Maria Rut Espinoza Campos

Several months ago God put it on my heart for my family to sponsor a child through Compassion International, but to be honest, I wasn't very obedient initially. It wasn't for lack of desire. I simply kept talking myself out of doing it because, while God has always been faithful to take care of my family financially, we don't have a lot of expendable income. Several weeks ago at Student Life @ the Beach Emily and I were once again confronted with an opportunity to make a tangible difference in the life of a child who is far less fortunate than our girls. What I love about Student Life is that they are challenging students in a practical way to share the gift of wealth that God has given them. This only reminded me of what God has been saying to me for months, so we decided to sponsor a child.

We had some criteria in the selection. We wanted to choose a little girl since we have two girls. We wanted a girl the same age as Emeline. And we wanted a girl that we could potentially take our girls to visit in the near future. Though we seriously considered adopting a child in Indonesia (because of David and Mindy Rainer) and Uganda (because of the AIDS epidemic and child soldiers tragedy), we eventually landed on the country of Peru for several reasons: (1) I recently visited Peru and God has placed this country on my heart. I hope that we can revisit discussions within our church to adopt an unreached people group in Peru; (2) Peru is close enough that it wouldn't be as much of a strain financially to fly my family to Peru to visit our sponsored child.

Two weeks ago we got a photo and information about our newest little girl. Her name is Maria Rut Espinoza Campos. She is almost 4 years old and shares the same birthday as Cameron Alysse (July 11). She has two siblings. She has been waiting for a sponsorship for more than 6 months. She lives in the coastal community of Jose Galvez, which is south of Lima (3/4 of Peruvians live in cities), consisting mostly of the ethnic group Mestee. Most adults in this community are unemployed, but some work as petty traders and earn the equivalent of $86/mo. It is unbelievable that people live off of this much a month. I will spend that much in food and gas this week!

Maybe you are reading this and wondering what you can do without so that someone in the world can be provided with Bible teaching, medical exams, nutritious food, hygiene education, social events, developmental activities and educational classes. Compassion International isn't a perfect organization, but they provide a way for each of us to touch the lives of the poor and disenfranchised in the world - two groups of people that Jesus cares about very much.