Hope Breaks Through

July 10, 2014
by Rodney Olsen
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(Pictured: Some of the many children being released from poverty through Compassion.)

He worked as a soldier for the former government, clearing land mines. That was until a mine robbed him of his eyesight and one of his legs. These days his small pension and meagre earnings from what little work he is able to do just can’t stretch far enough to support his wife and five children.

We were welcomed into his tiny dwelling. His entire home is about the size of a small bedroom. It’s dark and there’s some rough covering on parts of the concrete floor. The high corrugated iron roof has made it possible to accommodate a very roughly made mezzanine across half of the room where he sleeps alongside his two sons. Mum and two daughters sleep below. Their eldest daughter has moved to live with close relatives because there’s just not enough room for her at home. The large poster of Avril Lavigne on the wall seems completely out of place in this small Ethiopian home.

As a couple of local Compassion representatives and us five Australians huddled together in the cramped conditions, we heard the story of this fammily and their struggles.

With rain bucketing down outisde and thunder that made it sound like the entire neighbourhod was about to fall down, we also heard about how one of their daughters is now being sponsored through Compassion. Now there is hope in their home. She dreams of becoming a civil engineer …. and she’s only seven.

In just a few days in Addis Ababa we have seen a lot of desperate poverty but we’ve also seen incredible hope. We’ve seen hope amidst some of the toughest circumstances imaginable and we’ve met young people who have overcome poverty through their Compassion sponsorship. Lives are being changed and children are being released from poverty in Jesus’ name.

Before we left that small home today we prayed for the precious family we had just met. We prayed that Jesus would be their comfort in their difficulties and that he would also be the one to change their current circumstances. It was an honour to spend time with their family and to enter into their world, even for just a few moments.



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Welcome … We Love You

July 9, 2014
by Rodney Olsen
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It was quite a drive out of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia today to get to a church which partners with Compassion. While the sights on the way were amazing, nothing could prepare our group of five Australians for our arrival and the welcome we received.

A throng of children moved towards us. A small girl made her way over to me, handed me some beautiful roses and said, “Welcome, we love you.” I only just managed to hold it together.

From that point on we couldn’t go anywhere without several children holding onto our hands as they chatted excitedly amongst themselves and with us. They were all children who are benefitting from the holistic child development offered through Compassion. We had the honour of being shown through the centre where they are receiving help to improve their physical, spiritual, cognitive and socio-economic outcomes.

The joy exhibited by the children was only part of the story. As we found out more and more about this particular centre, we were told that many of those who had graduated previously had moved from desperate poverty to living fulfilling lives. Three graduates have become doctors, four have become lawyers, others have started their own businesses and the list just went on.

The love the staff at the centre have for each child was obvious. The fact that they could point at photos of many previous graduates and tell us what they were now doing and about how many children they now had showed that this was no passing interest. They are fully invested in the very best outcomes for each and every one of the children they serve.

I wonder what potential is hiding in each of the children we met today. I wonder how different their lives would have been if they didn’t have someone somewhere else in the world who loved them enough to sponsor them.

I wonder what potential will remain undiscovered simply because there are not enough sponsors for every child who deserves a chance to be released from poverty. Will you consider sponsoring a child through Compassion today?



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Days like today …

July 9, 2014
by Rodney Olsen
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Days like today remind me why I work for Compassion.

After some long flights I made it to Ethiopia last night. I’m here with some Compassion supporters to see what kind of difference is being made in young lives through churches that partner with Compassion.

Today was our first full day in this amazing country. We visited Ethiopia’s Compassion office and got an overview of the work here. Over 90 000 Ethiopian children are being released from poverty in Jesus’ name through Compassion in this country alone.

Next, we visited one of the churches that partners with Compassion to see first hand how lives are being changed and even saved.

After the church visit we went to the home of one young mother to the home she shares with her infant son. Her home was about the same size as my garden shed … and I have a small shed.

With a concrete floor and old corrugated tin sheeting for walls, this home is a very basic place for them to live and lay their heads. They don’t have much room but the area is still uncrowded. They don’t own enough to fill the space.

All the while as his mother told us her story, her son played with my camera, hugged some of his other visitors and generally lit up the room with his antics and an apparent love for life.

With tears rolling down her face, this mother told us that if it wasn’t for Compassion neither her or her son would still be alive today.

With tears rolling down her face, this mother told us that if it wasn’t for Compassion neither her or her son would still be alive today. Her tears weren’t the only ones being shed in that tiny room. None of us could help but be caught up in the story of this woman and her boy.

Days like today remind me once again why I work for Compassion.



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Life is too short …

July 6, 2014
by Rodney Olsen
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(I’m currently busy getting ready to fly to Ethiopia and Rwanda. You can read more about that in my post A Different Kind of Tour. So rather than spend time writing something new today, I thought I’d revisit something I wrote in April last year.)

I’ll admit it. I used to drink lots of instant coffee. These days I just can’t bring myself to throw some powder into a mug of hot water and call it coffee.

I’ve also decided that from now on, when the smiley lady on the airplane asks if I’d like coffee, I’ll be saying no. I’ll be polite but I’ll say no because what she’s offering doesn’t really taste a lot like coffee. It may have tasted like coffee some hours beforehand when it was made but it certainly doesn’t by the time they serve it up. I almost suspect that real coffee has a fear of flying and so they’ve found some kind of weird substitute.

Life is too short to drink bad coffee.

Life’s too short.

I’ve seen a number of statements in recent years about life being too short. Life’s too short to worry about what other people think. Life’s too short to drink cheap wine. Life’s too short to be anything but happy. Life’s too short to wait. Life’s too short to wake up with regrets.

I would agree with some of those statements more than others but the interesting thing is that many of them are about life being too short to bother with stuff that doesn’t maximise our own life experience. In light of eternity, this life is incredibly short but surely this short life is about more than squeezing the most out of the years we’re given purely for our own benefit.

Life’s too short to withhold kindness from others.

Whether it’s just giving away a smile or giving a large part of our lives to help others, focusing on those other than ourselves should be a priority during our short time on this planet. Put kindness on your bucket list.

We can find a million reasons to withhold kindness from other people but life is richer when we share something of ourselves with no expectation of return.

It doesn’t matter who we are, we all face struggles throughout life that remain unseen by most people. When we withhold kindness due to the way a person acts or the attitudes they display we may very well be withholding kindness from the person who needs it far more than those who are ‘nice’ to us.

Life’s too short to hold grudges.

When I encounter people who have cut others out of their lives over petty issues it makes my head spin. I know that we sometimes need to retreat from certain people, sometimes for a season, sometimes forever, but the stubborn refusal to forgive damages everyone concerned.

Forgiveness isn’t just a quick case of ‘forgive and forget’, it’s a process, sometimes a very long process, but if we refuse to undertake that process we remain slaves to the hurt.

If you want to read about some ‘big forgiveness’, head to the Forgiveness Project. The founder of the Forgiveness Project, Marina Cantacuzino, has a great take on forgiveness.

Forgiveness is an inspiring, complex, exasperating subject, which provokes strong feeling in just about everyone. Having spent all of 2003 collecting stories of reconciliation and forgiveness for an exhibition of words and images which I created with the photographer, Brian Moody, I began to see that for many people forgiveness is no soft option, but rather the ultimate revenge. For many it is a liberating route out of victimhood; a choice, a process, the final victory over those who have done you harm. – Marina Cantacuzino

Life’s too short not to consider the bigger questions.

The older you get, the more you realise that life is short. Very short. These days I look back at the decades and it feels as if I’ve only just got started on this journey of life, yet I know that it’s extremely likely that I’m more than half way through my time here.

While I hope that I’ve still got a good number of years ahead of me I really can’t be certain of when this fabulous journey will come to an end.

So what happens then? What happens after this life? If this life is so short and eternity is so long I need to discover whether this is all there is. Life’s too short not to consider the bigger questions.

I’m unashamedly a follower of Jesus so it’s my belief that this life is just a short, shabby lead in to a glorious future. You may think I’m wrong but have you actually taken the time to fully explore the possibilities?

If this eternity thing is real, and I fully believe it is, you owe it to yourself to check out the evidence yourself. Don’t rely on what others are saying or what you think faith is about. Investigate the evidence and be open to discover something that could change your thinking and your life.

Life, at least on this earth, is short. Eternity is forever.



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Our most powerful learning tool?

July 4, 2014
by Rodney Olsen
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How much time do you spend writing each day? What’s that? You don’t write at all?

I am utterly convinced that the very act of writing can make a major difference in the way we think and learn. If we’re serious about learning we should get serious about writing. That’s not to say we should all become professional writers but we should certainly all spend time getting our thoughts down on paper or even tapped into a computer.

Here’s something Professor Brian Cambourne said at an education conference I attended in Singapore back in 1986.

Writing, in my opinion, is the most potent tool of learning and thinking that the human race has got available to it. We need to write in order to find out what we think and in order to shape our learning. The evidence from cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics is quite conclusive. Writing is a highly complex act which depends upon analysis and synthesis of many different levels of thinking. I have a strong conviction that sustained engagement with the written form of language actually changes us cognitively.

I wish I could share the entire lecture that he gave but I only have it in video format and I’m not going to transcribe it all for you. Sorry.

What’s he saying? To over simplify, he’s saying that the very act of writing helps us to map out our thoughts and helps us learn. The processes that we use for writing are more powerful than the acts of simply speaking or listening.

Most bloggers would know this to be true. Even in the simple act of writing a blog post we can write, read, correct, read, restructure and read again before we finally hit the publish button. We take care to make sense and to be understood and it is in this process that we often more fully develop our own understanding of the subject matter.

Cambourne’s big concern is that most of us don’t engage with the written form of language nearly enough. Somewhere in the process of learning literacy we have adopted the thought that we’re not very good at writing and that it’s not something that most of us would do voluntarily without very good reason.

Even though the standard is sometimes less than brilliant, blogging has at least got millions of people mapping out their thoughts through writing.

What about you? Do you find writing difficult? How much do you write each day? Do you find that writing helps you clarify things in your own mind? Does it help you learn?



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