A letter

Today, I received a letter, a picture and a drawing from my World Vision kid. The letter goes like this:

Dear brother John, (does everyone calls me that now?)

How are you? Greetings to you for this day! Thank you very much for writting letter to me. I am studying at 1st grade of primary school this year. Our summer holiday will begin soon. I have many friends. I am a head of our class.

My Mother had a baby on April. Now I have baby sister. Our family members are all happy for that. Do you have any children? Your girlfriend is very beautiful. I received the toy car you sent. Thank you very much. I am sending my photo to you. I will send you my family photo next time.

Please write many interesting letters. I will write to you too. I am writting this letter by myself. If it looks very bad please sorry.

Hmmm pretty smart kid I suppose considering he is the head of the class. I can't even write that well when I am in primary school. Of course he wrote it Mongolian and they translate to English.

I actually am considering to stop my sponsorship because the credit card keeps giving me problems and again I am spending much even though I don't see where my money goes to. But then again...

I don't know, 50 is a lot. 50 is the price of united one night only. 50 is also 5 Mcdonald meals, 50 is also one year's education, 50 can save many lives. 50 is one year's wages. Yet in our opinion 50 is still big.

Why is it that there's no action from us even when we hear sermons from the pulpit plenty of times but when American Idol sang Shout to the Lord it moves us to tears? Why is it the call to mission is so hard when a simple short clip of Simon crying while visiting Africa moves everyone to donate?

Isn't it our job? But why when compassion is mentioned, BONO, OPRAH even BRAD and ANGELINA name came 1st? Where is our people? why are we hiding? Is this Christianity?

We're call to action, uphold justice, help the helpless, feed the poor. And yet here am I wondering what I could use 50 for something else. Shame on me. I have failed and to quote - where our treasures is there our hearts WILL be. What is my decision then? Well, I am going to let him go to school, get educated continue his role as head of the class. But at the same time, I also want to ask if anyone wants to help me out as well because I believe when we give together we can achieve more in times to come.

BATSUKH, Ochir

"You must finish your food! Do you know that the children in Bosnia have nothing to eat."

These are the familiar chorus being said over and over again to me when I was young, It is a tale probably told to many kids in many family. Being young and foolish, I simply chose to ignore those words.


Somehow when I grew up and in the recent years, I felt really compassionate towards food-less, shelter-less, kids. I begin to think to myself, why am I living all for myself? I hated education yet now I regret not using it fully.

I struggle actually to get this post posted. I am not bragging and not showing off. But this is an awareness that I think we as humans (what more as CHRISTIANS) should all work towards. In recent sermons that I've heard, I can't remember who exactly but it was said soemthing like this

"We call ourselves Christian, but why is Hollywood and Bono doing all they can to help the society?"

It is time for action! I recently participated in sponsoring a kid program from World Vision. I got a boy, his name is in the title of this post; his picture at the end of this post. It cost only Rm50 a month. Easily 5 less Macdonald's a month.

Alright so you don't really have that money to spend. Alright why not share with someone else? Share it with me, Then we can take action in sponsoring more kids ensuring they have a brighter future.

Here's a short writeup I've got about the area he lived in.

Your sponsored child lives in Nalaikh, Mongolia It has a population of 21,237. 40% of whom are Khazaks. Average income is Rm95 a month. Many people are chronically ill or disabled, and there are a number of unemployed widows with children

Another reason why I got was because of the book I have yet to finish (the one you can see now on the right - God's Gravity) It is about living Christian life, do your part in helping the society and yada yada yada. One sentence really struck me to the core of my bones. Because I am somewhat guilty of it. It is a chapter talking about selfishness being a rich Christian. The sentence goes like this.

"Rich Christians travel all around the world and always wants to be where laughter is"

To put it bluntly, Don't we always seek for revival in different places? Oh that church on fire let's go visit it. Oh this conference here cool. That cool. Not to say all is like that. But if you're whole purpose of being Christian is to seek where laughter is, aren't we missing the mark?