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.

Today was our last day in Peru and our group took some sponsored children on a trip to the Lima Zoo.

Many of the children had never been to downtown Lima and most had never seen a zoo.

The children saw things they have never seen before and might never see again. We had a chance to spend one more day with Sughey and her mother which was perhaps the best day of all. We were impressed with Sughey’s intelligence, her kindness and her selflessness. She is an amazing girl.

Here’s a few snapshots of our day before I hop on a plane back for California.

Tonight I’m praying for the children of Peru, the mothers and fathers and the people of Lima.

Will you pray with me?

I’m convinced that middle schoolers are the same everywhere.

A former middle school teacher myself, I remember what they were like. Boy crazy, silly, sometimes serious, affectionate, pranksters and altogether amazing.

12 and 13 year olds in the Ventanilla district of Lima, Peru are just the same. While one is blowing up the wrist opening of a plastic glove to make a balloon {that eventually popped} another one was begging Chad to show him Angry Birds on his phone. All the girls wanted to take pictures with the big handsome American {Chad} and giggled as they looked at the result.

Let’s just say I’m learning emergency Spanish very quickly.

Actually, children are the same everywhere too. In the Kindergarten classroom today at Project 157, 4 year old boys stuck their tongues out at their friends before lunch and said their prayers in unison as their tutor recited it first.

Baby girls smile at cameras when their feet are tickled.

Three-year-olds don’t want to sit down at meal time.

Sisters love sisters and brothers wrestle brothers.

Fathers work hard {so hard} to provide and are deeply affected when they feel they cannot care for their families like they should be cared for.

Mothers’ hands are full of little hands as they walk the street and will not let the youngest ones walk to school alone. They go along with them.

Families and smiles and hugs and kisses are the same. Peru. California. Lima. Los Angeles. Brown skinned and pale. Love is love. Joy is joy and beauty is beauty.

Our hope is the same {Jesus} and our future is the same {eternity}.

However, when one member of the body is hurting, we must do all that we can to help. Compassion is working very hard to help break the cycle of poverty and hunger around the world, and in Peru, they are seeing whole communities changed. These are children whose families are in desperate need and they are a part of the family of Christ.

We are the same, mothers, fathers, families, children, yet their need is so very great.

We CAN help.

If you have a sponsor child through Compassion or World Vision, write him or her today. Testifying first hand, these children love your letters, they wait for them and they cherish them. I had no idea before I came how much those letters meant.

If you’ve never thought about sponsoring a child, please consider it. Peru isn’t the only place in the world in need {however, Peru has captured my heart forever I think}; there are so many places that need the cycle of poverty broken.

Remember, you are a part of the worldwide body of believers, and that love CAN travel across an ocean and can change the life of a child and her family forever.

We are one body and we are one heart.

Chad has been able to pray for a few families in their homes this week. Here is some of what he has been praying for these amazing people.

Estamao tan agradecidos que Tu no eres un Dios que mira fronteras de naciones, culturales ni economicas, sino que Tu amas a todo los hombres y has llamado a todos hacia Ti, para serparte de una familia que sobrepasa todos los limites terrenales. Te agradezco por este padre y esposo qu ama a sus hijos ya su esposa, un hombre que trabaja duro y hace lo necesario para proveer comide y ropa, pero tambien el amor y la seguridad que los padres estas llamados a proveer a sus hogares.

Gracias por esta madre, pro las largas noches despierta cuidando a sus ninos enfermos, las largas caminates para llevarlos y traerlos de la escuela y por darles las innumerables lecciones que solamente una madre puede dar.

Te pedimos que traigas provision para hoy, y que tambien traigas la esperanza de que las casas seran mejores el dia de manana. Por favor trae a este hogar abundancia de gracia, misericordia y amor, para que se derramen dentro de estas cuatro paredes y tambien a todos los hogarres y familias de este vecindario.

In English:

We are so thankful You are not a God that acknowledges national, cultural or economic boundaries. But You are a God that loves all human kind and have called all people to Yourself. To be part of a family that surpasses any earthly limits. Thank you for this father and this husband who loves his children and his wife. This man who works hard and does what is necessary to provide not only food and clothing but the love and safety a father is called to bring to his home. 

Thank you for this mother; for the long nights staying up with illness, the long walks to and from school and the many lessons only a mother can teach.

We ask You provide for today but that You would also reate the hope for things to be better tomorrow. Please provide this home with an abundance of grace, mercy and love not only for within these four walls but for all of the homes and families in this neighborhood.

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.

{TO HELP AT RISK MOTHERS AND BABIES THROUGH COMPASSION’S RESCUE BABIES NOW PROGRAM, CLICK HERE}

I’m frustrated and overwhelmed.

By the poverty, and by the city, yes, but unexpectedly I’m even more overwhelmed by the stories.

As a writer, I don’t know where to begin. There are simply too many stories to tell.

Each one is unique. Each is rich. Many are sad. But more than that, I’m overwhelmed that I could not possibly tell every story that I’ve learned.

I could tell the story of Esther, a single mother of three girls, one of whom, Taira {3} is enrolled in Compassion’s Rescue Babies Now program. I could tell about her home, a 15 x 15 foot room in which her and her daughters sleep, eat, cook and live. I could tell you about the way she’s learned to provide for her daughters by learning crafting trades from the CSP center or how she testifies to Jesus’ love even in the midst of intense need.

I could also tell you that her 15 x 15 foot hallway that is her home was more spotless than my home has ever been.

I might also tell you about Lizbeth, a former sponsor child who is now 23 and works as a Child Survival Program Promoter. Her primary job is to visit homes of at risk mothers and babies, take note of their development, provide nutritional and physical assessments and educate the mothers about their child’s growth.  She sees all of her mothers twice every month for 90 minutes at a time.

I could also tell you about when I sat cross-legged this afternoon in front of the Compassion partner church in the San Juan de Miraflores district of Lima.  I pulled out a bottle of nail polish, waved a shy seven-year-old girl to sit next to me and I began to paint her nails.

She has a story too, I thought. But we didn’t have long enough and I didn’t know the right words.

Her sister, who sat down next, has a story and so does their mother. Each child, every mother, every father has a story.

And there were so many more. There was Maria, Abigail, and the little boy with the plastic bow and arrows who wouldn’t speak. I could write for decades and still not share the story of every man and woman in this 9 million person city.

But God sees me, He sees these amazing people and knows the story and the tears of every child in Peru.

HE knows them, he has already told their stories and has written them on HIS heart.

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 and click on Rescue Mothers and Babies at the top left.

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

Sughey draws us pictures. There are hills. Always hills.

She draws houses, colorful and whole. Cats with sombreros, rainbows and daisies.

And there is grass. Green grass with apple trees in the foreground and roses on the ground. If we’re lucky, she’ll draw herself into the picture with a dress, pink or red, and her long black hair.

Before we came to Peru I knew she was in poverty. I knew that she had to be in order to be recommended for the Compassion program but I even said last week to someone in explanation about our trip that I thought it might not be “that bad.”

I truly said that.

I actually thought that Sughey’s family’s situation might not be “that bad.” Sure they were in need perhaps, but Peru has a public school system. Kids receive meals and help at the Compassion center during the week. They have tutors. It can’t be “that bad.”

Plus there were her pictures. They were beautiful and joyful and I could almost hear the contentment shout at me through the page.

Unmistaken joy and certain hope. I knew it.

In my mind I pictured her living near grass and trees and streams.

In my mind I saw cloudy mornings and rainy afternoons.

In my mind I thought it couldn’t be that bad.

We walked through her town today. It’s still a part of Lima but it sits right up against those hills that were now familiar to me from her pictures.

Nothing green. No trees (except for a few cacti) and not a rose in sight. In fact, this area of Peru gets almost no precipitation at all and the hills have been as dry as a bone forever.

Yet Sughey smiles.

What I had seen in her pictures wasn’t a real representation of where she actually lived. Because I walked her streets and I stepped into her home. There were no flowers and no apple trees. Her home was bare with dirt floors and no door.  It was, in fact, “that bad.”

What I had seen was her hope.

It was hope that shouted through the page. Hope that drew daisies and cats. Hope that colored in rainbows in a rain-less sky.

God let me watch hope in a hopeless place today in the form of a little girl who will not and cannot give up dreaming.

 Have you seen HOPE lately?

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

To learn more about Compassion click here.

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

“You’re meeting her tomorrow.” Ryan, our trip leader, turned around from row 25 on the flight to Houston yesterday and told us. “We’re going to her church and then we’ll get to go to her house,” he finished.

Gulp.

Right out of the starting gate, before we’ve cut our teeth, before we’ve had a chance to settle in at all, we’ll get to go visit our sponsored child.

“Tomorrow? First thing?”

Big sigh. No tears yet, right?

The problem is, I’ve been inches from tears for a month now.

Whether it’s because I’m leaving my daughters for a week {the longest I’ve been away from them ever}, or whether it’s because I’ve been planning my trip to Peru and with that planning, preparing my own heart, I don’t know.

Commercials are getting to me. Movies are making my throat swell with unshed tears and their sweeping soundtracks and building emotional plots are twisting my insides. I had to almost turn away from the footage at the end of A Dolphin’s Tale on my plane flight last night. It’s almost embarrassing.

No. Actually, it is embarrassing.

My sinuses fill, the corner of my eyes feel hot and I. DO. NOT. WANT. TO. CRY.

Even in Moneyball on the flight from LAX to Houston this morning I smiled wide and teared up when the Oakland A’s won their 20^th game. I really did.

I looked toward the plane window. I didn’t want my husband to see me well up at Brad Pitt trying to change the game of baseball for goodness sake. I know it’s silly {unless of course you cried in Moneyball or A Dolphin’s Tale and in that case, I’m right there with you.}

In that I can look away.

But I know tomorrow I can’t look away. I won’t be able to and I don’t want to. But I’m scared of my own tears. I’m fearful of what they will do to me, the softening that has to happen during the weeping and the rawness that follows.

It scares me.

So this week I’m not going to look away. I won’t. That is my promise to you and to myself. I’m asking you not to look away either.

I’m not going to do anything this week on my blog but tell stories. I hope you’ll read and listen and share.

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

To learn more about Compassion click here.

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

“Go play outside. Unless someone’s arm is cut off or you break a toe, don’t come back in until I call you.”

We have that slight luxury in Southern California of playing outside in the dusk of the New Year. Not every day, but some are warm enough to run out in the late afternoon with short sleeves and dig in the cool dirt to make castles for tiny fairies and rafts for miniature plastic dogs.

And seconds after they are safely in the yard I turn to do my work.

I wash dishes. I write. I fold laundry. I pick up a neverending stream of little-girl toys. I go through mail. I email. I prep dinner. I bake brownies. I take a shower because, oh wow, it’s 4 o’clock and I’ve forgotten to do so today.

I’ve chosen this: this quotidian, common life. When I decided to have a marriage and have a baby, when I decided to help raise a family I chose this life. This I-can’t-remember-the-last-time-I-slept-in life.

But sometimes I wonder if some of it has chosen me. I’m nothing exciting and I’ve spent the last ten years, literally, doing the everyday tasks that come along with mothering and trying to run a household.

This kind of existence really crept up on me and while I knew all along this is what it entailed, I never really knew. Not until I was in the middle of it. Not really.

And now I think: am I content? Is this all there is? Is there MORE than this?

Am I really content sweeping crumbs, cleaning the yard after our dog, and washing clothes for 4 people for the next decade? Am I really content with cleaning up the messes of others for what seems like eternity?

If I’m honest, sometimes YES and sometimes NO.

Sometimes I’m just really, really tired.

But there is more. If I break it down only to the crumbs and the messy van and the trips to Target, then no. It isn’t anything worth feeling content with or happy about. There is nothing hopeful about cruising along in the 25 miles per hour zone for the rest of my young (ish) life.

But the MORE of it is the watching my almost-six-year old read books in their entirety to me now. The MORE of it is sharing the laughter of a household full of people with wine and lasagna around my dinner table. The MORE of it is the mentoring and the coffee dates and the ah-ha moments of my daughters. The MORE of it is volunteering in the classrooms of my girls and with my husband at church.

The MORE of it all, what makes this live uncommon, is the people who make it messy, not the messes themselves.

I hear screams out in the yard. Not hurt screams but angry ones. They are arguing over a turn with a toy, I’m sure.

It reminds me that the people in my life are what is important and not necessarily the common tasks, chosen or not, that fill up my hours.

I’ll forget. Oh yes. I’ll forget and I’ll get tired and I’ll even wonder, in my rawest places, if this is all worth it. I’ll scream and yell and angry-text my husband with all caps telling him

I NEED A BREAK OR I’M GOING TO GO INSANE.

And then I’ll take a break and return to the understanding that the kids in the yard, the friends at my table and the husband on the other end of my rage are what are significant.

They are the MORE in my life.

Are you content? What (or who) is the MORE in your life?

Yesterday was Lunar New Year, Tet in Vietnam, and when I walked into the nail salon I go to sometimes, the girls who work there told me all about the gigantic meal they had eaten the night before. I asked them a lot of questions and we talked about their customs and the kinds of food they ate on New Year.

I knew that the children get money from the elders. I knew that it was a big deal: New Year. Bigger than our stay-up-late and blow-a-few-noisemakers New Year.

After a few minutes they went back to talking to each other in Vietnamese. I sat back and thought. I’ve come here for a long time and I’ve never, ever thought to try to learn Vietnamese.

Now I know that that might sound silly. Stupid. Idiotic. Like where would I need to speak Vietnamese?

I don’t live in Vietnam. I don’t live in a primarily Vietnamese neighborhood. But, in reality, questions only go so far to show someone you care. When someone takes the time and energy to “speak your language” it makes all the difference.

How often do we only want to speak the “languages” we are comfortable with? For example, if I wanted to buy my mother a gift of music, it would be very easy for me to purchase an iTunes gift card with a few clicks and send it to her via email. Now while she reads my blog (Hi MOM!!) and works her cell phone like a pro, she doesn’t really utilize iTunes and she checks her email infrequently. MY language is the 1-2-3 simplicity of the Internet. HER language would be for me to go out and purchase a CD for her. That is what she knows and what she is comfy with.

Going out of my way to speak her language is what shows her love.

I’m going to Peru next week, and again, I don’t speak the language.

I could have taken Spanish in high school and college but I opted for French. I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but I wasn’t very practical back then.

On our trip to Lima we will have translators with us and while I’m not worried, I do feel dreadfully underprepared, less-than-functional and a little useless. A little like an appendix.

I wish now more than ever I spoke Spanish. I wish I could understand the stories, the questions, and the songs with my own ears and not the words translated into English.

Something about knowing the language of someone makes showing love that much easier. 

I can’t learn Spanish in 6 days. So I’ll be relying on smiles and hugs and handshakes to communicate my joy and my thoughts. In Peru next week, I’ll just have to share my love without fluency of words.

But I believe we can become fluent in the “languages” of those that are the closest to us.

This might even go one step further than the whole love language discussion. It’s about moving toward someone in their native culture and not merely sitting back and letting them come to me. In our house we all speak English, but we do NOT all speak the same language all of the time.

If my husband responds well to me sitting down and looking him in the eye after dinner for 20 minutes to talk about the day when my natural language would be to recede into myself and my latest audio book, then to love him will be to listen to him.

If my youngest’s language of today is the on-the-bedroom-floor, feet-kicked-up posture to play with her Littlest Pet Shop in the dollhouse {but I desperately need to fold clothes and clean up my own bedroom} to love her will be to spend time with her.

If my ten-year-old’s language is to watch that at times annoying Funny Home Video show over and over again on Netflix then I will do it because to love her well will be to share in her laughter and joy and silliness.

Learning each other’s language means being observant, being intentional and many times being uncomfortable.

But doing this, even in the discomfort, will help us love each other well.

Are you fluent in the languages of those you love the most? Are they fluent in yours?

I think if our eyes could see the baseness of one another’s thoughts we’d hate the human race:

The lust and the pornography,

the hatred and evil,

and the prejudice and bigotry.

If we could somehow see through the filtered language, the words stopped on tongues and into the bedrooms, the Internet histories and into the inner secrets of one another, we would be simply disgusted. We wouldn’t be able to stand each other.

{It’s why therapy is hard because we don’t even want to see those same things in ourselves.}

What if we knew all of the past and the present wrongs of just the people who sat near us in the pew? What if we saw the future and all of the terrible things that each one of them would do?

It’s dreadful.

But God is there.

I also believe if we saw the extent of the aches of one another we would be destined toward love, compassion and kindness.

To see each person’s entire story? Their pains and griefs? What would that do to us? What if we could see the hurts and the joys of each of these people too, see past their filtered words and secrets kept and what if we learned their stories. Knowing someone’s story gives us perspective and fosters compassion.

Could we begin, perhaps, to love people differently?

Could we, maybe even, begin to foster an intense love for the human race? Children, orphans, the arrogant, the pampered, the needy, the broken, the full, everyone?

We might not walk past the homeless man on the pier on our way to meet friends for lunch. We’d invite him in, buy him a Coke and give him a view of the game on the TV above the bar. We’d ask him his name and if he has a family. We’d ask him to tell us his story because his story is more important than any wrongs he’s done or hurts he’s committed.

We also might not dismiss the arrogant rich and overfed among us. Each of us holds a story.

God sees all of it: the Internet histories and the addictions and the lusts. At the same time he sees our pains and our hurts. He sees the ways we’ve wronged and the ways we’ve been wronged.

And he does not hate us (although it seems as if he should.) He loves us.

Do you ask to hear the stories of others? Do you think knowing someone’s story helps to inspire compassion and grace? When has someone listened to your story?

I was going to write a post today.

But I don’t think I am. Not a normal one anyway.

To write a post right now would be to steal me away from the littlest, most important person in my life. The one who’s toenail polish is chipping on her feet that are growing bigger each day. The one who holds a special under her arm everywhere she goes. A small stuffed animal that she never drops, never loses and never leaves.

To write a post right now, at least in the way I want to, would take me away from a television show on the couch under a blanket. It would take me away from reading out loud a Dr. Suess together. It would take my love and divide it with the world in a way she does not deserve.

To write something good and epiphany-loaded right now would be to take all my presence and give it here, to you, and that is something I cannot do today. I would be stealing from her and that is something, for today at least, I will not do.

I will click “publish” and then I will draw up my littlest to my lap and hold her close. She’ll only be 5 for 2 more weeks and I will then never have her again quite as small, quite as innocent, quite as compact as she is today.

What or who should you give your attention to today?