Recently, while listening to the radio, we heard about an organization called World Vision. Actually, we heard again about World Vision. What they do is go into countries stricken by poverty and provide food, clothes, clean water, and things like education and job training. I’ve actually heard about World Vision several times at an event called Winter Jam. It has always made my heart heavy whenever presented with the opportunity to sponsor a child, but I never could get past my memories of Sally Struthers (or what ever her name is) walking through African villages talking about how poor and hungry the children were and how much they needed our help and then seeing her in a commercial five minutes later slinging certs and degrees by mail…seemed hokie. So I wrote it off. This time, as I listened to the experiences that the DJ had in Tanzania, Africa, I thought a little more about it…this could not only be a chance to help, it could be a teachable moment.
Sadie is 2.5 now, and becoming more and more aware of the people around her. I threw the idea out to Kristen and she said that she had felt that this was something we needed to do for awile now. So when the boss approves you go for it.
We decided that we would look for a girl that had the same birthday as Sadie. Out of all the children from all the countries that World Vision supplies aid to, there were only three that matched. We are pretty sure that one of the children was really a boy (don’t ask how we know), so that left us with two for Sadie to choose from. We sat her down last night to talk to her about how some people don’t have the nice things that we have, or that sometimes they don’t even have food or clean water. As I watch her try her hardest to look at anything but me as I’m telling her this, I’m thinking that maybe we should have waited a little while. Even as we pick our girl, she is more concerned about who’s lap she is sitting on than about the task at hand. Maybe this was a waste of time. I clicked on the button to sponsor and filled out the appropriate forms and as I told her “there we go, all done” she looked at me with a puzzled face and said “I want help that girl”. I tried to explain that we did help the girl by sending her money. She looked at me with her bottom lip stuck out a tears welling up in her eyes and just as she repeated what she had said before, she broke out into crying. It’s not very often that my baby girl cries and I feel good about it, but this was different. Perhaps she gets it. Maybe staring aimlessly at anything and everything is her game face. She felt for this girl and it broke her heart.
Today she recieved a card from her Grandma Beth. In it were two one dollar bills. Getting two dollars when your two makes you rich. Imagine the possibilities two dollars could bring. Imagine the joy of handing your very own money to the cashier. She wants to send it to Vilma. Good girl.
