How I Accidentally Sponsored A Child Through AICM

Sometimes, a child makes a mark on your heart. If you are a sponsor, you may know the feeling. It doesn’t take long after you’ve chosen a child to sponsor before they feel like part of your life, part of your family, part of who you are. It can happen when you see a child on the website, or a cardstock picture on a sponsor interest table. 

For me, it was in Uganda. 

I went to meet a little girl who had been placed with a family after life with her biological family had disintegrated. She was such a serious child, sad brown eyes looking soulfully out of a thin face at a world that had brought such pain to her even in the few years she had been alive. Back in the United States, I was given the job of advocating sponsorship. I had many, many children that needed a sponsor, but my sweet Genevieve stood out to me. I hesitated to put her packet out on the table, because more than anything I wanted to be her sponsor. But I was as broke as any college-aged student you have ever met! So, reluctantly, I put her packet out on the table. 

Now God has a major sense of humor, it seems to me. A young man and his mother came over to my table, and I told them her story. The young man sponsored her, and two years later, I married him. So now we are her sponsors, and I got a cute hubby out of the deal too! 

We recently had our own little girl, and I cannot wait until she is old enough to understand that through our prayers and a little bit of money every month, another girl also gets to go to school and gets to know about Jesus, along with so many other things. 

Genevieve’s picture is on our fridge, just a simple piece of cardstock that reminds me everyday of the little girl who may have never met Jesus unless she had been chosen by AICM and by just one person with a willing heart. Sponsoring a child changes their entire world. 

And you never know- it could change yours, too.