A Message From Santiago "Jimmy" Mellado
When I was a kid, my family moved around a lot. My dad was an engineer, and when he finished a project, whether it was building a road or a power plant, my family would move on, often to another country.
There is a lot I treasure about that experience, especially in that I learned how to quickly make new friends. With each new community, I was on the lookout for a friend — someone I could play with, to be sure, but also someone who felt safe. Someone who would understand me.
Isn’t that what we still look for in our friends as adults? Safety. Understanding. Love.
This month, we celebrate International Day of Friendship on July 30, and I love that, together, we get to praise God for the friendships both in our own lives and in the lives of the children Compassion serves. Each Compassion center is a place where friendships grow and flourish, where children learn valuable social skills surrounded by people who love them. And how grateful I am that so many children consider their sponsors their friends.
Will you then pray for those children who struggle to make friends? Maybe, like me, they have moved a lot as their parents look for work. Pray for the shy ones who struggle to let people in. And pray for those children who fight emotional wounds that make trust difficult.
Thank you for your prayers, on behalf of the children and their best friends around the world!
In Christ,
Santiago "Jimmy" Mellado
President and CEO
Compassion International
Praises
- We praise God that the local conflict in Bule Hora, Ethiopia, has been resolved. The local government is working with the community to ensure that peace is sustained.
- Sophia’s mother, in the Dominican Republic, is so grateful. She loves that the center is teaching her daughter about the Word of God. She feels blessed that her daughter asks to pray before eating. Even that little detail has been her strength in difficult times.
- We praise God that 8-year-old Lawrence in the Philippines underwent successful open-heart surgery.
- We praise God that no children, caregivers, siblings or center staff were infected by the recent Lassa hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Togo.