One thing that made a big impression on me as a child was our family sponsoring a child from Bolivia. We didn't have a lot of money but my Mom really wanted to sponsor a child because it was something her family had done. The child my family ended up sponsoring was a boy around my age named Alex. We prayed for Alex and talked about Alex and his picture was on our refrigerator. I knew that Alex's family was very poor and they lived in a one room house with a mud floor. I vividly remember getting letters and even gifts from Alex's mother in Bolivia. One time she sent a picture of a bird that was made out of real feathers and another time we received a small weaving with little people and objects on it made out of embroidery thread. I remember telling my Sunday school teacher that Alex was part of our family and I almost considered him to be a brother to me, albeit a distant one. Alex made a big impression on me and he opened my heart to children who live around the world. Alex gave a face and a name to children around the world who live in poverty and it made me want to do something to help kids like Alex. When I was 13 years old, I decided that I wanted to sponsor my own child with money I earned babysitting. I think it cost $13 a month to sponsor a child back then and that was a lot of money considering I was lucky to make $2 an hour babysitting. My first sponsored child was a four year old girl from India named Marufa. I sponsored Marufa through my time in highschool, college, and on into my married life. Eventually Marufa aged out of the sponsorship program and I was matched with another child to sponsor. All those years ago, I never would have imagined that some day I would travel to China to adopt three different children who had all been sponsored by people who wanted to make a difference in the life of a child.
There is another memory that I feel also had a big impact on me as a child. When I was around 9 or 10 years old, my Mom had taken my brother and I to a local state park that had a beautiful lake. We loved visiting this lake to go swimming and have picnics. Some of my happiest childhood memories involve spending time at this lake as a child. Well, on this one particular visit to the lake, there was a group of people who had brought children from some kind of children's home in our area. There were a number of kids and most of them were laying on a blanket that was laid out on the grass. The kids had some pretty significant special needs and the people who brought them were trying to feed them all lunch. My Mom is a very outgoing and friendly lady and I don't know what made her think to do this but she got up and went over to talk to the people caring for these children. She asked if we could help since our blanket was close by and they said we could take one of the little boys and help feed him his lunch. He was such a cute little boy, around two years old, and he had hydrocephalus. He could not sit up on his own and he could not feed himself so we propped him up and my mother fed him from a spoon. After we fed him, we spent some time playing with him and then my mother brought him back to his caregivers. This whole interaction involved maybe a half hour at most. I remember after returning home from our outing, my parents actually discussed the possibility of adopting that little boy. They felt it would be too much because he had such high level special needs and would always be completely dependent for all his care. We prayed for the little boy and found out a few years later that he had died from his health issues.
I share these memories just to show that it is not always big events in a person's life that can determine the life choices they make when they get older. As a parent, I want to follow my parent's example and sprinkle my childrens' memories with small actions that show our family's love for Jesus and others. Not everyone can adopt children with special needs internationally, but everyone can do something to make a difference in the lives of children who are in need.
