(Please don’t forget to visit Nick’s blog)

This is our last day in the Dominican Republic. Tomorrow morning we will head for the airport and from there we will fly for home, leaving the developing world and returning to the developed world. As much as I’ve enjoyed this experience, I can’t deny that I’ll be glad to be home. I’ve been to many homes here in Dominican Republic but I don’t know if I’ll remember any of them more vividly than Julia’s house. I wrote about Julia yesterday, describing the kind of poverty she had experienced as a girl—poverty that forced her to wear a borrowed dress just to have her photo taken for Compassion’s sponsorship program. Now a university student as part of Compassion’s Leadership Development Program, tears spilled from her eyes as she remembered the shame of poverty. Today Julia lives in a slightly nicer home—though dark and musty and sad by our standards, it was positively luxurious compared to many we saw and compared to what she had known as a child.

We sat in Julia’s living room, on benches and chairs and the floor, and asked her mother about what Compassion meant to her, having seen it support two of her girls. She had no words. Tears filled her eyes, and ours. I guess words really weren’t necessary. We asked Julia about her sponsors and she told us of Roger, the sponsor in New Zealand who had supported her from age six all the way through her graduation from the Sponsorship Program. For twelve years Roger had supported her, written her cards and letters, sent her gifts, and even written her asking for advice on whether or not he should ask his girlfriend to become his wife! For twelve years he had prayed for Julia and she for him.

“What would you tell him if you could talk to him?”

“I love you so much. I still read your letters and cards and still have the pictures you sent to me!”

“What does Roger mean to you?”, we asked.

“He is my superhero.”

A superhero. It was not the only time this week I heard the word. For all the talk of the extraordinary men and women who have made such a difference in the lives of children, when I went to the homes of the girls and they proudly showed off the letters and photos they had received, the sponsors, whether from America or New Zealand or anywhere else, looked awfully ordinary to me. And I guess this is what Compassion is looking for. They aren’t looking for the rich and the famous, the notorious or the renowned. They are looking for ordinary people to play an extraordinary role in the lives of children who so desperately need help. They’re looking for a few ordinary superheroes.

I’ve been here for four days now and have seen Compassion in action. I’ve seen women being trained in how to care for their children. I’ve seen projects where the children receive an education and receive the good news of Jesus Christ. I’ve seen future leaders who are attending university through the Leadership Development Program. I’ve seen a water filtration system built to supply an entire neighborhood—thousands of people who drink water that leaves them with fungi and lesions—with pure, clean water. I have met Compassion staff who were sponsored children themselves and who are now dedicating their lives to serving children through the organization that so ably served them.

I came to Dominican Republic on something of a fact-finding mission. I do not sponsor a child. I’ve thought about it many times, but have never had confidence that Compassion is what they claim to be. But having seen it in action, I now have no doubts. I’m willing to stake my reputation on it. When I get home we will be visiting the web site as a family to choose at least one child to sponsor. Frankly, I’d like to have each of my kids sponsor one child (though I still need to talk this over with Aileen!). Compassion is all that they claim to be—more even. They were true to their word and allowed me to open every filing cabinet, look behind every door, and so on.

Today I want to encourage you to consider sponsoring a child. You know the pitch—for the price of a cup of coffee a day you can make the difference in the life of a child. I know now that this isn’t just idle talk. You really can (and will!) make a difference. But don’t just sponsor a child—write to him, have your children write to him, pray for him, send him a birthday gift. These things will get through to him, they will mean the world to him, they will change his life.

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Have you ever looked through the photos of children at Compassion’s site or at a table at a concert and wondered why sometimes five or six girls are wearing the same dress? It’s not a school uniform and is not a particularly nice dress, so why are several of the girls wearing it? Today I found out why. With tears of shame, even fifteen years later, Julia (pronounced “HOO-lia) sobbed her story. She had been born in such poverty that when, at age five, Compassion had taken her photograph in the hopes that they would be able to find a sponsor for her, she had no clothes she could wear in that photograph. And so she huddled in a bathroom naked with eight other girls while they waited their turn in the dress. One by one they put it on, faced the camera, and then took it off and returned to their tattered clothes. Today Julia, vivacious and hilarious, broke down as she remembered the shame of poverty. Today Julia, a university student and participant in Compassion’s Leadership Development Program, helped showed me how Compassion defines success.

Compassion’s child development model has three core programs. We saw the first of these on Monday in the Child Survival Program which helps children from before their birth up through their third birthday. We saw the second of these on Tuesday in the Child Sponsorship Program. This is the program Compassion is best known for as it connects one sponsor with one child. Today, Wednesday, we saw the third one of these in the Leadership Development Program. This is the program that accepts graduates from Child Sponsorship who display exceptional leadership potential. These young people receive a university education and leadership training that helps them become leaders within their church and within their communities. And so, in these three days, we’ve seen the broad sweep of what Compassion does and how it works with children from before they are born all the way through their university graduation. It takes children who would otherwise have very little opportunity and sets them up as future leaders. It ends the cycle of poverty by equipping children to be productive members of society.

Our day began with a visit to another one of Compassion’s Santo Domingo projects. Here we were greeted as we have been greeted each day—with a program of music, prayer and Scripture. It seems clear by now that music is an integral part of Dominican Christianity. Most of the songs seem to be simple but to contain great truths; most are accompanied by loud clapping and joyful praise. We accepted an invitation to the project’s office and here we were shown the project’s records—ledgers, records of attendance, and so on—everything they could do to give us confidence that they are faithful stewards of the gifts God has given them. I paged through the ledger for some time, doing currency conversions in my head and expressing amazement that they can do so much with so little. We visited some of the classrooms, slipping in and sitting down among the children (and in my case even being expected to participate in a lesson on the Good Shepherd).

But the day’s main attraction was meeting two of the students of this project who are currently part of the Leadership Development Program—Julia and Mariolvis. Both girls had grown up in the neighborhood and both attended the church associated with the project. Both had been sponsored from a young age. Each of them shared her story, telling of fathers and siblings who had died, of extreme poverty, but of the joys of attending the project and of graduating to the Leadership Development Program. We toured both of their homes—homes that in any context but what we saw yesterday would have been shocking—meeting their mothers and their siblings, admiring their academic accomplishments and expressing joy at their graduation photographs.

Someone asked the questions that always arise: “Did you have a sponsor?” “What were their names?” “Did they send you letters?” In both cases today, the girls were sponsored, knew the names of their sponsors and told of the letters, cards and gifts they had received. Mariolvis, was asked what it meant to her to be part of the Leadership Development Program. With joy she said it meant the world to her, but it was her next words which grabbed me. “The Lord was hiding that gift from me,” she said. It was a gift God held back until the proper time. God has blessed her so richly, calling her out of the hopeless life awaiting her and freeing her from the cycle of poverty. Now Mariolvis is studying marketing at a local university and is actively involved in evangelism there. She thanks God for Compassion, aware of the life-changing impact it has had on her. She thanks God for his hidden gift to her.

And this must be the question Compassion has to answer all the time. What happens when sponsorship ends? What happens when a child gets too old to be sponsored? What does success look like to Compassion? From what I learned today, I’d say that it looks like this.

Here are some more photos from today:

(When you’re finished here, please visit my son Nick’s blog at challiesjr.com.)

I must have met 100 children today; 200 maybe. I had children touching my skin, poking my nose, grabbing my ears, hanging off my back, arms and shoulders, poking their hands into my pockets and asking, always asking, to have their photo taken. I shot photo after photo of children posing for the camera, smiling and giving a thumbs up or “rabbit ears.” I’d show them their photo on the little screen on my camera and they’d laugh and point and run to fetch their friends. It’s a trick that didn’t ever seem to get old. We were in this small batey to see Compassion’s largest program—the Child Sponsorship Program.

As we did yesterday, we did two home visits today. We dropped into the homes of some of the children who are sponsored by Compassion International. Here we saw abject poverty—a different kind of poverty than we saw the day before. A shocking, terrible, unjust kind of poverty.

We arrived just after nine at a batey well outside the city limits of Santo Domingo. A batey is a plantation and in this case a sugar plantation. The people living there are perhaps not quite slaves but neither are they free. While I was not able to figure out the exact circumstances in this particular batey, a typical story goes like this. A man is wooed from Haiti and convinced to move to Dominican Republic where he will work at a plantation and improve his lot in life. The situation in Haiti is so desperate that many are unable to resist. But when they and their families arrive, they find that they’ve been lied to. They have revoked their Haitian citizenship and are unable to qualify for Dominican citizenship. As non-citizens, they have no real rights. And so they find themselves working at bateys, living nearly as slaves. Their wages are very low. They are forced to buy everything they need from company-owned stores that charge exorbitant rates. Soon they are in debt, unable to leave but unable to make a living by staying. They may live out their lives in this state of constant injustice. And all the while they are employed (or is it owned?) by American-owned companies—maybe the company which sold you your last bag of sugar.

The homes are tiny and dirty and decrepit. Many are falling apart but the company refuses to fix them. When asked about this, I heard one woman say, “Promisa, promisa, promisa.” The corporation promises, but never delivers; the poverty continues. In the first home we met an old grandmother who had ten children of her own and who had taken in several of her grandchildren after their mother had died. In the second home we met a mother and grandmother and watched their boys play together with my Nick. In both cases, these families had a child sponsored by one of our group. The second grandmother, who looked impossibly young to be a grandma, was asked about her hopes and dreams for the future and she had little to say. She had dreamed of being a doctor or a psychologist in her younger days, but her hopes had been shattered. Now she lives on this squalid batey. I don’t think she dares hope any longer.

Yesterday I said that Compassion is in the business of stories—of writing stories through the lives of children. But today I saw that they are also in the business of giving hope. By meeting the needs of these children they are offering hope. In the midst of this sad little batey in a small and overlooked corner of the Dominican Republic I saw hope. I saw a school teaching children to read and write and to think bigger than the life they’ve always known. I saw children whose physical needs were being met, who were being told of a God who loves them, who were being educated and who are being given the skills they’ll need to make a real living. In the midst of dirt tracks running with refuse, in the midst of trash being picked through by mangy dogs, in the midst of such poverty; in the midst of all of this, I saw hope. If you look at these photos, maybe you can see it too (RSS subscribers will need to click through to see the slideshow):

I’m writing this morning from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. As you know, my son and I are here with Compassion International to see how they serve God by serving this nation. From now until Thursday we will be touring the country and seeing Compassion’s work among its people. We will be busy all day and writing in the evenings, so, as a break from the usual routine around here, I’ll be posting later rather than earlier. In just a few minutes we’ll be meeting up with the rest of the team and, as I understand it, taking a look at one of Compassion’s Child Survival Programs. Stay tuned this evening and I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.