Seeing Is Believing. Believing Is Changing. Change Is Contagious.

I sponsored my first child in college. A few months later I got a letter in the mail telling me that child was “no longer in the program” and asking me to sponsor another.

I was a cynical immature college student and that one letter gave my inner skeptic everything it needed to write Compassion off as a scam…for the next nine years.

In 2001, when I first started my “job” as a singer guy, Suzie from Compassion’s staff started talking to me about speaking for the organization at my concerts. I kept her at bay with antagonistic question after question for four years until I finally ran out of them and agreed to at least go see what Compassion’s ministry to children looked like for myself.

Seeing is believing.

Since that trip to El Salvador my family has simplified our life so that more can simply live – paid off debt, downsized the house, canceled the cable and more. And all I do these days is travel America and Canada, to 100 cities each year, speaking and singing on behalf of Compassion’s kids.

Believing is changing.

A couple years ago my friends and I had a simple idea: Take everyday people with lots of on-line friends on a trip like the one I took to El Salvador. Let them ask question after question – anything they want. Let them look in every file cabinet, behind every closed door, talk to anyone they want about anything they want. And let them write about it.

Let them see malnourished children nursed back to life.
Kenyan boy

Let them play.

And play some more.
Bloggers playing in Kenya

Let them hear the sound of hope and joy coming from those once silenced by poverty.

Let them see the letters children receive from their sponsors – letters packed away in special hiding places like treasures.
Letter From Sponsors to Samuel in Kenya

Let them hear children recite the names of their sponsors as if they are old friends – as if they are family.

Let them see. Believe. Be changed. And tell the world about it.

Because change is contagious.

Have you caught it yet?

Sponsor a child today.

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