boyfriend is in AFRICA!!!

my incredible boyfriend, john, is on his first trip to Kenya this week. he works for compassion international and travels to churches, concerts and confrences to help get precious children all over the world sponsored.

among other things, the purpose of his trip is to get a first hand experience of the kind of work that compassion does in the lives of these kids and their families who live in the poorest of the poor areas around the world.

the most exciting aspect (at least to me) is that john gets to meet the little girl, judith, that he has been sponsoring for over 2 years now. last week john and i went out and bought her a backpack and filled it with toys, coloring books, stuff for her family, etc. i just got an email from him about meeting her and i couldn’t resist sharing!! so amazing!!

“I got to meet Judith. Holy crap this was awesome. She was so

shy she wouldn’t even look at me for the first hour or 2. She
wouldn’t talk at all and she rarely if ever smiled. But while all the
other kids were really social and interactive and smiling, Judith was so
unique and it made me so glad I sponsored her. We walked out to the
bus and when she saw the backpack her eyes got so big and then a big
smile came to her face. I think she didn’t even expect it. I showed
her all the gifts and she loved them. We bounced the beach ball back
and forth. We blew bubbles. She had never seen such a thing. Later
on when it started raining she didn’t even hesitate: she bent over
opened up her backpack and pulled out her raincoat we bought her and put it

on. By the end of the day she was walking around with me and talking to me in

Swahili even though I couldn’t understand. She was shy the whole time
but the behavior change was amazing. I was sitting on our bus at the
end getting ready to leave and I looked over to theirs and she was the

only person standing up and looking for me in the other bus. I waved

and she waved and smiled.”