The Music Technology majors at Capital University filing in for my lecture on music business.

Yesterday I got to go and guest lecture for the Music Technology majors at Capital University here in Columbus. It’s a pretty amazing program that they’ve built – my friend Neal is a professor there and he asked me to come in and share some of my story and talk about songwriting and niche marketing and such.

Most schools have traditional music programs, and it’s pretty hard to find one with a major in music production which is basically what this is. They have about 200 majors in Music Technology, and if you’re in the field, you know it’s mostly male. So it was pretty funny to get up in front of the 175 or so who had come and see about 6 girls, and all the rest guys, most of whom were tatooed and pierced and dread-locked, etc. Basically, they were so much cooler than me!

While Capital has roots in a church denomination, the school is not considered a Christian school anymore, so it’s always a little tricky to know how to share. Several times someone asked a question about how I made a business decision or decided on the next project or whatever, and I had to stop and think, “Do I tell them it was really just because I prayed about it and felt that was how God was leading me?” And so, I did. 🙂 If God’s going to give you open doors, you ought to walk through them!

I miss teaching – I loved my years teaching at a University level – and it was fun to get back in there. Hopefully I’ll get to do it again soon!

Donna rocking her new wig after the going-away party for her hair

My Rachel before

And after

It’s been a really busy month. I’ve finished writing all the new Scripture Memory Songs, and we’re already about halfway through all the tracking for the project. Tracking is basically recording all the instruments and voices – you put each one on it’s own “track” so you can edit them later, making different things louder or softer or whatever. I’m really enjoying working on this project! I’ve been doing this one here in Columbus, so we’re working with different musicians and a new engineer and studio. It’s been challenging and also really fun to produce the whole thing myself as well. After this we go to editing, mixing, mastering, package design, and finally manufacturing and we’re looking at a May release. In total we’ll have 39 songs on this project! We’ll keep you posted!

I know many of you have been praying for my assistant, Donna, as she’s back fighting cancer. She’s had her first two sessions of chemo, and they had told her that given the kind she had and the fact that it’s stage 4, chemo was going to be “pretty brutal.” We’ve been praying so much that God would sustain her and let her do what she needed to do. Praise God, while she’s been really tired afterward for several days, she didn’t have nearly the nausea or side effects she was fearing! I am so grateful, and so grateful for your prayers for her – she’s so loved. She just had a “going away party” for her hair – she’s hilarious, and meets the challenge with such an amazing spirit. I’m thankful she’s my friend.

And in honor of Donna, my younger daughter, Rachel, decided to donate 12″ of her hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths which makes wigs for women with cancer. After we cleaned it up, she lost about 14″ and clearly, she still has a lot of hair, but I was so proud of her.

Just had another review posted about my book “Life Not Typical: How Special Needs Parenting Changed My Faith and My Song.” I especially loved reading this review because it’s by another special needs mom, and it’s always so encouraging to hear that our book was encouraging to her! God has been so good to us, and to our family, and it’s fun to watch Him use the book now too. You can see that here.

The gorgeous sanctuary inside The Barn Church – Liberty Presbyterian

Yep, I’m in there somewhere with all those poinsettias!

Okay, I admit this is a few days late – we had this thing called Christmas, went to Michigan to have Christmas with the in-laws, came home, remodeled a laundry room and half bath, and had New Year’s. Nothing like taking it easy over break!

Just wanted to say Happy New Year and post these pictures of Liberty Presbyterian Church. I got to sing there on Christmas Eve, and it was one of the prettiest churches I’ve ever been in. They call it the Barn Church because the original building is historic and tiny, and they weren’t allowed to add on to it, so they built a new sanctuary off the huge barn on the property. It’s a pretty amazing space inside, and the had a small orchestra, two 7 foot grands, a band, and even a hammer dulcimer player. Truly a beautiful candlelight service, and I was so glad I got to be there!

I had an article come out today on Crosswalk.com about how to help your family be more thankful at Christmas. Hope you enjoy!

5 Ways to Put the Spirit of Thanksgiving into Christmas

Christmas seems to come around faster every year, and with each new season, people seem more stressed. Whether it is not enough time or money, hard-to-please kids, or strained relations with relatives, it becomes more difficult to slow down and maintain meaning and gratitude at this time of year. Since retailers now decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving, it’s time we brought the Thanksgiving to Christmas! Here are five practical ideas:

Reach Out
The fastest way to increase thankfulness is to focus on others. It puts things in perspective. You could serve a meal at a homeless shelter or take your kids to visit people in a nursing home. You could offer to help stock the shelves at a food pantry or bring a meal to someone who is lonely or ill. Every year we pack shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child that are sent to kids in poverty all around the world. I have the kids pack things they would want themselves and then we send them to a child their age. This teaches our kids to serve others and be thankful for what they have, and it always reminds me of my blessings. We have also encouraged our children from a young age to give handmade or personalized gifts. One of the greatest joys for me is seeing that they are often more excited to give their gifts than to see what they received, because they spent so much time and thought on what others would enjoy.

Downsize
Christmas can be overwhelmingly materialistic. Take the emphasis off acquisition by giving the gift of experiences or time together, or gifts that remind your family of their blessings and the needs of others. Give your family a zoo membership or tickets to a show or game you can attend together. In our family, it’s become a joke that we always get practical things like socks and toothbrushes in our stockings along with little fun things, but it’s a reminder that we are blessed to have the things we need, and not to take them for granted. We often give the kids the gift of choosing something from Compassion International’s Gift Catalog such as clean water or emergency food for a family in poverty, and they love knowing they are making a difference for someone else. One good rule I have tried to adhere to when it comes to gifts for kids is, “Something you need, something you want, something we can do together.”

Draw In
If you don’t have any family traditions, this is a great time to start some! Every year we make a unique kind of cookie together and then drop them off on neighbors’ porches. We spend one day making a special coffee cake that is only eaten on Christmas morning. When I was growing up, we set out a “manger” and made it ready for Jesus by doing kind things for each other in secret, and for every good deed, you got to add a piece of hay. Since we have allergies to hay now, it’s evolved to pieces of paper, and this year we’re going to take it a step further and write on the paper which character trait we showed in our good deed like kindness, patience, or thoughtfulness. We have traditions for our little family, as well as traditions for our extended families, and that gives our kids a sense of belonging and connects us to a deeper experience of the Christmas season.

Re-Think
Things are not going to be perfect. Everyone is not going to adore everything you got them, and you’re not going to make an amazing Christmas dinner while keeping your hair flawless. Choose the things that are most important to you, prioritize them, and don’t be afraid to say no to the things that will get in the way. It’s okay if you don’t go to a fourth neighborhood cookie swap or agree to organize the church Christmas pageant while your whole family is in town. It’s okay if your Christmas tree looks crazy because you decided to decorate it all together with homemade ornaments rather than choosing the perfect color-coordinated scheme. And realize that saying no to some things allows you the time to really enjoy the things you have decided are most important to you.

Look Up
You’ve heard it before, but Christmas is not about stuff and Santa. Christmas is one of the holiest holidays on the Christian calendar. In the weeks before Christmas (called Advent on the Christian calendar), our family reads a page of our Advent book each night after dinner, every day telling a bit more of the Christmas story. On Christmas morning, we always sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, and then read the story in its entirety from the Bible before we open presents. It’s a reminder of what this season is about and teaches our kids what we are actually celebrating.
Christmas can be overwhelming, but it is also an opportunity to love and care for others. If we can remember to be thankful, it will make it less harried and more merry.

Jennifer Shaw is a Telly Award winning speaker, author, singer, songwriter and five-time Top 40 Billboard artist. She is also a wife and mother of three whose favorite holiday is Christmas. Visit her online at www.jennifershaw.com.

Christmas Brunch at Cornerstone Alliance Church

Merry Christmas from our dogs – you would not believe how long we worked to get this shot – someone needs to train those dogs!!

I had such a fun time last weekend with Cornerstone Alliance Church in Marion, OH! This was such a sweet bunch of women, and a beautiful event. We had such a wonderful time with Sue, the coordinator, and her husband and team – very special people! They do a big annual women’s brunch, and since Christmas is my favorite time of year, it was so fun to really focus on “Immanuel, God With Us” and the true meaning of the season!

With fun things, though, there are often hard things. We also learned very recently that my assistant, Donna, has a new form of cancer and it’s very serious. She has had cancer twice before, and this is not a recurrence, but rather, a new kind. She had surgery this morning, and while she came through very well, they found in surgery that it has spread, and is officially stage 4. This is such hard news to hear – I just love Donna and her whole family, and we’ve been working together for years. Her last cancer was also stage 4 and they told her at the time that she only had a few months but tried an experimental treatment and 11 years later she is still here – God can and does heal, and we are praying. But I hate knowing that she has to go through this again. She will take this month off to heal from the surgery and then will start chemo – we would absolutely covet your prayers for Donna and her whole family!

In other news, I have started the writing for a new Scripture memory project. Over the years, many of you know that I have written several mini-albums of Scripture memory songs for kids – they are word for word from the NIV and include references, and we’ve always used them for a VBS curriculum along with a play that I write with my writing partner Terry every year. They’ve just commissioned me to write 3 more years worth of music, so I’ve got 18 new songs to do, and we’ve decided to publish them along with the other mini-albums in one giant Scripture Memory collection. I’m writing a song a day right now, so hoping to have them all written by Christmas and then we will start production after the New Year. They are fun and upbeat, and aimed at grade school kids, and we are really looking forward to seeing how God will use them!

Some of the over 100 clocks Christine used to decorate

Presenting “For Such a Time as This”

This past Saturday I got to present the life of Esther at Genoa Church’s women’s retreat in Westerville, OH just north of Columbus. It was such a great group of ladies, and I so enjoyed working with Amy and Christine who were organizing the whole event.

I call it “For Such a Time as This – A Study on the Life of Esther” and Christine went and found over 100 clocks and had them placed all around the room! They were centerpieces and hung on the wall and on stands and at the tables – it was pretty amazing. I so love sharing the Bible with people, and the history behind the stories which takes the people from characters you can read about impersonally to real people who lived and made mistakes and heroic decisions and everything in between. When we see the people in the Bible as real people, we can learn so much from their lives! Esther is one of my favorite, and I’m so glad they gave me the chance to share it!

Children dressed in the traditional costumes of the nine countries they serve

Presenting at the Remember Nhu benefit to aid children in danger of human trafficking

We got back from Nicaragua late Friday night, and Saturday morning I got up and drove up to the Cleveland area to do a benefit concert for the group we went to Thailand with two years ago, Remember Nhu. This is a wonderful organization, still quite young, but it is amazing to see how God is blessing their work!

Nhu is a Vietnamese woman who grew up in Cambodia and lived with her grandmother in profound poverty. When she was twelve, her grandmother sold her into the sex trade. Carl Ralston, the founder of Remember Nhu, heard her story from some missionaries who ran the school Nhu attended and felt that God had called him to “remember Nhu” and find her. Six trips to Cambodia later, he located her and was compelled to start Remember Nhu which seeks to stop the child slave trade through prevention. They are operating in nine countries now, and Nhu works with them and is just an amazing young woman. We got to know her well when we were in Thailand, and it was so good to see her again! I hope we raised a lot of money for their homes, and praise God for the children they are helping. Poverty is the number one reason for children being trafficked, and it is one of the reasons we feel so passionately about helping those in poverty and protecting the most vulnerable!

At Alvin and Joel’s house (Alvin in the purple) with his mom and Joel’s teacher and the other boys who work with him

Alvin showing us some of the first mussels he found

The neighbor girl playing in a boat on the mud flats waiting for the boys to return

The boys coming back after several hours of working – you can tell it was a bad day because Alvin only has half a bag of mussels for the four of them

One of the neighbors showing her fish for the day

The mom from our first home visit here getting water from her neighbor’s – her house has no water, and this water is not safe for drinking but they share with each other

The fishing boats coming in where the mom from our home visit works – she can gut up to 250 pounds of fish by herself in a day

Now as the tide is coming in, you can see how this sewer empties right into the water behind their homes

Milagro’s home – one of the nicest we saw because it had a floor and concrete walls

The washroom and bathroom at Milagro’s house

Milagro looking so pretty in her backyard – you can see the trash and barbed wire brought in with every heavy rain

To view larger images of the pictures, just click on them.

Our last full day, we spent the entire morning and early afternoon with one family, just doing what they do all day. We were split into groups again, one going with the men to cut wood, one group staying with a family who would help bring the catch in and process the fish, and our group going to a home where we would be “collecting sea shells.” You can imagine when they announced that one on the bus! Compared to chopping wood and gutting fish, sea shells was sounding pretty awesome! We had many invitations to switch with other people! When we got there, though, it certainly wasn’t what we were expecting.

We ended up at the next door neighbor to the house we had visited the day before. That was interesting because when the mom from that house saw us, she came with us and spent the whole morning with us. We had brought her a few things like soap and towels, and she wanted to thank us, but in the end, I think she just wanted to understand why we were there and why we had come to see them.

The family from this day had three children. Their son, Joel, was in the program (and in the pastor’s wife’s class – she was so proud!!). They had a baby who was too young, but they were planning to put him in when he got old enough, and an older son named Alvin who was not in the program. When we asked the mom why, she said she needed him to collect shells, so he was not able to go to school or be in the program. She looked a little embarrassed, but I don’t know where dad was, and she obviously couldn’t do it without her son. It made me so sad. He was such a cool kid, too, 15 years old and a very hard worker who clearly loved his mom and family.

He took us down to where he collected shells. We were picturing a sandy beach (we were right on the Pacific, remember) but it was actually the mud flats we’d seen the day before where the sewage was draining. We realized he was collecting mussels not just shells, which made so much more sense, and would sell them at the market, 12 for forty cents. We had a dilemma because he was wading calf deep in this mud and feeling around under the banyans, well past his wrists in the mud to find these mussels. Since we knew it was contaminated and also that there were scorpions under the banyan trees, we didn’t feel safe doing this – waterborne illnesses can be really nasty and our bodies would never have been exposed to anything like that. We went with them, but we really couldn’t participate, and I felt terrible. Our translator explained, but it still felt bad. They seemed happy just to talk with us while the kids hunted, though – I hope it was okay.

Alvin and four other boys went looking. We talked to Alvin’s mom and also the mom from the other day for a long time, and when the boys finally returned, they told us it was a very bad day. The four of them had gotten about a half bag of shells. They were large, but that didn’t make any difference to the price they got for them. On a good day, they would all get at least half a bag.

We went back to their house, and then Alvin’s mom took us to the fishing pier where she worked. While Alvin looks for shells, she guts fish for the fisherman. She is paid in fish which they can eat and she can sell at the market. She works with three other women, and on a good day, together they process 1000 pounds of fish. A bad day is more like 400 pounds. This woman will gut 250 pounds of fish herself on a good day and then have to turn around and take her portion to the market to sell it to make a few dollars to buy food to come home and cook it for her family and turn around and do it the next day all over again. Again, these people work incredibly hard, it blew my mind!

We went back to their house and shared lunch with them and met Alvin and Joel’s grandmother who was a hoot! We stayed and prayed with them for quite a while and gave them some gifts also of food and soap and towels. I am praying that now that Joel is in the program, maybe some of the pressure will lift and Alvin may be allowed to go to school. Culturally, if one child can get an education like Joel, they will help their whole family, so at least they have that here.

We had time to stop at Milagro’s house. She was so excited we had come! She had been very shy the day before, but now that she had had time to think about what we had said and had looked at the pictures and card that Donna sent her about her family, she was like a different kid. Her house was nicer than many, with a cement floor and walls which would hold up better in an earthquake. They had almost no belongings, though, and their backyard where they bathed and washed their dishes was literally the sewer for the neighborhood and full of trash and barbed wire. Her dad said that he and his neighbors had recently tried to dig a trench to get it to drain better, but it had washed out in the next rainstorm, and they didn’t know what else to do.

We gave Milagro a present that Donna had sent. It had art supplies and toothbrushes and soap and hair ribbons and a brush and candy and all kinds of things she would like and could use. She liked that stuff, but it was nothing next to the most important thing Donna could have sent apparently – a doll! Her eyes got so big when she saw that doll, and she snatched it right out of the box and wouldn’t stop hugging it. I asked her what she was going to name the doll, and without missing a beat she looked at me and said, “What is my sponsor’s name again?” and I said, “Donna” and she said immediately, “Her name is Donna.” It made me cry! And if you’ve met Donna, you know that she was bawling!

It was a good way to end the trip. Nathan and I both said this was the longest, shortest trip we’ve ever taken. For some reason, this one was just grueling. It is always so hard to see people living in terrible poverty, but these people were trying so hard and just needed some support. We are to be the hands and feet of Christ, and I was so encouraged to see the Church able to be the Church here! There is still so much more to do, though, and I am left with a fire to share and to help, and praying for wisdom about how to communicate all we’ve seen!

We have so much in the US. We don’t have any idea how good we have it. And there’s so much we can do to help. It’s not just throwing money at the problem – it’s addressing the issue of poverty in a way that makes sense with all the complexities that are present. Compassion is seeking to address poverty from all angles – economic, social, emotional, and spiritual. They are giving people hope in the name of Christ, an education and a future, while supporting their physical and emotional needs today.

I was so impressed with everything I saw. It was hard to see, but I also saw the hope and the progress. I’m proud to be sponsoring children through Compassion, and I know that God is using them all around the world. Will you join me? If you’d like to sponsor, feel free to email me at info@jennifershaw.com and we will set you up, or you can contact Compassion directly through the link below and tell them I sent you. 🙂

To sponsor a child today, please visit Compassion following this link!

At the welcome assembly in Corinto – some of the children did beautiful traditional Nicaraguan dances

Our team singing to the kids and families in Corinto – we sang “How Great is Our God”

Meeting Milagro and her father

These streets had sewers but they were open and ended right in the yards of the people we were visiting

The cooking station at one of our home visits – she was cooking for the returning fishermen

The other half of her kitchen

The bed their family of five shares in her brother’s house

Her husband holding the baby – he was such a loving dad!

The kids back at the Compassion program

Singing with the kids at the school

Blowing bubbles with the children at the school

Bringing in the afternoon meal

Yum! Chicken corn soup with plantains

There were dogs absolutely everywhere, and you could tell by their posture it was really hot

To view larger images of the pictures, just click on them.

The next morning we got up and went to the church partnership in Corinto. This was especially interesting because it’s a new program here. The ones we had seen in Managua were well established and had many graduates, but this program had only begun 8 months ago.

Corinto is on the Pacific coast, and most of the population are fishermen. The church we were with had been trying to get Compassion there for several years, and the pastor was so happy that they had gotten the program started! Although it was rural as opposed to urban, the neighborhood felt similar, and we would learn the same truths about it – poor but decent housing surrounded on the fringes by a double layer of true desperation.

One of the problems that we see everywhere we go in developing nations is water. These people had no clean water at all. But the problem is very different. When we were in Kenya, there was no clean water, but there was no water at all. People were walking 8 miles to dirty water everyday. That is a serious problem. Here, there was water everywhere – they were living on an ocean just feet above sea level and dirty water was running through the streets. They had no access to clean water, and also no way to get away from the dirty water – no sewers, no filtration system, floods every time it rained bringing sewage and trash with it right into their homes. Opposite ends of a desperate problem with water.

We got to the church and they had a special assembly with all the kids and a lot of parents to welcome us. Since this is a new program, we were the first visitors other than the staff in Nicaragua, so that made us an oddity. 🙂 The kids did a beautiful program including some singing and traditional Nicaraguan dances and then we sang for them too. Afterward we went out and saw the classrooms and heard from the school administrator and pastor about how the program was going and how it was impacting the community and the families.

As we were listening to this pastor, something struck me that I had never realized before about this program. This pastor was also so passionate about helping these kids and families and he knew every one. This was his neighborhood, these were his neighbors. He had seen the problems and his church wanted so much to help, but lacked the resources. I thought about how heartbroken I would be as a Christian if I saw obvious needs around me that I could not address, and I realized that not only are we helping the children and their families, we are enabling the Church to be the Church in a way that would not be possible for them without support. This is a double blessing we are giving!

The pastor’s wife here was amazing! She loved the children so much, and she was with us for a lot of the time we were there, mostly because we were going to the homes of children in her class and she was so proud of them, she wanted to introduce us and show us how special they were. The mothers of kids in her class told us she visits every day, just to check in and see how they are doing, if they need anything and are doing their homework. It was incredible! These are the people we are supporting in ministry!

While at the school I got to meet a very special child named Milagro which means “miracle.” My scheduling coordinator and good friend, Donna, asked me to find a child who needed a sponsor while I was there and meet her for Donna’s family so they could sponsor her and feel like they knew her situation personally. Donna already sponsors three boys, so she thought it was time for a girl!

Milagro is the youngest of three children and 7 years old. Her father is a single dad, and our translator, Carlos, told me that he thinks her father is “a very brave man.” He told me that the culture does not see caring for ones’ children as being masculine, so if the mom leaves (Milgro’s mother is an alcoholic and abandoned the family) most dads would abandon their children. Milagro’s father told me many times how much he loves his children, and that he could not imagine giving them up. He drives a bicycle cart and supports his family that way. Milagro also has a 15 year old brother and a 9 year old sister named Amanda who has some neurological issues. Amanda was having testing for that the following week and the dad asked us to pray for her with tears in his eyes. She is able to have the testing now because she is also sponsored through Compassion, and he is hoping they will finally get some answers and medical help.

After meeting Milagro (we were going to visit her at home the next day), we went for another home visit to one of the families in the program. This neighborhood was slightly better than the urban one in that it had open sewers running alongside the street rather than sewage running in the street. Unfortunately, the sewer ended where the pavement did, which was right where the houses we were visiting started, draining all that was running through the sewer right into the backyards of these homes.

The father of the family we visited was a fisherman, and he had been out fishing all night, but asked to be woken when we got there because he wanted to see us. We got there and talked to mom, dad, the three kids, the sister-in-law, and nephew. They lived next door to mom’s brother which had turned out to be a real blessing. There was an earthquake two weeks earlier, and now their house was tilted about 30 degrees off vertical. It was too dangerous to sleep in there (we went in for a few minutes and I was seriously uncomfortable just being inside it because it was so obviously unstable), so her brother had taken them in, and now there were eight people sleeping in one room about 10 feet by 14 feet, with one twin bed holding her family of five and her brother’s family sleeping on the floor. They had no mattress – the bed frame was lined with rags – and they were hoping to do something about the situation because at the full moon, the tides shift and usually flood their homes monthly. She was not sure how they would get all eight of them in the bed when the floor flooded.

It’s hard to describe how difficult it was to be at this home. The smell was incredible as there was running sewage in the yard, and the mud flats behind the home are exposed at the low tide which makes everything smell like fish. There were flies and insects everywhere. It was very hard to keep anything or anyone clean with the mud everywhere. Mom makes an extra $2 a day by cooking for the fishermen when they are coming in after work, and the whole time we were talking, she was working, cooking chicken that had had no refrigeration in 98 degree heat all day, using one knife for the chicken and vegetables, with no water and no way to clean anything, dripping chicken juices all over her work surface. It was difficult not to react.

We sat and talked with them for a long time. Dad works 15 to 24 hour shifts. He gets 1 Cordoba for every pound of fish he catches. There are 26 Cordoba to 1 US Dollar, so that’s 26 pounds of fish for him to make $1. She said on his best days, he catches 200 pounds of fish, making just under $8, and about half the days, he will work those very long shifts and catch nothing. She cooks for the fishermen and also cuts wood, rowing 3 hours to get to the place where they can cut it, bringing it back in the boat, and selling it for 40 cents per 100 pieces. If she still doesn’t have enough money to feed the family every day, she will go and rent a bicycle cart and drive people around until she earns enough to make a meal.

People have said to me that poor people just need to work harder or make different choices. Poverty is so much more complicated than that. These people worked harder than I ever have, often not sleeping at all because they are chopping wood during the day and fishing all night. If you have no money, you can’t move to a place with more opportunity because you have no means to get there or money to stay somewhere when you arrive. When you have to work every second of the day just to eat, you have no time to attend school to change your future. When you have no hope of things ever being better, you don’t think about the future – you are always focused on what you need right now.

There were people making bad choices, just like Milagro’s mother, but there were many more doing everything they could to provide for their families. There are people making bad choices at every level of society. The difference is that when you have a little more, you have options. And what I saw Compassion giving was the hope of Christ, so people knew they could have a different future, and then the means to realize that future.

We went back to the school and played with the kids for a while. We had brought some candy and some bubbles and other things to play with. It was a relief really to get back to the school and see the happy faces of the kids. We served them a meal (Compassion helps with nutrition, education, Christian nurture, medical care, and many other things) which they do every day before the kids head home to make sure they have dinner. This school was sunny and bright and clean, and the kids were so beautiful and happy, it was jarring to realize what they will go home to everyday.

And yet, I want to make sure that I say, these parents were amazing. They loved their children! They loved them so much, and they worked so hard with what they had. They had dignity, and they wanted so much more for their kids. That was what I heard over and over – they were so proud that their kids were going to school, that there might be something different for them down the road. Generational poverty is very hard to see beyond, but these parents had a glimpse of what could be, and they were hopeful to see where it would take their children.

To sponsor a child today, please visit Compassion following this link!