So I told you that last week I attended Travis' Live CD taping at Woodstock. I'll never get over the worship but that's not just because the music was so fabulous, it's because I brought worship home with me. By that I mean I committed our family to being a Compassion Child Sponsor.

Before the recording Shaun Groves (oh my gosh he is awesome..totally see why Sophie raves now) shared about the work of Compassion International. Now, if you read blogs AT ALL you are aware of the different girls who've travelled with this organization to bring awareness to their programs. I just love reading the Compassion blogs when they are on site. Word by word, you can feel the souls shifting of the ones ministering in these areas for the first time.

So why haven't I sponsored before now? Truthfully? It's because I'm a loser at follow-through. It wasn't that I thought I couldn't afford to send the money but rather I know how important it is to these children to have communication from their sponsor families. Ultimately I was afraid I would be a disappointment to the kid who was stuck with me. I thought I would need to send care packages. I thought I'd need to send cards for special occasions and since I have a stack of holiday cards for MY OWN HUSBAND that I never manage to deliver, oh lets say, across the room I just knew I'd fail at being the kind of sponsor a kid across the ocean deserved. And for those lame reasons, I just didn't.

Well, after hearing Shaun's appeal that Sunday I couldn't stand it any longer. It's like God was saying, "Lisa, how can you presume to teach the love and mercy of God when you don't practice it?" And then there's the passage in Isaiah 58:7-8ish(?) that I've heard many times but was the stake in my heart that day. It essentially says "True religion is caring for the poor." True religion. If there's anything I want more of, it's that. So, I took an envelope and asked God to help me not to be the world's worst Compassion Sponsor. Imagine being the first person ever booted from the program since the therapy the child would need as a result of my neglect would be more expensive than the other necessities.

With all that said, we are now sponsoring a 13-year old boy in India named Palivela. I received an email today confirming our commitment and I spent a while looking through the website. And y'all. Oh my gosh I'm still so excited.

I can email Palivela. RIGHT THERE ON THE SITE! AND A TRANSLATOR WILL GIVE MY LETTER TO HIM! Not that I don't intend to send real letters to him (there's that Intend word that always gets me in trouble) but an email letter is better than nothing, right? Y'all, I can do the email!

And guess what else!!!? They don't even allow you to send care packages! I can make a birthday/special occasion donation through the handy dandy website and a location worker will make sure Palivela gets a needful gift from us! I can do the special donations!

So I guess I'm writing this to reach out to any of you who may be hesitating in sponsorship for the same reason as me. If I'm the only flake who struggles in this area, please make me feel better and keep it to yourself. You can make me feel even better than that though if you will check out Compassion's website and see how easy it is to sponsor a child of your own.

The great people there have thought of everything to keep you from looking like a major loser.

Now that's some true religion.