When we started sponsoring children through Compassion International, I never even considered what it would be like when our sponsorship ended. The first one came pretty quickly.
We sponsored Natalia in Colombia because she was just a bit older than our daughter at the time. It wasn’t too long after we started sponsoring her that we learned about her and her family moving. She ended up in an area that was not close to an existing church partner, so our sponsorship ended.
Our daughter wanted to sponsor another young lady in Colombia about the same age, so we started sponsoring Lina.
As we were able to start sponsoring additional children, we had numerous sponsorships end for one reason or another…one family pulled their daughter out of the program, one church did not have enough committed volunteers, one country ended up not being able to partner with Compassion anymore…
It was starting to seem like we were not ever going to have a long term sponsorship.
However, I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit two of our sponsored children more than once.
I was able to travel to Colombia twice. The first time in 2015, and again in 2019. I learned on that first trip that my letters to Lina helped to keep her in the program. Her previous sponsor did not send very many letters. When she started receiving letters on a regular basis, she decided to keep attending, and eventually completed her time as a sponsored child in the spring of 2022. As hard as it is not having any regular communication with her anymore, I am excited about her future. I spent 11 years praying for her and writing letters to her. For someone I have only spent a little bit of time with, that is a lot of time invested into the life of another person.
There is one other sponsored child that I have been able to visit, and did not even think about my time as his sponsor coming to an end anytime soon. There are things I learned about him and his family that definitely gave me compassion for him, and I realized why God connected me to him in the first place. I believed he still have quite a few years left as my sponsored child, so I was completely taken by surprise when I learned recently that my sponsorship of him has come to an end.
This is a situation that Compassion hopes will happen in many communities where they partner with local churches around the world.
The church where this particular sponsored child attends has reached a point where they no longer need Compassion’s support.
When I have been on Compassion trips, I have heard this many times.
Compassion wants to be there for the neediest of the needy. And when a community can get to a point where they say ‘thank you, please go help in another area of our county’, this is a reason for celebration!
But as a sponsor, this is still a hard thing.
The years of praying, letter writing, and the time I spent fundraising to earn money to be able to go visit him…I invested so much of myself into the relationship with this young man.
In my final letter to him, I reminded him that God is always with him. I reminded him that God wants to know him. I reminded him to cling to God when life seems overwhelming. My prayer is that he knows Jesus, so that one day, we can be in heaven together.