My Shining Star

Being a sponsor to 3 little girls who communicate exclusively through letters means I enjoy getting mail just a little too much sometimes.  No, I mean like at around 8 o'clock every night, I start getting excited to wake up and get the mail the next morning.  It's a bit ridiculous really.

One morning last week, I went out to my mailbox to find an envelope from World Vision.  I had a moment of excitement until I realized it was not, in fact, a letter from my sponsored child.  Instead, what I found inside was a birthday card to sign and send back to be delivered to my Sulmi for her upcoming birthday in June.  Attached to the card were also these adorable paper glasses that made everything look like stars when your child puts them on.  The card said, "You are my shining star." 

I was ready to use this to write a post about birthday letter ideas when I realized I had never properly introduced Sulmi to all of you.  I mentioned her in posts about how God led me to sponsor Melania and Aura; but since Sulmi's sponsorship happened first, and before I started this blog, I never actually shared the story of how this all came to be.

One day in 2011, I was at my local Christian book store.  I was 17 years old and a new Christian; and I'd spent so much time at this store that the employees knew me by name.  On this particular day, I was talking with Jim, the very nice man who worked there and always teased me about being at the store almost as much as he was.  At the register paying for my things, Jim showed me their World Vision display and asked if I would like to sponsor a child that day.  I looked at the beautiful baby girl whose packet was on display and my heart sank.  She was precious.  You're probably thinking, "Wow, that's great, but that's the shortest story ever."  Unfortunately, that baby girl was not Sulmi, and I did not sponsor her that day.  I explained to Jim that as much as I would like to sponsor a child, I was still in high school and didn't have a job at the time.  This was the truth.  As I left the store though, my heart turned inside of me.  Looking down at the bag of things I had just bought for myself and my friends, I was convicted.  I may have been a full time student who wasn't consistently working, but God was always providing money for me one way or another- babysitting jobs, birthday gifts, etc.  As I sat at a nice restaurant with my mom for dinner that night, I stared at my steak dinner and thought about all the little things I could be sacrificing to sponsor a child.  I felt sick...not with guilt, but with awareness of the extreme needs of those I had ignored for way too long.  I was an evangelist at heart, but God was convicting me that He also cares about loving His people through providing their physical needs.  Not even being able to finish my meal, I went out to the parking lot and cried. 

I couldn't get back to the store that day to sponsor that baby, and I knew she would likely already have a sponsor by the time I could.  So, I spent the next few months researching different child sponsorship organizations and praying for God to lead me to the right child.  Then, in March of 2012, I attended a Casting Crowns concert with my mom and a few close friends.  At the concert, they had a World Vision presentation.  I was not planning on sponsoring a child that night, because I hadn't decided on an organization and was leaning more towards sponsoring through a smaller program.  Not knowing this, my mom raised her hand during the presentation to choose a child's packet for me- knowing that I had been planning to sponsor and thinking that we could share the child and the sponsorship fees.  At intermission, my mom handed the packet to me and this was the face I saw:

There was no turning back.  She was mine.

God brought Sulmi's packet all the way from the World Vision office near Seattle to a concert in Pittsburgh, put her packet in the hands of the woman coming down our isle at the concert, and had my mom pick up her packet out of all the children in the pile.  He knew what He was doing the whole time.  He had the perfect child in mind for me from the very beginning.  I was able to simply be still and let His will come to pass.  Now that Sulmi is a bit older, I wrote her a letter recently to share this story with her.  In the letter, I shared Jeremiah 29:11...

"For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD...."

God knew His plans for Sulmi and I.  He perfectly ordained them from the start.  More than that, He always has a plan in any and every situation.  We can rest in that.

For the record, I did not end up sharing Sulmi with my mom.  The second I laid eyes on her, I knew I was going to keep her all to myself. :)