another letter came in the mail for chris and me from linet, the girl we sponsor in uganda. that is three letters in the three months that we have been sponsoring.

“i want you to know how much my family and me love you.”

yeah, i got a bit misty eyed from that.

her birthday is sunday…i wonder what she’ll be doing?

it’s really easy for us to see how a seemingly nominal $32/month and the occasional birthday or christmas gift is helping her. i wish it was just as easy for her to see the difference she is making in our lives.

shaun was right. a trip like this will morph your life. i can’t believe it’s been three months since we’ve been home. honestly, i thought the emotions would wear off by now.

until i realized what i am experiencing isn’t emotions…it literally is a complete and unexpected reformation of my spirit. even though chris wasn’t able to go on the trip with me, god has been reshaping his heart too. we look at everything so differently now. it’s made our marriage stronger. it has changed the way we spend money. the way we look at the world. the way we look at the poor, the rich, and ourselves. we pray differently. we hope differently.

around 30 children have been sponsored from this site. i mentioned earlier that you all purchased at least 110 mosquito nets.

your lives are being changed, too. it’s been beautiful to see us all walk through this in different ways, together.

i haven’t posted a specific child who needs a sponsor for a while, but i thought i would today.

this is gipsi. she is five years old and lives in columbia.

In her home, Gipsi helps by making beds and cleaning. She lives with her father and her mother. Her father is sometimes employed and her mother maintains the home. There are 2 children in the family.

Gipsi is not presently attending school. Playing with dolls, playing ball games and running are her favorite activities. She also attends Bible class regularly.

gipsi has been waiting over six months for a sponsor. i pray that wait will end today. and i am assured whoever takes a step into this little girl’s life will be just as changed as she will be.

CLICK HERE TO SPONSOR GIPSI. please make sure you do not click the “select this child” button unless you are sure you will be sponsoring her, as doing so will make her sponsorship page unavailable for an hour or so, and someone else might miss their chance. thank you…

if you try to sponsor gipsi, but it says she has already been sponsored, you can always search for a child here!

CompassionBloggers.com - WOW. from the first time brian mentioned the trip to me, to now, three months after returning from uganda, i don’t think anybody really knew the impact blogging could make in releasing children from poverty. well, needless to say, it has blown everybody’s stinkin’ minds.

shaun (in between wearing a dress and a cute little girly hat, and hanging out with cuban assassins) has been working really hard on this site which connects bloggers and children to the world. the next blogging trip is in november, and he is looking for people to go that want to passionately explore this new road of getting children sponsored and having their own lives changed forever. oh, and you can also post about 2873 cool widgets and stuff on your blog.

VISIT COMPASSIONBLOGGERS.COM NOW! :)

WeTheChurch.org - i love prayer. i love praying for others, and hearing how god is working in their lives probably more than anything in the world. it is powerful and transforming.

my friends chad and scott launched an amazing site called WeTheChurch.org. people submit either prayer or praises — keeping their thoughts within 140 characters like twitter — and from all over the world, people can pray and celebrate with them.

my favorite part of this site is that i can get new prayers/praises in my twitter feed. let me tell you there is nothing like reading,

“A friend’s father had a massive stroke today, in ICU, doctors said he has 50/50 chance of surviving, if he does, he’ll have permanent damage”

in between the daily tweets of “at starbucks” and “my cat barfed up a hairball.” it’s divine. truly.

CHECK OUT WETHECHURCH.ORG and FOLLOW THEM ON TWITTER.

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in all the craziness, i have had some great posts brewing in my head this week that i haven’t fleshed out. thanks for hanging in there with me.

what site or blog have you been digging lately?

before we get to blogging…i thought i would update you guys with the unofficial count of malaria nets you donated in the 50 hour challenge last week…somewhere around 110 or so in under 50 hours!! and that is just from here…so many of you spread the word and i know many more were donated! thank you so much!

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today’s guest blog is actually from two guest bloggers…our compassion child in ethiopia (abdukerim, he just turned 6!) and from our compassion child in uganda (linet, she is about to turn 10! i met linet on our trip).

from abdukerim:

Chris & Anne Jackson,

How are you? Praise God! I am alright! I enjoyed Christmas by worshiping at the church and with my family at home. With your Christmas gift (about $15 USD) I got a blanket, a t-shirt, purchased some Christmas presents, and the rest was handed to me. God bless you! How did you celebrate Christmas? Pray for my family! Goodbye!

and from linet:

Chris & Anne,

I greet you in the name of Jesus Christ! Linet is fine and very happy to communicate to you. She says…

I was so excited to meet you at the hotel the last time you visited Uganda. I was SO SO happy and also grateful that you love, care, and support me and my family.

I hope you arrived in your country safely. I pray for you and you will always be in my prayers. Thank you very much for all the gifts you brought and gave me. Thank you for the two teddy bears, play dishes, photo frame, utensils, toys, scarfs, bubbles, the two bedsheets, stickers, flute, jump rope and for the bracelets. I love them very much and I will use them well and accordingly.

I love you very much and I will study very hard at school. God bless you!

chris and i got the letter from abdukerim one day, and from linet the next. we’ve only been sponsoring them both for under a year and we have gotten 2-3 letters from each of them. the front of our fridge is mostly covered with them.

communicating with your compassion child is so important. shaun shares about daniel, a boy he met while he was visiting the dominican republic last week. all daniel wants is for his sponsor to write more. you need to read shaun’s post. for reals.

if you’re not currently sponsoring a child, you can explore that a little bit here.

so, i thought 50 nets in 50 hours would be a challenge for you guys.

BOY WAS I WRONG!!

you have already donated 68 nets! in less than 24 hours.

so…i’m raising the ante!

let’s make it 100 nets.

32 to go.

AND…moviepastor.com will match the next TEN NETS DONATED!

so, if you buy a net now, leave a comment here and also at his blog. because that just freaking rocks!

let’s hit 100!!

ready, set, go!

what if everyone in the city of detriot died?

that’s the impact malaria has on the world EVERY YEAR. around one million people, including 750,000 children, die from malaria. and what sucks is that it’s completely preventable!! because of poverty, families can’t afford to buy nets or pay for treatment.

today, 3,000 children died from malaria…while we were all talking about what we’d do with an extra ten bucks.

but with ten bucks, you can make a change. you can bite back.

ten dollars provides a mosquito net that will protect a child from mosquitoes for THREE YEARS. it also provides education and treatment for those who have malaria.

i’d like to present a challenge to you. april 25 is world malaria day. and i want to see at least 50 people from this blog community donate at least $10 to buy a child a net in the next 50 hours (by 7 pm CST on Friday).

50 nets in the next 50 hours.

super easy.

FIRST…

click HERE to leave a comment and let me know you’ve donated.

THIRD…
spread the word. post about this on your blog. steal the graphic!

here’s the code:

<a href="http://www.flowerdust.net/2008/04/23/malaria-prevention"><img src="http://www.flowerdust.net/images/malaria-prevention.jpg" alt="$10 to Prevent Malaria" /></a>

50 hours. 50 nets. let’s do it!!

we have had a great time in nashville, getting to hang out with so many truly amazing people, some were old friends, and some were new. we are driving home now & we just passed through memphis and are driving through arkansas.

i met brock face to face at the compassion dinner last night and because he remembers stuff much better than me, i am stealing this from him. the guest speaker at the dinner was tony neeves, (VP of international development for compassion)…a lovely british gentleman with humble and challenging thoughts.

one that stood out to me was “children in poverty aren’t the problem. children in poverty are the solution.” he went on to say that these children are “bundles of potential” — and if they receive positive support, they have the potential to be world-changers in the best way possible. yet if they aren’t loved, aren’t cared for, they have the potential to be world-changers in the worst possible way.

wow.

other things (from brock):

third world people press their faces against the windows of our lives because of technology, internet, tv etc. and they feel as if they have no hope. it is because they are seeing soap operas and game shows on tv and see how we live. they cant afford a bowl of rice. they realize they have nothing and have no hope.

also, churches in western world are far more introverted than third world churches. this must change.

and, third world churches are growing fast in some areas not because of a great pastor or sermons but they are loving people and meeting needs. then the community sees the love and want what they have.”

a few other highlights from the trip:

i honestly don’t listen to much christian music. but i did when i was 13. a little bit of me thought it was cool when toby mac walked into starbucks. then i realized how truly cool i was when jenni went to hug him. (julie, i thought you’d get a kick out of that!) :)

we got to hang out some with mark and stephanie lee. mark plays the guitar in amazing ways for a band called third day. again, it’s probably been a good decade since i really listened to third day, but as we saw them play at a showcase, some of their new material really really touched chris and me in ways only god could know.

it was just truly amazing to reconnect with some of the uganda bloggers. twice.

i really wish i could link to everyone we met and hung out with but i am about to have to drive. so to all of you, thank you for making us feel so welcome!!