Awesome Church, Awesome People, Awesome God

I am really amazed at the awesome people who make up my church, New Life Christian Fellowship Narrabri. I am also in awe of the opportunities that every person has to play a role in the lives of others around the world.

From quite early in the life of our church we have been sponsoring a child in Bolivia through Compassion. Every year we sent off our annual sponsorship plus extra gifts at Christmas. We wrote letters, but probably not as frequently as we should have. Over the years most families in the congregation also adopted their own sponsor child through Compassion.

Last year Jonathan completed his secondary schooling. For a few year he had been talking about wanting to study medicine to become a doctor. We thought that that might have just been an unrealistic dream or perhaps he meant something different that didn't translate across the language and cultural divide.

Compassion duly put us in touch with a little girl in Ethiopia. Some people asked if there was something we could do about continuing to support Jonathan through his studies, so that was something I was going to follow up shortly.

When we got back from our holiday there was a letter from Compassion telling us that Jonathan was now entering their Leadership Development Program which is for young christians going through university. They were offering us the chance to continue our support for just $400 a month. My first reaction was "I don't think we will get that level of support. Our people are already giving generously."

I mentioned it at church and passed the information around. After church somebody said, "Maybe we could share a sponsorship." Bear in mind that our congregation is just 35 to 40 people so it's not a big church by any means and that kind of commitment is a big ask.

We were talking about it again after night church. I was amazed that by the end of the conversation we were talking about how to handle the excess! We have firm pledges to cover the $400 plus probably some more! They were getting excited abut the possibility of sponsoring Jonathan to come for a trip so we can meet him!

I am so blessed by the generosity of our people.

I am also blessed by the fact that our bunch of ordinary people in a place that nobody's ever heard of can have such an impact on a young person half way across the globe, helping him to become a leader in his nation.

I literally could not sleep last night because I was so excited by all of this.

Awesome people, awesome God.