Today we had the pleasure of visiting the Compassion International office in Santo Domingo. It was an eye opening experience to see the work that goes into the sponsorship of a child.
The office will process over 20,000 letters a month. Each one is read, translated and delivered to the center every two weeks. We learned that the children have to write twice a year and when you ask questions to your child, you WILL get a response.
One of the people we met was Eliza, who has the privilege of traveling the world to gain knowledge of people's testimonies of how compassion has helped them in order to increase sponsors for the children.
After touring the Compassion office, we visited Casa Juvenile 3er Cielo (Third Heaven youth ministry). It is a place founded by the children of Compassion who have graduated from the program to give back to the community. It is a safe place for the youth to go to hear and see the love of God. Becky (our team member), joined the singers on stage to sing "Yes Lord" in English and Spanish. It was neat to see her use her talent in the DR! We heard testimonies from the graduates of Compassion talk about how a simple letter touched their lives and how being a sponsor to the kids is about so much more then the money that is being sent. It is about a relationship, encouragement and love. We learned how small words of encouragement can greatly impact the life of a child who would otherwise may not feel or know what love is.
Seeing first hand the impact that letter writing has made in the lives of the people that we met has given me the motivation for me to write more to my sponsor child.
Looking forward to a great day tomorrow as we spend the day with our sponsor children.
Bendiciones,
Kathy and Hannah