The Other Life

By Joshua Woodmansee

Two days ago I went with my mom and a few other friends to an event called the “Compassion Experience.” It was a large tent that stood beside First Baptist Allen.

We walked in and understood what this was. There was a set up to experience what the life of children is like in some third world countries. The two set ups were a day in the life of a child in Ethiopia and Dominican Republic. The first child was Yannely. She lived in Ethiopia. You put on earphones and have an iPod that reads a first person explanation on his or her life. We walked into this old kitchen that was super small and was enclosed by curtains and had smelly food (it was fake food) on the ground.  It had no windows and it had little space to sit. It was raining hard in the audio and Yannely described how hard it was to sleep or do anything in the mud and noise of the heavy rain showers. She said mosquitoes were so hard to live with. Food was spoiled and covered in disease a lot.

When the audio stops you enter another room and this room was her school. Small but cleaner and there was a note on the chair that was from her sponsor from Compassion. Anyway, Compassion is a ministry that when you adopt a kid you can write him and let him know you care for him. Yannely grew up to become a doctor! She never thought she could do it but she was helped by her sponsor to live through her life and believe in God. It was a powerful day and God worked in my heart. We should all be thankful for the amount of money we have. An average Ethiopian family makes less than $1 a day! Only $330 a year! We buy $330 of food in 3 weeks! Some spend $330 on mortgage a week! We spend more money in a week in house utilities and store bought items than they probably do in a year. We may even have about 7 weeks of their earnings of money on our body right now! What’s even crazier is it’s not just there. Almost half the world (more than 3 billion people) live on $2.50 a day! We should be thankful instead of thinking, “we don’t have enough or people have more than we do, it’s not fair.”  Today, you can challenge yourself to only spend $20 dollars that day. Or less! Which means you can’t buy more than $20 of food, items at stores, or use gas in your car over $20. Try to have fun with it but realize this is how other people live like and with not even the luxury cars or houses or iPhones we have. If you don’t want to try the challenge, that’s totally ok. You could try sponsoring a child in Compassion on www.compassion.com, or you could donate to UBO.  UBO gives their money to get Bibles and thousands of people are receiving Bibles because of UBO and the ministries that we help. If you’re new, that’s great! Don’t feel like you have to give a lot. Just $25 will get about 8 bibles that will go straight to people that have lives maybe somewhat close to Yannely’s here in our city.  Like Yannely said, “God and my sponsor changed my life forever.”

Thank you for donating and have a great day!