Child Sponsorship
Sunday, November 15, 2009 Life Center launched a partnership with World Vision to transform a community in Swaziland called Maseyisini by sponsoring over 1500 children! In the four previous weeks, Pastor Joe led us through the book A Hole in Our Gospel (you can check out the series here) and for the series finale, Rich Stearns, the book's author and president of World Vision, shared his heart. At the end of the service, everyone had the opportunity to take one of the sponsorship folders taped to the wall - Pastor Joe journaled about it the following day and wrote this:
I am still walking on air after the amazing response of our church on Sunday. I will never forget the sight of hundreds of people after each service rushing the walls to sponsor a child. We posted 5-600 kids on the walls for each service, and they were all gone within minutes…and some people were disappointed that they didn’t get one! It was so inspiring! We haven’t gotten the final count, but we sponsored over 1500 kids—every one that World Vision brought was taken—and we could have sponsored many more. I was, and am, overwhelmed by our church’s generosity.
More information about the Maseyisini community can be found by downloading an informational PDF here.
To sponsor a child, please go to the World Vision website (www.worldvision.org) and, when prompted, enter our church code (1149160) and specify that you want a child from Maseyisini, Swaziland.
How does World Vision work?
They try to serve the poorest of the poor, where no one else is working. They create an ADP: an Area Development Project. They go into an area—like a county—and meet with the village leaders—it starts with relationships. They win trust and together create a development plan that includes clean water, food, education, jobs, and medical care. As children in that area are sponsored, it provides a stream of income that can be used to make all those things happen. It is not only the sponsored child who benefits—it’s their whole family, the whole village.
