why I love Compassion
August 19, 2010 | Compassion International
JAVIER’S STORY
After a three-day drinking binge, Mario lay in bed, unable to get up. No medicine could help him now as he vomited and his fever raged. Years of drinking were taking a toll.
His 8-year-old son, Javier, however, was sure he had the cure. Since registering in Compassion’s sponsorship program through a local church, Javier learned that God had a special purpose for him.
He stared at his father.
“Daddy, you should accept Jesus into your heart,” the boy began. “He will save you and heal you from this illness.” Javier began to pray.
Mario cried. Through his son, Mario felt Jesus’ infinite love for the first time.
From that moment, Mario’s life transformed — and astonished a community that knew him and his wife, Martha, only as drunks and bullies.
Mario and Martha had raised their two children in a dump, in a slum in southern Quito, Ecuador. The young parents’ struggle against the poverty they grew up in manifested itself in lifelong drug and alcohol abuse and stealing. And now their own children were growing up among beggars, thieves and addicts.
But when Javier’s grandmother found a flyer about a local church that worked with Compassion, she brought the child to be registered. At the Compassion center, Javier learned that he was important, and that through Jesus he could have a life full of joy and hope — things he’d never experienced.
Today Mario and Martha are deeply grateful to God. They cry when they think about the hole that God rescued them from through Javier’s intervention. They are clean and sober, attend church with Javier and their daughter, Melany, and they work honestly, helping people park cars along a Quito city street.
“My life is different now,” says Javier. “I’m thankful to Jesus for changing everything!”
I’ve been to this Compassion project. I’ve seen the boys and girls learning things we take for granted, like how to read, how to brush your teeth, how to know the love of Christ, how to reach for dreams.
I’ve talked to older young adults, those who once walked in these little boy’s and girl’s shoes and who are now students at universities because of Compassion’s Leadership programs. I’ve talked to Jonathan, who is sponsoring a child, who is graduating as a professor of Math and who plans to go back to his old project as a teacher, though he could go to many other places and make more money.
Many times we ask what we can do. This is one thing you can do. I pray you’ll consider sponsoring a child.
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I love stories of redemption! Thanks Suzie!
August 19th, 2010 at 9:35 pm