Compassion is a Christian organization that takes a holistic approach to helping children. They operate in 25 countries and are currently helping over 1 million kids. They work with local churches (I’m a big fan of working with local folks who already have a burden to help) to provide the kids in the program with food, education, and an introduction to the Gospel. They also help parents with everything from parenting skills to vocational training.

Uwitonze Sarah

I first started sponsoring Sarah in the summer of 2005 in response to an invitation by Caedmon’s Call, one of my favorite bands. Their Share the Well album is very focused on social justice, so it wasn’t a surprise that they support Compassion’s mission of “[r]eleasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name”.

I picked Sarah because we share our given name and because she was one of the kids who had been waiting a long time for a sponsor. Compassion strongly encourages sponsors to write to their sponsored children, and it’s been very cool to see, even from such a great distance, how she is growing up. She used to just color the pictures that were pre-printed on the stationary, and now she’s writing her own letters in cursive.

A couple of years ago, a local Christian radio station did something unprecidented and asked their listeners to sponsor a whole Compassion project in Honduras (usually when a radio station does this kind of sponsorship drive, the kids come from all over the world, but KTSY wanted one project where they can go visit—they’ve been down there twice and have a third trip planned for next spring).

Lauren Yohana Monje Tróchez

At the time, I wasn’t in a position to sponsor another kid, and when they were all sponsored, I was a little sad that I wasn’t able to be involved. The following year, though, some of the younger kids who had previously been too young joined the program, and the radio station sought sponsors for them. That’s when I started sponsoring Yohana.

I haven’t had a chance to go visit my kids yet, but hearing the stories from my friends at the radio station is both awesome and heartbreaking. The incredible poverty that these kids suffer through only emphasizes the incredible love and hope that they have.

Now that I have a son of my own, I want to start contributing to the Child Survival Program to help babies his age. I can’t imagine the universal challenge of childrearing with the added stress of poverty, illiteracy, unsanitary birthing and living conditions, and a lack of knowledge about parenting. Becoming a parent has made me more empathetic in general, but I’m especially moved by the plight of other, less fortunate mothers.

When Benjamin is a little older, we will sponsor a boy his age. My hope is that, in addition to helping someone who desperately needs it, sponsorship will also help develop empathy, compassion, and an awareness of the world in Benjamin.

I’m planning on featuring a child who needs sponsorship as part of this site in the near future, but don’t wait for me! If you want to share the blessings, you can sponsor a child today.

The statement does make me think, though. I give little bits to a lot of causes, but only a few consistently receive my dollars (and my love). Clearly, I have some kind of criteria, even if they’re mostly subconscious.

First, the easy one: I give because of who’s asking. This isn’t a strong enough factor for me to commit to ongoing or long-term giving, but when one of my friends asks me to sponsor their charity walk or tells me about organization they care deeply about that needs a one-time gift, I’ll usually bite.

For bigger or longer commitments, I weigh a few more factors:

• Is the organization effective? This goes a lot further than just having low administrative overhead. I want to see great results.
• What kind of impact do they have for eternity? There are so many needs in the world that many charities can all work to meet them without overlap, but my money isn’t unlimited so I give preference to those that address spiritual needs as well as physical, mental, social, and emotional needs.
• Am I needed (and do I know it)? There are charities who may be doing great things, but if they feel impersonal or don’t seem like they need my gift, I don’t give again. I’m not looking for a big public awards ceremony or anything—just a sense that my contribution matters.
• How far does my money go? Thanks to radically different costs-of-living around the world, the same dollar amount can go much further in other countries. I do give money domestically (for instance, to my local church), but I like how much my money can accomplish when given strategically. I especially like projects that are self-sustaining—projects where today’s successes set up tomorrow’s victories.
• How urgent and important is the need? Again, there are so many real, important needs in the world that I have to prioritize. I usually go for concrete projects rather than abstract ones as a result.

These are just guidelines, obviously, but they help narrow down the vast field of good charities doing good work in areas that need good solutions.

I’m going to write about some of my favorite charities over the next few days, but in the meantime, I’m curious: what makes you give to one charity over another?

I love that no one knows what to call this decade.

Most Important Tasks

• Tweaks for one client
• Write back to theme-creation inquiry
• Tweaks for another client

The reward

Subscription to All You magazine, which I’ve been tempting myself with for several months.

photo credit: flash.pro

Okay, I don’t have kids yet (well, the one I have is doing all the playing he wants in the womb!) but I came across the KaBOOM Playspace Finder the other day and thought it was a great idea.

It’s basically a Google Maps mashup that lets visitors review “playspaces” (by which I’m assuming they mean parks and playgrounds and such), and browse using a map. They say “there are currently 10468 playspaces in the KaBOOM Playspace Finder,” and there are a few shown within a couple miles of my house, so it seems like it’s got enough info already to be useful.

Besides, kids aren’t the only ones who like playgrounds!

I really like Katie’s idea.

Image via Wikipedia

Where to start? I guess a good place would be the fact that I am not supporting any particular presidential candidate at this point; I haven’t done enough research to justify support yet. I’m a long-time conservative, but I’m getting more moderate by the year (in part thanks to stupid conservatives). It’s also possibly relevant to this post that I’m pro-life, so naturally I disagree with Barack Obama on the issue of abortion.

However, that’s not what has me irritated at the moment. No, that special honor goes to James Dobson and Tom Minnery of “Focus on the Family Action.” I’m familiar with the Focus on the Family organization (hey, they make “Adventures in Odyssey,” my favorite kids’ radio program) and I’m guessing the “Action” suffix means that this is their political activism arm.

Well, if what I heard today is what constitutes political activism, I really wish they’d either give it up or do a better job of it.

The piece that got my attention was a forwarded email with the subject line, “Obama lashes out at Dr. Dobson.” A nice little bit of hype, right?

As a Christian, I am interested in knowing about faith-related views and actions of the candidates, so I took the bait and read the email.

The “lashes out” part? From the email: “On Tuesday, presidential candidate Barack Obama lashed out at Dr. Dobson and accused Dr. Dobson of ‘making stuff up’ about Obama.”

Okay, that merits some investigation, especially since the original email was directly from Dobson’s organization, but first I finished the rest of the email, which purported to summarize the events leading up to this point. Honestly, I can’t pick which parts to share, so I’ll excerpt the rest of the email here:

Here is what happened. On Tuesday’s Focus on the Family radio broadcast (paid for by Focus Action), Dr. Dobson and I dissected a 2006 speech in which Obama made some very disturbing statements about his understating of Christianity, the role of religion in government and specifically Dr. Dobson.

Please click here to watch Obama’s speech, listen to Dr. Dobson’s comments, and more.

Obama compares Dr. Dobson to Al Sharpton
In that 2006 speech, after stating that we are not a Christian nation, Obama directly compared Dr. Dobson to Al Sharpton. Obama then continued with an extremely convoluted discussion of the Bible – from Levitical law to the Sermon on the Mount – that caused Dr. Dobson to say Obama was “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview.”

While Obama’s statements about Dr. Dobson are offensive, Obama’s misunderstanding of the Bible is alarming — especially considering the blind faith so many of our fellow Americans seem to have in him!

Again, I want you to hear and see for yourself what Obama said, as well as Dr. Dobson’s comments.

These are extremely important issues that we must contend with. That is why Focus Action sponsored this radio broadcast – and it’s why we will not stand by silently as any public figure drags biblical understanding through the gutter or undermines the role of people of faith in our society.

It struck me as a little odd that this clamor centered around a speech that is two years old, but I was curious about “drag[ing] biblical understanding through the gutter” and the accusation that Obama was “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview.”

Frankly, I don’t follow enough of the political-religious uproar to be very familiar with Al Sharpton, but clearly Dr. Dobson was appalled at the comparison, so I finally decided to just watch Obama’s speech.

It was longer than I expected, so I tidied the office at the same time, eagerly listening for the gutter-dragging or the Dobson segment (since the email said that Obama “specifically” targeted Dobson).

Imagine my disappointment (well, more confusion) when the only mention of Dr. Dobson was a single rhetorical question that pointed out that American Christians can’t agree on the practical applications of their faith.

Following up on the point that Christians are not the only folks who live in America (hard to argue that, though believe it or not, Dobson tried), this is what Obama actually said:

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would it be James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s?

Yes, that is the dreaded spot where “Obama directly compared Dr. Dobson to Al Sharpton.”

Do you remember in grade school where the teacher had you “compare and contrast”? To me, this is a whole lot more “contrast” than “compare,” but maybe I’m just getting caught up in semantics.

In any case, I don’t see how any reasonable person could find the statement offensive. I suppose that Dobson is probably a little hyper-sensitive because of the arena in which he operates, but that doesn’t seem like a good excuse for throwing logic out the window.

As for the distortions of the Bible, I really didn’t hear them. I was keeping my ears open for them, but just didn’t hear anything that struck me as “distorting” or even non-traditional (and believe me, I think you can do far worse than “non-traditional”).

Admittedly, though, I’m a person who can sometimes be swayed too easily by polished arguments, so I thought I’d let Dr. Dobson take a stab at enlightening me. After I finished Obama’s speech, I hit play on Dobson’s podcast.

It’s really too bad I’ll never get that 30 minutes of my life back again (but at least my desk is a little neater…).

I found the program in turns ignorant, misleading, and manipulative. I honestly can’t tell whether Dobson and his cohort really never listened to Obama’s speech or are just deliberately being obtuse.

They consistently took segments out of context—if a production assistant trimmed the speech to those sound-bytes and that’s all the hosts had to go off of, that could explain the lack of intelligent discussion, but I would sincerely hope that their journalism skills are a little better than that (of course, the alternative is probably worse).

Beyond that, they jumped to crazy conclusions (some were almost laughable, if it wasn’t for the fact that these things that actually matter), for instance, that Obama was accusing Dobson of wanting to expel non-Christians from the country. They attacked his brief summaries of biblical viewpoints (which I found to be pretty accurate—his summaries, that is, not their attacks). They just generally made fools of themselves.

Finally, after sitting through the whole broadcast in the interest of being informed and fair, I did a search to find out what Obama actually said when he “lashed out at Dr. Dobson.”

This article covers it pretty well, and essentially, Obama simply rejected Dobson’s attacks and said, “I think you’ll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes.”

Well, I’d pretty much agree with that.

A quote from the article:

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.

Asked about Dobson’s assessment, Obama said “somebody would be pretty hard-pressed to make that argument” that he was distorting the Bible.

You think?

Gosh, that is a vicious and hurtful attack, now, isn’t it?!?

Give me a break. And please stop using illogical, out-of-context rhetoric to sucker your devoted listeners, most of whom will probably follow your lead and not listen to the actual speech.

Dr. Dobson should hold to a higher standard, “especially considering the blind faith so many of our fellow Americans seem to have in him!”

photo credit: xfuture911

I’ve heard lots of discussions about renting vs. buying big items, and I pretty much sum up the best advice this way: Rent things you use less than a couple times a year; buy things you use more.

Very straightforward. (Of course, there are probably some exceptions, but it’s a good rule of thumb.)

One piece of advice I read about when to rent caught my eye, though, just because I hadn’t seen it before: when possible, rent the car you’re going to buy for a few days before purchasing it. You’ll get a much better feel for it than on a quick test drive.

This assumes two things:

1. You’re going to buy a new car. That’s not usually a good financial move, given the instant depreciation and the fact that you can typically buy a slightly used model for thousands less, but some people will ignore that and buy new anyway.
2. You’re buying a car that rental places rent. Not all cars, and particularly not all packages, will be available for rental.

However, if those two things are true, and you’re at all picky about the car you drive (I’m not; we bought our last vehicle off of eBay because we spotted a great bargain), it makes a lot of sense to invest a little upfront to make sure the big investment is one you’ll be happy with.

I’ve spent today catching up on the neglected clients and projects. It’s draining to feel behind on everything (though admittedly, it’s getting better). I decided to take a break and go get the mail—getting the mail is one of the great (small) pleasures of my life.

Imagine my excitement when I got a package! I love packages!

And then I opened the package!

Oh, now you know that’s going to be good!

Now I know you are all incredibly jealous… look at all that fudgy goodness!

A little back-story on the fudge: when I checked my email on Monday morning, I had a super-nice note from Reonne of Earth’s Sweet Pleasures. Over the weekend, she used my WordPress videos to learn to install her blog, appropriately named Chocolate Fudge Cafe (is your mouth watering yet?!).

She appreciated the videos and offered to send me some fudge. Now what sane woman would turn down that offer?!? Not this one! (Though I guess at this point my claim on sanity is a little tenuous…) I didn’t realize that Reonne was going to send me 16 pieces, though!

Honestly, even more than the fudge (which is fantastic, by the way… I kept it intact just long enough for the photos ), I’m really touched that she went out of her way to do something so nice. After a very stressful few days, it’s like my soul just sighed with satisfaction.

Ahhhhhhhhh…

Don’t underestimate what your gestures of thoughtfulness can do for another person.