Meeting Our Sponsor Child Face to Face

“How do we pick among all the faces?”

Pages of “Food for the Hungry” children line up in front of our church office.

She must have seen my frustration.  For, “Sometimes God can work through random selection.” is all our Mission’s pastor wisely tells us.

We shuffle children. I close my eyes and pick one like lots in the Old Testament. “Rancel”. O.k….um..I guess “Rancel” is our new sponsor child.

I scan his info: Deep, dark skin. Full lips. Thirteen. I turn the card over. Under “religion” the description simply says, “Other”.  (Read more HERE)

I am still not super convinced that the selection of a heart, of a child, of a person doesn’t require deep contemplation, prayer and maybe even fasting. But I roll with it.  I have no other choice.

We stroll into his village weeks later. I wrote a letter, but in a weeks time, it hasn’t gotten to him yet.

We ask around this community about this blind-picked child we pass by daily at home. Praying for him often, as His face stares at us from our stainless steel refrigerator.

A tall, shy boy learns we had been looking for him. He sheepishly comes to find
us. Heart soft, eyes passive. His stature tall, long, and athletic.

We find out later….


, he plays baseball.

And to be honest, at first I question our visit, until after our “hellos”.  We ask Rancel, “Are you a Christian?” Eyes down, then darting.  He looks at us as if to resurrect a truth he had once heard from another person, “No”.

He says it again, “No, I am not Christian.”

And from a culture of my people, who too often boast saying they are “Christian”…but struggle more to live it…I find it refreshing Rancel is real, truthful, more honest now than most of us.

“I don’t believe”.  There. Such frankness.  Freeing.

The next few days; color, religion, language, or culture can’t separate us. 

Every time we see Rancel, we throw our arms out as if seeing the prodical come home. “RANCEL”…we announce full blown, and run to him smiling. At first, he tip-toes towards us, nervous smile grinning, looking quite visibly embarrassed.

But then, His countenance changes. His eyes seem to slowly welcome our goofy American greeting.  Rancel soon becomes more than a face on our refrigerator, but more like a heart-child, God selected that initial day in front of the church office.

And when they told me sponsorship works, I didn’t believe it. Having children in the past, but never really meeting them; they felt far off, distant….Like our letters and our petty pennies didn’t really matter in light of eternity; in a world so big, so filled with debilitating suffering.

But in Dominican, I saw children clinging to the letters their sponsors had mailed them. Them feeding, as if starving, upon every word their sponsor family back home had jotted to them.

And truth is, words are never meaningless. If the world was created, and life and death are the consequences of the power of what we are saying….

Why shouldn’t our efforts to write our sponsor children be weighed heavier than what we can comprehend them to be.

In a culture that blurts out empty dialogue, too often without thinking, we can so sadly neglect seeing, the meaning and the power behind a letter.

Days later, we get the official visit. We go to Rancel’s house and meet his mom, who left her husband, while taking all of her six children. Yet, unlike American’s might think, she is not a victim. She makes jewelry for revenue, and spends her time helping her community; taking care of her family which includes four grandchildren.

Still, hard times and hard work can shrink God to non-existent. Bitterness can create wedges, bringing great distance between God’s love and our call as His children.

On the couch in her entry, she asks us “Why did you come?” And I go on and share that our smiles, and our hugs, and our love for her people are not manufactured or something we alone can take credit for.

I explain how we were and are still sinners. How anger, and hate, and bitterness once filled our souls until it totally and utterly consumed us. How our lives had no peace, lacking all hope and any ounce of joy and contentment.

But Jesus undid us. (And by the grace of God, He continually undoes us.) 

He exchanged our sin for a peace leading us to do things we never dreamed or imagined. God called us. And how it was only by His grace, He lead us and drew us to her family in the middle of Dominican Republic.

I look at Rancel’s mom. I recall all those times I faked religion and felt called to be real with her as the Spirit prompted…

“You know, I used to  live like I was well. I used to do all the right things, so people would think I was a ‘good’ person.  But at the end of the day, in the late of the night…when we lay our heads on our pillows, we know in our ‘heart-of-hearts’ if we are right with God or not.”

Then, I explained the Great Exchange….how God took away our fears and exchanged it for His deep peace. How God’s love flooded us with a freedom we could have never attain by ourselves in a world full of hardships and difficulties.

My husband pulls out the Bible we brought Rancel. He shows him the necklace with a cross and the scripture about resting on wings like eagles, we prayerfully chose for him.

I feel the tension. Doubt, past, history colliding with God’s love who sometimes has no explanation.

And my husband then starts sharing. In His native language, Spanish….He talks about the freedom found in scripture. He tells of the power, strength, and hope of God’s word, and how it’s far better than empty religion.

And then I remember it. I remember the power of the testimony and the truth of the Wise-One who led me to walk by faith…instead of some deep, self-centered spirituality. The one who encouraged me to close my eyes, trust God, and randomly select His card; Rancel’s Food for the Hungry Card, outside the doors of our church office.

And as the story illuminated my heart…I share it!

“I want you to know something.”  I look straight at Rancel. “We didn’t choose you.”

He seems stunned.

“There were too many kids, and I felt burdened by all the faces. How could I choose one…out of so many beautiful people?” I throw up my hands for dramatic effect.

His eyebrows bend low, looking deeply alarmed.  But I know where this story was going. So, I pray under my breathe that by grace, he holds on…

“No…God chose you!” I break the tension and point to heaven. “We couldn’t choose, so we closed our eyes, mixed up the cards, and prayed that God would choose the exact child He wanted us to be with.”

His dark skin softens. Eyes lighten. Joy and discouragement seem to be carried off with eagles unto places we would never see again the rest of the trip visiting him.

I look at his mom, also with a religion of, “other”.  Grabbing her hand, eyes meet, while both our eyes fill with tears at the thought that the God of the Universe actually knew, loved, saw and heard her..and her children.

And oh once we get that!  Once we get that we are more than work-horses, or personal saviors, or people striving to accomplish what we need to before we die…

Once we get that we are seen, and loved, and reached by a God who is personal, and real, and loving.  We are changed.  All of us.  Changed forever. Significantly.

The next day, Rancel raised his hand, along with ninety others, at VBS to accept Christ. His mom told us that night he sat in his room reading the Bible we gave him….(which of course makes us smile).

Rancel showed up after that to every one of our events. He stayed with us, and outside the door to our brick fortress day after day after day.

The morning we left, Rancel was the first to sit against the car by the bus we filled with our American emptiness. His eyes alive, His heart ignited….unlike the first day we came to Antonci.

And though arms can’t reach, eyes won’t meet, lives won’t always intersect in the same way they did when we left our wealth and walked into our Sponsor Son’s world…

Jesus is alive and absolutely connects us through sponsorship in a way few of us could ever know, learn, dream, or realize.

Children are waiting. Many with “other” as their religion. Yes, some lacking resources or opportunity, while others just needing the freedom found in an authentic and personal relationship with Jesus.

And now that our trip is over, I see my lack so magnified.  I see more fully after this trip than I ever realized I could.  I lack community, and support, and fellowship in the fullness that Rancel has it. But, it is this unifying of cultures, this reaching outside the boxes we live in…that makes us all willingly bow lower at the feet of Jesus.

Fellowship always helps us learn, making us all just a little bit more like Jesus.

And I want to keep praying, touching, selecting the faces he puts in front of me. I want to trust that God is Sovereign above creation….and can use random acts of selection, to bring his plans and purposes to the surface.

Would you consider sponsoring a child today?  If you already have a sponsor, would you please stop right now, take some time and write to them?