And another one gone

We lost another sponsor child recently. This year has been one of tremendous loss. I hope that 2013 is a year of gain.

Last week I went online to my Compassion account to double-check the sponsorship number of our newest correspondence child, as I was getting Christmas cards together for my kids. When I logged on, I noticed that we only had three correspondence kids listed. There should have been four. Little Jayid had completely vanished from our account. When Tae dropped out of the program, his information lingered on the account for a while, but his picture was gone. A nondescript grey avatar was left in its place. With Jayid, he was just gone.

I had to wait until the next morning to call Compassion to see what was going on, because I discovered that Jayid was missing pretty late in the day. The representative I spoke with did have a little more info on Tae, because he was showing up as a recently dropped sponsorship, but she had to do some digging to find Jayid. She said "his financial sponsor has decided they no longer want to sponsor him." I have had contact with other sponsors who write to kids, and in every case that I've run across, if it's a matter of financial difficulties (if the sponsor can no longer afford a monthly sponsorship), that's noted on the account. But Jayid's file says that he was "no longer wanted." I can't understand that. I am so sad that we have lost another sponsor child. I'm sad because I was just getting to know Jayid- we have only received three letters from him, but he is an extremely bright, warm six year old boy. His letters were exciting because he liked to show us what he was learning. He wrote out the English alphabet (he lives in India and his letters were written in Hindi) and the numbers 1-100, numerical and spelled out. One letter even said he liked to play chess! And now we won't get the opportunity to find out how this whip-smart little boy turns out. I just pray that his parents decide to make him available for sponsorship again, and that he will be picked up quickly.

There is another distressing dimension to this whole ordeal. Back in February, Compassion wrote a facebook post that said they had a sudden, urgent need for 500 correspondence sponsors, and that any interested parties should call right away. They said they would waive the Rule of Three (my term, not theirs), meaning that even if you already had the maximum number of three correspondence kids, if you called in time, you could get on the list for one of these kids. About six weeks later, we got Jayid. The phrasing of the request was so unusual that I assumed Compassion received a large "order" for sponsor kids- maybe like a corporate sponsorship? Then, when Jayid's info arrived, I saw that his sponsorship number was a really low digit- the center number followed by 0005- so I wondered if his center was new. The whole thing was unusual, but I was thrilled to have another sponsor child added to our Far Away Family.

Since Jayid has been dropped by his sponsor, though, that makes me wonder if the other 499 children that needed correspondence sponsors that day have been dropped as well. If that is the case, that's horribly, sickeningly sad. Jayid was only in the program for about 8 months before someone somewhere decided they didn't "want" to sponsor him anymore. Because of these unusual and mysterious circumstances, I find myself more angry than sad with this loss. I will miss Jayid terribly, and if I find his information on Compassion's website I will do all that I can to find him a new sponsor, but I hadn't known him as long as I've known Tae, and my feelings of anger and frustration are overriding pretty much every other emotion at this point. I pray for the other kids that became available for correspondence sponsorship at the same time as Jayid. I pray that this is all a coincidence, and they are still being sponsored, preferably by someone who loves them and cares for them enough to write frequently and make an emotional investment in these kids' futures, as well as a financial one.

So we bid farewell to little Jayid. I will still pray for him every day, and I look forward to the day when we will meet in heaven.