around the world and make a difference in one child’s life. He lives with his dad and has one brother. This organization helps the children and family as well and many times the whole family believes because one child is loved and fed and clothed.
Take care…Happy New Year to all and thanks for sharing God’s love here and around the world.
We sponsor 3 boys through World Vision: one each in Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Honduras. The boys are the same ages as my boys: 6 & 8, one even has the same birthday as my 6yo. We have sponsored them for four years, through numerous “family emergencies:” times when it was tempting to say, “We really need to cut back our expenses; let’s stop our sponsorships.” But then we’d start to think, no matter what our circumstances: unemployment, outrageous medical bills, high mortgage payments…, we have so much more than these three boys and their families can even dream of, and so we continue our sponsorships, and cut out other things, LOTS of other things, but that’s ok. Our whole family receives so much joy and a true sense of doing something for our neighbor by being sponsors and the kids we sponsor receive better health, better education, and a better life – which is so much more important than Starbucks or cable TV or… or… or…. World Vision is a wonderful organization, thank you for taking the time to further their mission on your blog – hmmm… maybe I should be doing the same 🙂 Happy New Year!
I’m glad we found each other’s sites! 🙂 Us lonely writers will have to stick together.
(We lonely writers? Neither quite sounds right. What was I just saying about being a writer …?)
This was a fantastic article. This year many of the gifts we gave were donations in someone’s honor to World Vision. It’s so devastating just looking through the site and seeing what people are going through–and also, how little it takes to make a difference, and how infrequently we do something about it. The one that really brought tears to my eyes was Safety for a Formerly Exploited Child–$50. How devastating that such a situation even exists, and also, that it’s really so easy to bring safety to those children and yet, there’s so much need.
I’ve been wanting to sponsor a child through them for a long time–this encourages me. One of my resolutions for 2010. 🙂 Thanks for a great post.