Clare Shearing looks forward to Compassion UK visiting in January
So what is Compassion UK?
Compassion UK’s website says it ‘is a Christian charity passionate about empowering all children to overcome the obstacles poverty puts in their way’. For me this is only the starting point. As one of the UK’s leading Christian charities, it offers opportunites to sponsor a child, and to give each sponsored child a hope and a future. But its approach is very personal to each child, and this is what makes it so special.
This is how Philip and I got involved. When we attended a concert at Bournemouth Community Church, we hadn’t expected to begin sponsoring a child through Compassion. However, God made all the connections (hearts and heads) and by the time we left, we had signed up to sponsor a six-year old girl called Abigail from Bolivia. Sponsorship gives Abigail life-changing support, including food, education, health checks, and the care of the local church. But also, after over seven years of writing to and receiving letters from Abigail, we have developed a relationship, through which we are able to convey our hope in Jesus, encourage her in faith and life, and express love and care through our letters and prayers.
What’s happening in January?
On 12 January 2020 Michael Robins from Compassion UK will be visiting St Saviour’s to tell us more about the work of Compassion and how we can partner with them in releasing children from poverty. To make this more meaningful to us all, if any of you are already Compassion sponsors, please provide the office with your name and postcode (if you did not do so earlier in the year). Mike can then produce anonymised but bespoke data about the difference our sponsorship is making. Your data will be used only for the purposes of linking you to St Saviour’s Compassion Partnership. We hope this will be an encouragement to all of us by revealing the bigger picture about the incredible difference our sponsorship makes.
If you would like to begin sponsoring a child through Compassion, you can do so via their website https://www.compassionuk.org or there will be opportunities when Mike visits, so do be praying about whether God might be asking you to get involved.
As I have mentioned, the name of our sponsored child is Abigail. Appropriately Abigail means ‘Father’s joy’ or ‘Father rejoiced’ and for me our child’s name confirmed that we were to sponsor her. But thinking about it now, it seems to me that our Father rejoices over all children, and that the Father’s joy knows no bounds when a child steps out of poverty and into hope. Let’s make our Father joyful as we find out more about Compassion UK.
Clare Shearing, Compassion sponsor
