On Tuesday night while in Ecuador I had the priv­i­lege to have din­ner and hear the tes­ti­monies of three grad­u­ated Compassion chil­dren. All three of these stu­dents have now entered Compassions Leadership Development Program. It was such a bless­ing to hear from all three and to here what has been going on in their lives because of Compassion. This LDP pro­gram is a spon­sor pro­gram to put stu­dents who show high aca­d­e­mic stand­ing and strong lead­er­ship qual­i­ties through post sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. These stu­dents will have their uni­ver­sity oblig­a­tions along with help­ing out at their local project. Despite the heavy work load it is amaz­ing to see what this pro­gram can do.

On the left we see Josue (pro­nounced Hosway). He is 24 years old. He was brought into the Compassion sys­tem at the age of 5 and had the same spon­sor until he grad­u­ated at the age of 18. Josue is study­ing mecha­tron­ics in school and shows great promise to do amaz­ing things with his intel­li­gence. He had talked about how he would love to learn a bunch of dif­fer­ent lan­guages, start­ing with Korean and Chinese. He also aspires to be a pro­fes­sor. Josue has such a heart for his fam­ily and for God, it is truly amaz­ing to see what is hap­pen­ing in his life.

Beside Josue we have the won­der­ful Elsa. Elsa is 24 years old and she also entered Compassions sys­tem at the age of 5. Elsa is study­ing Business in school and is cur­rently work­ing on her the­sis. Elsa had applied for and won $1,300 to start a busi­ness she pro­posed through one of Compassion’s ini­tia­tives. Her busi­ness is a chicken farm. She dreams of sell­ing her busi­ness to start her own cloth­ing busi­ness in her home­town. Elsa is super involved in many dif­fer­ent projects, it is really inspir­ing to see her aspi­ra­tions and ded­i­ca­tion to her local project.

Last we have Pablo at the age of 20. I had the priv­i­lege of hav­ing din­ner with Pablo and to really get to know his super pas­sion­ate heart. Pablo entered the Compassion sys­tem at the age of 7. Pablo is in school study­ing hotel man­age­ment with a spe­cial­iza­tion in tourism. He wants to build his hotel so that he can give the peo­ple in his vil­lage and church jobs. Pablo also is very tal­ented when it comes to music. He sang for us at our table. Our own pri­vate show.

So far this trip has been a true bless­ing and a dis­play of hope. Something that has really been on my heart is that so often in North America we see these devel­op­ing coun­tries as hope­less. I have noticed that this is far from true. These peo­ple are filled with so much joy. True Joy! When I see the faces of these chil­dren and the way the fam­i­lies work together there is a joy dis­played that you just do not find back home. It has led me to believe that we in fact are the ones in some form of poverty. Visiting these homes and projects have done noth­ing but encour­age me. To start liv­ing in a self­less and joy­ful man­ner as these peo­ple do daily. With that I chal­lenge you to do the same.

Jared