SPECIAL MEETING … Meeting their sponsored child was definitely a highlight for Edgerton’s Byron and Gayle Adams, on their mission trip to Kenya, Africa. They are seen here with their four year old adopted daughter, Lydia, and her family.
By: Rebecca Miller
Edgerton’s Pastor Byron Adams and his wife Gayle were blessed recently with the opportunity to get to know first hand, how Compassion International (CI) uses the funds sent to support children in other countries. Not only did they experience the flight to and from Nairobi, Kenya, and the incredible memory making time there, but they got to meet, and pray for, their very own little girl, Lydia, whom they just began supporting recently.
“Thousands of children are sent monthly support from caring people around the world, that helps them survive and thrive, but only about 3% of the supporters ever get to meet the child they have been given to support. We feel so blessed! It is fun, too, that our little four year old Lydia in Kenya, has the same name as one of our daughters. It made us connect with her even more,” Adams said.
Life Changing Church, which has campuses in Edgerton, Ohio and Angola, Indiana, has made a choice to focus specifically on supporting one international area of the world, that being the Santa Domingo area in Dominican Republic. They have a mission presence there, having already built nine houses over the past five years, and have chosen to support that area in every way they can.
Recently, Pastor Adams began meeting with a Compassion International representative out of Akron, Ohio, to see if they would be able to begin the program to adopt children from the Santa Domingo area. They are in twenty four countries already, since they were founded in 1952, and Life Changing Church has a desire to add the children from where their church is already ministering.
The plan is in motion to get that going and Adams believes that between the two church campuses, they will be able to sponsor 300 children from the specific area where they minister in the Dominican Republic.
“When a family here adopts a child,” Adams explained, “they send $39 per month to support one child, per family that applies. Compassion International has chosen to do it that way, thus being able to minister to more families.
The money provides schooling, uniforms, and food, and the entire family benefits from one child being sponsored. 80% of the money goes to the child and 20% to CI.” The church will continue to go there on mission trips, to build more homes, and that will give everyone who is sponsoring a child the opportunity to meet them.
On the weekend of March 21 and 22, Life Changing Church will be combining their Baby Dedication Days with Compassion International Weekend. The plan is to have it in place that LCC members can start signing up to adopt a child that weekend.
The trip to Africa opened their eyes and gave them much insight into the way Compassion International is changing the lives of families. “We visited what they call their “projects”, Adams shared. “Compassion works through the church.
They find a church there in Africa or whatever country into which they are going, and that church hooks up with them. They work through the churches, and provide for better health, education, emotional, and spiritual care for the children.”
While in Kenya this past January, they visited three different settings. Two were in the city of Nairobi, and one was “way out in the boonies.” It was a three hour drive and there were three hundred children there, jumping for joy to greet them. “Some of the kids walk up to 45 minutes one way, twice a day, to the school and some stay there and go home on weekends as it is too far to walk every day.
“The kids know that Compassion International is the reason they are there,” Adams said, “and they are so appreciative and grateful for the loving help they receive.” There were eighteen in the group with which they went, some couples and some full time missions leaders. Compassion has three different stages in which they help and the group got to witness all of them.
The first is the Survival Program for 0-3 to help the child survive, second is Sponsorship which covers age 4- High school graduation, and those are the norm for support. The last one is Leadership Graduation Training which helps the kids who go on to college or gives them vocational training.
“We sat down with several in that stage of it. They are sharp, love the Lord, well educated, their stories are incredible. They had been through the whole program,” Adams shared. “They and their families have been pulled out of poverty. One we met is applying to go to college in America and there are quite a few in the states going to school.”
Two things that he is telling people who sponsor a child –
1. At these programs every kid in a program has a folder that tracks them all the way through. Every letter, picture and record of gifts is in there. So letters are a big deal! When a kid gets a letter, the others who didn’t receive one are excited for them! Sponsors can go on Compassion App and just send a line to your child. It doesn’t need to be a whole letter. Just say it snowed here and it is cold and we built a snowman. How are you? I love you. But do something!
2. You can give a family gift. Yes, each sponsor gives gifts to the child on their birthday and Christmas and whenever you want to, but you can also give a Family Gift! The case worker will help the family decide how to spend the money you send in the best way. So they might get a goat, or fix their roof, buy clothes for the kids, or take care of their greatest need. The whole family benefits even though only one child is specifically chosen. So any toys sent to the sponsored child get played with by everyone.
Pastor Adams shared a few stories of great joy that they heard: One story that a Compassion guide shared was that he bought his child a couple chickens. The boy was nine and he took them and raised more chickens and sold them and bought a goat.
By the time he was 13 he had a business and provided his family with a better home. Now he is grown up and has a business and picked his sponsor up in his own vehicle at the airport.
Another story they heard was that a sponsor’s daughter was going through a hard time in high school and the girl her family sponsored was encouraging her and feeding into her life. They did not even realize at the time that the two girls were writing back and forth and their daughter was being blessed with love and guidance from the girl they adopted.
As you sponsor a child, the case workers try to send responses for them when they are little, and as the child gets older they start writing letters and sending pictures. The letters and gifts they receive mean so much to them, so sponsors are encouraged to connect in every way they can.
The trip to Africa entailed the flight from Detroit to JFK and then on to Nairobi, fourteen hours there and fifteen coming back. They stayed in Nairobi in a canvas sided house with a nice wooden floor and a bathroom with a shower. Part of the experience was a flight into the country to go on Safari in the Serengeti at a park that was 100 miles wide.
The entire time for all of the group was paid for by a gentleman who gave a large amount of money to Compassion International specifically to take pastors to see what they do. “It was an incredible experience,” Adams said, “and we are so glad we got to go. Especially getting to meet Lydia was awesome.”
Rebecca may be reached at publisher@thevillagereporter.com