Compassion Blog Month

Have you heard the news?

 

September is officially Blog Month at Compassion and there is a big goal! There is a goal to have more children sponsored via the Internet than any other September in history. I have committed to do my part to help spread the word about Compassion Blog Month and help more people make the decision to become Compassion Sponsors.

 

If you are a blogger and you sponsor a child with Compassion, you can join in the fun! Just click the "I'm Participating in Blog Month for Compassion" button. You won't regret it! :o)

 

 

Not Quite Back to School Day

 Our day started with a little bit of this...

 ...and a little bit of this.

You see, Matthew starts his first day of college tomorrow, and Kelsey and I will be starting our first day of our new homeschool year tomorrow. Since Matthew will be leaving quite early in the morning (and Kelsey is not an early morning person), we decided to have our special breakfast this morning to celebrate our upcoming school year.

After breakfast, we packed our lunch and headed out for Knight's Ferry. This destination has the longest covered bridge in California and is a great spot for pictures. Once we arrived, we started walking over toward the bridge and stopped briefly for these next two pictures.

 Kelsey, starting 7th grade

 Matthew, starting college!

 The bridge is always a great backdrop for pictures

 Not sure which one I like better of the two of them. This one or...

 ...this one. So hard to decide!

Matthew said I needed to be in a picture since I am usually always the photographer.

 I like to put the camera in burst mode and have the kids jump around.

 Kelsey usually jumps pretty high for these shots!

 Photo session was done, so it was time for lunch. Matthew was looking pretty serious, so...

 ...Kelsey did her best to get a smile out of her brother! :o)

 After lunch, we drove over to the Ghirardelli Outlet for ice cream sundaes. Gotta have a special treat for the 'first' day of school, right? :o) 

Once we got home and the mail arrived, I was so excited to see what arrived! This is my Gussy Sews pouch made with fabric from Tanzania! When Maggie and her husband traveled to Tanzania with Compassion a few months ago, she brought back fabric and made pouches from the fabric. A portion of the profit from the sale of these pouches will be used to help sponsor a child with Compassion. How could I not buy one of these pouches? :o)

So tomorrow starts a new adventure for us...Matthew off to college, and Kelsey being my only student. I am looking forward to what God has in store for this new chapter in our life!



Compassion Bloggers

When I started by blog years ago, it was a fun way to share about our daily happenings, especially with my parents living out of state. But over the past year, I have been able to use my blog to share about how much I love Compassion International! As a homeschooling mom, this gives me a way to help share with others a way they can be more involved with making a difference in the life of a child, even from their own home. One day, I pray that I will have a chance to visit one of our sponsored kids. But for now, I can be on a 'mission field' from my own home, sharing the love of Jesus with children in other countries.

Do you like to blog about Compassion? If you do, you can join a team of other Compassion Bloggers. As a Compassion Blogger, we receive assignments periodically to share on our blogs. These topics range help each one of us learn more about these Compassion kids and the world they live in. You can also read about the trips that some of the Compassion Bloggers have been able to go on to visit Compassion kids and projects.

I know I am looking forward to reading the posts from this upcoming trip to Peru. Won't you consider becoming a Compassion Blogger today?

A little bit of meal prep

Over the next two days, I will be helping out at the Compassion table at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. I am really looking forward to sharing our Compassion story with the people in attendance and praying that many children will be sponsored!

Since these next two days will be long days away from home for me, I wanted to take some time tonight to prep a couple of salads to go with dinner the next couple of nights. Kelsey was a great help getting everything ready! I found both of the recipes in one of my Gooseberry Patch cookbooks.

Our menu is pretty simple for the next few days.

The first salad was a Crunchy Strawberry Salad. I did make one substitution by using chow mein noodles instead of the ramen noodles. Since we won't be having this until Friday with pizza, we will wait to mix in the dressing and the noodle/walnut mixture.

 Next we have a Greek Salad with cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, Kalamata olives, and feta cheese. I love using a homemade dressing since I know what is going into it. I did find a similar recipe on one of my favorite go-to recipe web sites. The one I made did not include garlic or bell peppers, two things I love! I may have to give this other one a try next time!

Even though it was a little warm this afternoon, I went ahead and baked up a batch of my favorite chocolate chip cookies. Of course I brought a couple of cookies along with me to the conference to enjoy! This recipe is from America's Test Kitchen. I had printed out the recipe when we still had cable TV and they had featured the recipe on the show. You currently can't get the recipe unless you join their membership (which if you just want to join the trial to get the free recipe, I don't think you will regret it!)

What type of meal prep do you do during your busy weeks?

Destination Experience Compassion Conference: Day 4

The big day had finally arrived!

After months of planning and 2 full days of driving, we would be spending the whole day at the Global Ministry Center for Compassion International!

On the way to the entrance of the building, this statue was my favorite.

Great reminder, right on the walls of the building!

Even though we were in for a full day, we arrived a little early so we could walk around the building a little bit. On this wall is a huge world map with highlights from each of the 26 countries where Compassion works.

This is the room where we spent most of the day with about 200 other attendees of the conference.

Matthew went up on stage before the room was filled, he looks pretty comfortable up there... :o)

Grant Norsworthy led us in worship to start off the conference

Then Innocent Mucunguzi welcomed us and thanked all of us for our volunteer work with Compassion. He challenged each one of to "sacrifice 5 minutes to write to your sponsored children. Sharing with them is caring."

After Innocent spoke, we were all off on a quick tour of the building. My favorite part was this mock up of a project center. There was a big screen at the front of the room with children singing. There were so many little details in here. I just have to go back so I can spend more time looking around.

Once we arrived back in the conference, we were able to take part in one very special treat!

This is a Skype session with GU930, a child developement center project in Guatemala. Since they are in the same time zone as Colorado Springs, they were able to get up, practice, and be ready for our 11am worship time together. We had a great time singing along with them! (I was really hoping to upload a video, but after waiting way too long, you will have to make do with a picture. Sorry!)

One of the most important things I came away with is that our sponsored children want contact with us. For the kids who receive letters regularly, their self-confidence is higher. Our letters do not release these children from poverty, but our letters give them hope. The little bit of time that we spend writing letters to our kids can produce a big outcome.

This was an amazing day I was able to spend here with my family!