The Beginnings

My journey with Compassion began about three years ago.  A seed was planted on a mission trip and I went home to prayerfully consider what I had heard.  A few months later, after much deliberation and research on the organization, I began my sponsorship of Marlen from El Salvador.  At the time she was seven and I was seventeen (she's now ten and I'm twenty).

  I enthusiastically sent out a letter to the little girl whose life I had chosen to touch.  Over the next few years we wrote regularly and I grew to love and adore that girl who was touching my life in some of the same ways that I had hoped to touch hers.

 My journey took a new step last spring when I began writing to a boy from Haiti named Predilien whose sponsor is unable to write to him themselves.

  I also talked to my sister about writing to a child of her own.  She liked the idea and is now writing to a little girl in Ethiopia named Kalkidan.

I was glad that my family seemed to be wanting to get involved with Compassion a little as they became interested in my letters and pictures that I got in the mail from time to time.

Then, this past winter, my journey took the biggest leap of all.  I was notified of a Compassion tour coming up in May where I would be able to meet my sweet Marlen in person.  I was already considering a trip with school to several countries in Europe and was conflicted as to which trip I should go on.  I went around and around for weeks praying over it before finally deciding that El Salvador may be a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I reserved my spot on the Compassion tour and began to anxiously await the trip.  It is now two days before I am to board a plane bound for El Salvador.  I still have much packing and organizing to do but all I can think about is what it will be like to finally hug the girl whom I have loved for years.  One simple decision a few years ago has lead me on an incredible journey already and I know that it has only just begun.