Melengo

In high school, I signed up for a Compassion child on behalf of the youth group.  People said they would help me, so I made a box and set it out so people could donate some money throughout the month.  Only...most of the time no one did, and I was footing the bill.  Funny how $32 seemed like so much at the time.

I ended up canceling my sponsorship, which was slightly traumatizing.  But I got over it quickly, because the girl had never written to me, and I never really got the sense that she was a real person.

BUT for the past year or more, I've been writing back and forth to Melengo, my new sponsored child from Tanzania.  He makes my heart melt, and then he cracks me up.  I just got a letter from him today with a picture of him studiously bending over a notebook.  In his letter, he said, "He says, he is happy for the way you love him.  He says, he also loves you and others as how Jesus loved him."  And on the back he drew a picture of a medicine cabinet!  HAHAHA.  With a bottle of magnesium and some peeling plaster labeled as such.

I love this kid.  I'm so glad I can give him the money he needs to go to school even though I've never met him and probably never will.  It's people like him that truly make me excited for heaven.  Sure it would be nice to see the people I know for eternity, but I can live this life with them.  I can't wait to spend eternity meeting people I only wrote letters with, or only heard about, or never knew existed at all!

Until then, Melengo.