Photo by Leslie Ponder

Missouri, USA

I wake up to the sound of my baby crying in the middle of the night, hurrying down the hall to his room I find him burning up with fever and coughing and I know he is sick with another cold.  I give him a dose of Tylenol and I rock him until the medicine starts to work and he falls back asleep.  I lay him in his crib  touching his little face relieved because his fever has dropped and he is cool now.  In the morning I will take him to the doctor.

A few hours later my alarm buzzes letting me know it is time to get up and start the day.  I check on the baby he is still sleeping, I touch his forehead and feel he is warm again.  I plan to call the doctor as soon as I get the other kids off to school.  I stop by their rooms to wake them up and then head to the kitchen to cook breakfast.  As I prepare breakfast I feel a bit overwhelmed with the tasks of the day.  I have a list a mile long of laundry, grocery shopping, my daughter has girl scouts and then dance class after school and the baby now needs a trip to the doctor.  My girls come into the kitchen, I put their breakfast in front of them, and we begin to talk and laugh as they eat their pancakes.  After breakfast is finished we all pile into the car and I drop them off at school, my day has begun.

Les Cayes, Haiti

I wake to the sound of my baby crying. I reach over and touch him he is burning up with fever and coughing, I know he is sick, though I am not sure how to help him. I do not have the money for a doctor or any medicine to give him. I rock him back to sleep listening to the coughs hoping he will be better soon.

A few hours later I wake to the sound of my baby crying, I reach over and touch his forehead, he is still burning with fever.  I sigh as the other children begin to wake up, I know they are going to be hungry and I have nothing to feed them again today. I wish I had more to give my children.  I do the best I can and am thankful for our home made of scraps of tin.   We have no electricity or running water, I worry my children will get sick from Cholera or Typhoid, and at night I cover them with mosquito nets to keep them from getting bitten by mosquitos which could bring them sicknesses such as Dengue fever and Malaria. I don’t really know how to help my children get out of this life we live.  Our day has just begun, I feel so tired and overwhelmed…

It’s Compassion Blogger assignment time again and since this Sunday is Mother’s Day the assignment today was to write from the perspective of a mother living in extreme poverty.  Because I do not live in poverty I really do not know how that would feel but that was my feeble attempt to compare my life when my children were still small and living at home to a mother living in poverty.

This past March I went on a Compassion Sponsor Tour to Haiti.  While there, we visited a mother at her home, the mother I described to you was the lady pictured at the top of this blog and that is her home she is standing in front of.   She had a family of 7 people who lived in that tiny home and she was HIV positive. Her eyes were tired and told a story of a hard life.  I will never forget her for long as I live.  Haiti is a poverty stricken country where 1 in 11 children usually die before the age of 5  and sadly most die from preventable causes.

Now I want to tell you about Compassion International’s Child Survival Program.

Compassion’s Child Survival Program works with mothers and expectant mothers to help them physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  The program teaches them how to take care of their babies and how to make a safe home for them.  The Child Survival Program is based through the local church where they present the mothers with the gospel and also encourage their spiritual development by teaching them how to apply Christian values and how to share God’s love with their children.

While on our visit one of the places we visited was the HA-303 Child Survival program, while there I had the privilege to meet the mothers and children who attend and see first hand how the program is working.  The mothers and babies who were in the program were happy, healthy and thriving.

This is not the end of today’s story, I want to show you how you can help mothers in poverty change their story.  By clicking here you will be taken to Compassion’s Child Survival Program website there you can get more information and also make a one time donation to help save mothers and babies in need.  Thank you so much for reading my blog and also for making a difference in a life today.  Enjoy the video below of the mothers we visited at CSP HA-303 as they sing to us.