The 40 Day Fast: My Cause and My Organization

Posted on 06.21.07 in The 40 Day Fast and there are 29 comments.

Child Hunger

My cause is child hunger and my organization is Compassion International.

Did You Know?

Almost 6.5 million children under five die every year from hunger-related diseases. In fact, hunger-related illnesses kill 12 children every minute of every day.

Did you know that the Western world has all the resources needed to defeat child hunger? Consider this:

The basic nutritional needs of the world’s poorest children could be met for $19 billion a year.

• We spend $18 billion annually on makeup alone.
• We spend $17 billion on pet food.
• We spend $11 billion on ice cream.
• We spend $35 billion on bottled water.

Compassion International

My husband and I sponsor three children through Compassion - Sathish (14-India), Sayriel (12-Mexico) and Sophanie (6-Haiti).

We exchange letters and pictures...Sayriel just told us he has a girlfriend now (aaaaargh!), Sathish dreams of becoming a doctor and Sophanie always draws a pretty picture for us.

It’s been such a joy to get to know each of our kids.

How To Get Involved

Sponsoring a child costs just $32 per month. So, for $32 per month you could free a child from poverty and hunger or you could:

• Go out to dinner with your spouse...once.
• Enjoy those extra 300 minutes on your cell plan that you never use anyway.
• Spend hours watching the additional 250 channels that you have since you upgraded to premium cable service.
• Make two extra impulse purchases this month.

How crazy is it that for the cost of one restaurant meal for a family we can completely transform a child’s life?

How To Be A Superhero

Here are some of the kids awaiting sponsorship:

If you ever wanted to be someone’s hero...here’s your chance.

Already a Compassion sponsor? Tell us about your child.

The Comments:

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Great post Kat!

Those statistics are crazy… $18 billion on makeup?!!! Oh wow....

~We have two children that we sponsor through Compassion.  James from Uganda and Rochie Mae from the Phillippinnes. We’ve had James the longest, and so our relationship with him is closer, he is now asking us to come and visit, he asks us to pray for him to do well in school, and he tells us he prays for us. 
Rochie’s mother wrote us a letter thanking us over and over for sponsoring her child.  We also get pretty drawings from her. 
Compassion is a great organization, and gives these children and their community so much along with the necessities, they are giving them love, and hope.

Thanks Kat for the post. Those stats are mind boggling! Im praying for you today as you fast.

I’m prayng for you today as you start the fast! God bless you richly! I love you, Mom

I’ll be praying for your fast today.

Just curious, but the above stats: are they global or U.S.?

Euphrony,
The ice cream stat is just Europe. The pet food is the US and Europe and I’m not sure whether the makeup is just the Western world or if it’s global. The bottled water stat is global.

Here is my source.

I sponsor Jancey.  She lives in a small town outside San Salvador, El Salvador with her mom and dad and little sister.  She’s great with a crayon, struggles with spelling and loves to sing.

(PS. Kat, on the road I’m having a hard time sending mail out to get you a message.  Can you add the blogroll to my sidebar?  Under the 40 days chicklet?)

I sponsor Munita from Kenya.  She will turn 7 on Sunday!  It is wonderful to know that we can make such a HUGE difference in the lives of these kids, from so many miles away, with so little money.  I sponsored Munita through World Vision, another fantastic organization that hopefully another fasting blogger will mention in the next 39 days!

Great post!  I want to just snatch up one of those children!  Hopefully, someone will. 

I sponsor Shampa (Bangladesh), Ice (
Thailand), and Vicky (India) Shampa just wrote to say her five month old brother died of pneumonia.  How heartbreaking is that?  She often sends me beautiful drawings and is the cutest thing in all of Bangladesh.  Ice and Vicky I just started sponsoring in January.  Vicky’s mother is in a mental institution and his father isn’t around.  He lives with his grandmother and according to his social worker is very smart.  I believe it.  Ice helps her mother sell meat off a cart and is Buddhist.  She doesn’t yet know Jesus. I pray for her family to know Jesus and have all their needs provided for.

Great post, and very convicting for me.  I sponsored a child in college with a friend of mine, but haven’t since.  Shame on me!

My wife and I sponsor two children through compassion. It’s so easy, almost to the point where we don’t even realize the impact we’re having. $32 is nothing to us and everything to them.

Thank you for getting us started Kat!

We’ve got two kids.  Natnael from Ethiopia, he’s 9, and sweet Sally from Indonesia.  She’s 6.  Natnael likes playing soccer and Sally likes to sing.

I love being a part of Compassion.  Both our sponsorships came out of Shaun’s concerts.  The second, Sally, was a moving experience.  We felt led to help another child, so we asked to be given a girl, but it didn’t matter who.  When I looked down at who we were given, the presence of the Holy Spirit, his love and purpose, was so strong.... 

Thanks for posting those numbers, Kat.

Those statistics about the hunger-related deaths are so staggering. I really don’t think I can wrap my mind around them, or around the grim reality that they portray.

We sponsor three Compassion children—Karla in El Salvador, Lidya in Ethiopia, and Marisela in Mexico. We love the way that Compassion allows us to interact personally with these girls, and to pray for them and encourage them. I would wholeheartedly agree with Kat’s recommendation, to simply visit the Compassion website and get started today. The folks there are very helpful, and make the process of getting started so fast and easy—but the impact is huge beyond all measure.

Awesome job, Kat.

It is very moving to see all the comments proudly showing off everyone’s sponser child.  I have been sponsering Sam (Uganda) through an orphanage that I went to work at when I was 16!!  (same age that Sam is now!) It is amazing the way my heart wells with pride when I recieve a letter from him talking about how he has passed another grade, or helped his family on the farm.  Beautiful children who all deserve a chance - a chance that we can provide!!

Great way to start the 40 fast Kat!

We sponsor Salomi in Nepal through World Help.  She wants to be a nurse and likes to draw Precious Moments characters.

I bet we would not even have to give up 18 billion dollars worth of makeup to feed the worlds poor.  From what I understand the main culprit is inadequate distribution (aka hoarding) that keeps most of it in the hands of the few.  It works something like this....send your average dictator all the food (or money to buy food) they need to feed their drought stricken country and they make themselves, their cronies, and their army fat while others see little. 

But if you want to spend less on makeup too I am all for that...all the better (not that Kat wears very much, or needs it).  I will say that we could support another child for one bottle of Avon’s base powdery stuff (not sure what you call it).

Amy - I may adopt the name of your child from Bangladesh for my own son....Ice.....I really like it.

It’s Spreading!!!!!!!

http://www.pinkhairedgirl.net/?p=498

We sponser Stephanie who lives in Colombia and will turn 12 years old next week.  She is a great student and she loves the Lord so much.  It is so great to get her letters and hear her appreciation for all the Lord has provided for her and her family.
We don’t miss the money at all but it sure makes a difference to Stephanie.
God bless

I’m praying for you, Kat!  I would LOVE to tell you about my Compassion child, but I’m going to wait until my day to tell!  Blessings!

Good start, it seems.  Again, Kat, kudos on bringing this idea to the foreground and putting ourselves in the background.

Great start to a great effort, Kat - way to go! I look forward to seeing what the Lord will do through this time - what a great bunch of bloggers to be partnering with!

My wife and I sponsor two children through World Vision - but I will be talking more about them when my day comes around. Later!

I sponser one child, Ephrem, in Ethiopia.  I had been planning on doing it for a while, and at one of Shaun’s concert a couple months ago decided to stop plan on doing it and go ahead and do it.

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! I’m extremely excited to see what these next 40 days will hold.

It’s so fun to see everyone share about their kids.

One thing I especially like about the child sponsorship model is that it makes me profoundly interested in what happens in India, Mexico and Haiti. It makes the world a bit smaller and other cultures less mysterious.

Shaun,
I posted that info for you.

Kat,
Great post, humbling, and scary all at the same time. Mu hubby and I decided today to adopt a Compassion child. I am looking forward to these next 40 days.
Jeanine

Thanks, Kat!  A beautiful post about such a wonderful organization.  Compassion is such a blessing to so many children (and to their sponsors like me!).

I sponsor a child, Eliazima, from Tanzania.  This past February I got the amazing opportunity to go to Tanzania and I got the chance to visit him in his home and meet his family.  It was an unbelievable experience and if anyone has doubts about Compassion, I can tell you that it truly does change lives.

There are Forty-Four Million White Americans who live in poverty.

Most of the Sally Soccermoms never hear about this little factoid because the Press and Politicians all ignore White Poverty. They are afraid to talk about White Poverty because they fear being labeled as racists, but being poor hurts just as much, no matter what gene pool you sprang from!

Corporations and universities openly discriminate against the White poor, by providing special race-based quotas for other minority groups, and denying the White poor any similar opportunity to improve their position in society.

While you are all busy fasting and pining away for the poor in the Third World, I will be working to help alleviate White Poverty. I will be trying to get more investment capital to flow to areas where local economies have been destroyed by outsourcing manufacturing to China. I will continue to teach courses in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development and I will continue to support SCORE and SBA programs to help new business start-ups. I will also work for Tort reform and anti-trust actions to help make American business more competitive and able to employ more American labor at better wages.

The White poor here in the United States are a larger population segment than the ENTIRE black population (33M) and larger than the ENTIRE Latino population (36M), yet there are no scholarship programs targeted at the White poor, no celebrities holding telethons to help this, the largest population of poor people, in the United States. No, it seems more popular among the elites to fund programs in the Third World with the misplaced belief that if we are nice to them, they will be nice to us, later on. History and the Bible teaches us that such charity is rarely repaid with anything but a slash of the saber across the throats of the rich. So, by all means still be charitable to the Third World, but expect no kindness in return.

By contrast, charity here at home, is proved to be a major factor in building better citizens. These citizens go own to raise strong families with good values and become pillars of their own communities. So, in your giving, do not forget that charity begins at home; including in our home communities.

So, to all of you Sally Soccermoms who are busying yourselves saving children in far away lands, please save a few of our own children, while you are at it.

I would just like to state to Clairese, that yes there is poverty in the US, however, every person in the US has the chance to get themselves out of it, have food and shelter.  Go work at McDonalds if nothing else and get off your butt.  Americans have the opportunity everyday, they just choose not to take it, versus declared poverty countries that cannot make the income to feed their families or afford proper education.  I myself have a Compassion girl from Tanzania named Neema who is 8.  I think Compassion is a great cause!  I think it’s a wonderful thing to get others involved!

Kat, you are making better people out of us. I hope you can sleep at night having this thought in your mind. Jokes aside, this is very serious. Seeing their angelic faces makes me want to take them all and raise them as my kids. For now all i can do is open my check book and make a few kids happy for at least a day.

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