I love all the bloggers who travel to different Compassion International locations and blog. In fact November 2-7 you will be able to read updates from Dominican. According to Challis: Challis and possibly his 8 year old son will be going, Melanie from TheBigMamaBlog.com, Mary from OwlHaven.net, Marlboro Man (and his two daughters) from ThePioneerWoman.com, Jennifer from 5MinutesForMom.com. Shaun Groves and Brian Seay will co-lead the trip. I am looking forward to reading about their experience.

Me on the other hand would love to support a child and really not tell you about it. That is just the way I roll. I love to give, in fact I think God gave me my husband to monitor me so I would not give all my worldly possession to anyone who asked for them. God has convicted me; if me keeping this a secret prevents another child from being adopted, well….that is something I could not live with. So know I share this with you humbly. In fact my parents are reading this for the first time also. Sharing about my giving is something that is difficult for me. Well here I go..

For awhile I have been praying about adopting a Compassion International girl. I already had my heart strings tied into it, but I needed my husband’s blessing. I fear he would say “not at this time.” You see we are not rolling in money here, we live by what is in the bank and we worked hard to become debt free. So taking on a long term commitment, means we need to seriously make sure we can make the commitment financially. I prayed about this for over a month! Finally God gave me the green light to approach my husband (people don’t think I feared approaching him, I just really really wanted him to say yes go-for-it). Well of course I got his blessing, he said “I know you have been wanting to do this for awhile, so yes.” I was so excited! I wanted to involved my kids also.

So one afternoon my two older boys and I poured over Compassion International’s web site…how can you possibly chose one???

My oldest son picked the location: Kenya. He said “Mom I know a girl in Kenya needs us.” So we started there.

And as soon as we laid our eyes on Mary all three of us at one time said, “that the one.” It is amazing how God tenders your heart to the right one. You will understand why she stood out to this Floridian Family =)

So let me introduce you to Mary, born December 23, 2002; and she lives in Kenya. When we got our introduction packet my family was so excited. Mary’s picture now sits right beside the picture of my boys. We look forward to being part of Mary’s life and watching from a distance her grow up and be able to have the every day items like clothes, food, school supplies and Christian training, she may not have had otherwise.

Pray and ask God if this is an adventure for you. But I strongly recommending praying for God to open the right door and let him lead you to right place. It is overwhelming at first but I am here to tell you God leads in very specific ways.

Currently Compassion International is growing, moving into new countries (children will soon be sponsored in Togo) and expanding the reach of its ministry to children in many others. Every child Compassion ministers to needs a sponsor and at the moment there are thousands who do not have one. Many of these have been waiting for a sponsor for over six months. These children need words of encouragement and Compassion needs the cost of their care sponsored so that the ministry can continue to expand.

-Special link to children who have been waiting the longest for sponsorship:
http://www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/default.htm?referer=9713

-More information about Compassion International’s Child Development Sponsorship Program:
http://www.compassion.com/about/programs/learningforlife.htm

-Send your readers here if they’d like to blog for Compassion like you do, and for banners and widgets:
http://compassionbloggers.com/get-involved

Compassion’s blog for an inside look at our ministry and our people around the world:
http://blog.compassion.com/