The Game Changer

We sat across the table from Micheal, a young student in Compassion’s LDP program in Peru. With the help of Compassion, Michael is studying History at the University.

He wants to see Peru change from the inside out, for Peruvians to learn to be more proud of their culture and heritage and to see fellow Peruvians come to know Christ.

“Now that you’ve seen Peru,” Micheal asked us, “What is your mission when you go home?”

What is MY mission?

I didn’t know how to answer him. A few of our team members made reference to wanting to see the family units of Peruvians remain intact, to see abject poverty reduced, and some other very important things come to fruition in that country.

I had to think. I have no idea.

Yes, I’ve seen the child projects first hand and I am well aware of just how far $38 a month can go in the life of a child. It is actually life changing. Yes, I’d already seen the Child Survival Project and watched loving mentors working with young single moms and their toddlers, teaching them how to best care for their babies. Yes, I’d already hugged our sponsor child, her brothers and her parents. I’d sat in her “living room”, stood on her dirt floor and walked down the dusty road in front of her home.

I’d seen all of this already. But what is my mission?

To see more children sponsored. Of course. Just by simply telling stories, I’ve already heard from some of you who’ve been inspired to sponsor children or to send a letter to your sponsored child. But beyond that {because there has to be a “beyond that”} what is my mission?

I’ve spent the last several days with children and families who have been inspired to have a future and a hope for their lives, even in the midst of poverty, hardship and illness. My week has been a basket of irony: joy in the dust, beauty in the dirt, hope in the hopeless. One of my missions, I believe, is to better recognize that the joy {in the dust} is greater, the beauty {in the dirt} is more brilliant and that the hope {in the hope-less} is more tangible.

This is what it is: I sponsor a child. Her life begins to change. Her family {a lot of the time} begins to come to church to see what is going on. She {and her family} begin to have a hope for the future and her whole family’s future is altered. When her family is changed, the community is changed. When the community is changed, the city changes. And when the city changes, the whole country changes.

And it all begins with one little girl.

So my mission, then is to try to change the game. My mission is to believe that the individual matters. 

It might just be to apply that idea to my life here. If I can inspire my own children that their own changed hearts can affect their community, and that an affected community can change an area and that by that, they can help change the world, then I think I will have accomplished my mission.

If I can believe that the changed life of one person {my own, the homeless man on the street, the friend at church} can affect a whole community or a whole school or city, then that is the game changer. That is when all of life shifts.

If you really want to make a difference, begin making a difference in the life of ONE person. It can be your own little boy, the friend who needs help on a Saturday or the old woman at the convalescent home nearby who hasn’t gotten a visitor in a year. You CAN change the world. But it happens one person at a time.

I believe Michael will change Peru. And I believe that my nine-year-old sponsor child, with her beautifully dusty feet and smile as wide as the hills, will too.  I’m praying that for her. And I’m praying the same for us: that we will become painfully aware that changing the world means beginning with one single person.

To sponsor a child in Peru with Compassion International, click here.

To learn more about Compassion click here.

To learn about the Child Survival Program and how you can help, click here.

To read about why I care, click here and here.