Compassion Bloggers heading to Dominican Republic

Thumbs_Up.jpgCompassion is taking a group of bloggers to the Dominican Republic in November.

I spent a few days there in May this year after we had to leave Haiti due to the food riots.

They’ve written about the trip on the Compassion Blog in the post Blog Trip to the Dominican Republic.

I’ve seen first hand the amazing work that Compassion is doing in the Dominican Republic so I’d like to encourage you to keep up to date with their journey through the various blogs represented.

Jennifer Donovan – 5 Minutes for Mom
Mary Ostyn – Owlhaven.net
Tim Challies – Challies.com
Marlboro Man, from ThePioneerWoman.com
Melanie – BigMama
Shaun Groves – Shlog



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Your words are powerful

CompassionDay.JPGI’m just wiping the tears away after reading this post at the Compassion International Blog.

One of the things that really hit home for me during my trip to Haiti and Dominican Republic with Compassion Australia was the extreme importance of writing letters to sponsored children. Hearing the children talking about their sponsors and the overwhelming joy they felt whenever they received a letter from them was an amazing revelation. We met one one lady who had been recognised by the President of her country for her incredible study results. She kept the certificate handed to her by the President in the same folder as the letters from her sponsor family. They were both precious to her and they were kept together as her most prized possessions.

In the post I mentioned at the Compassion International Blog this truth is demonstrated through the words of Roberto Medrano, a Compassion worker in El Salvador.

It is amazing the influence a sponsor can have on the child. For example, I remember a 25-year-old Compassion graduate. She is a Christian who is married and has two babies. She also serves as a center worker. Even though she is an adult and loves Compassion’s ministry, she always cries because in the 15 years of sponsorship her sponsor did not write one single letter. She wrote her sponsor dozens of letters, but she never received any response.

If you sponsor a child through any aid agency, can I encourage you to make some time tonight to write that child a letter. My words here can’t even begin to express the influence your letters can have.

In Dominican Republic we spoke to a beautiful young lady who never once received encouragement from her parents for her schooling, yet because her sponsors kept in touch regularly over many years and encouraged her with her studies she is now achieving top results at university.

If you don’t yet sponsor a child I plead with you to do something about that today. If you’re in Australia I can get you signed up today, just contact me directly, or you can visit the Compassion Australia website. If you’re outside Australia you can go to the Compassion International website. Please let me know if you decide to change a child’s life through sponsorship.



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Back to School

DR.jpgI went back to school yesterday.

Thankfully I wasn’t going back as a student but I was there to talk about the wonderful work of Compassion Australia.

I was invited to speak to the students at Beechboro Christian School about the trip I took to Haiti and Dominican Republic in April this year. While we had Compassion Day at 98.5 Sonshine FM back in May, they’ve got their very own Compassion Day tomorrow.

The staff and students will be doing all sorts of fun things to raise money for Yessica, the school’s sponsored child, as well as contributing to other Compassion projects.

It was such an honour to be able to tell them about how much their contribution will mean to boys and girls in other parts of the world who have so little. They all listened very well and hopefully they understand just a little bit more about the responsibility we all have to care for those in poverty.



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Photos from Haiti and Dominican Republic

As part of a presentation I was asked to make last night, I put together a number of photos from my trip to Haiti and Dominican Republic with the audio of a radio segment I recorded for Compassion Day last month.

The trip was back in April but as you can imagine, it’s still very fresh in my mind.

If you take the time to watch, let me know what you think.



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At the airport

Here’s another one of the videos recorded around the time of the food riots in Haiti.

If you haven’t caught up with the details yet, I was part of a small team visiting Haiti last month to see the work of Compassion. We were meant to be there for a week but had to evacuate after 48 hours when ritoting and looting in Port-au-Prince escalated.

Our exit was interesting to say the least.

After a rather scary drive from our hotel to the airport we had the opportunity to reflect on what we’d just been through. This video is a couple of minutes of me sharing my thoughts as we sat in a disused room at Port-au-Prince Airport.



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