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Naomi and I have been compassion sponsors since our first year of marriage. Over time our sponsor family has grown, and today it did again.

We had a very special opportunity to actually meet one of our sponsor children, Alexis (He likes to be called Alex) We were able to meet his father Antero, and his little brother Christian. We just actually sponsored Alex within the last couple weeks so havent even been able to send a letter yet. I was actually nervous to meet this punk, and he was nervous to meet us as well.

I just feel like a proud dad, so am not going to say much else, except:

• If you have ever thought of sponsoring a child #sponsorachildtoday
• If you ever have questions about Compassion. Ask them, or ask me. I’ll talk your ear off about how impressed I am with what they do.
• If you have never thought about sponsoring a child, #sponsorachildtoday

I’m done blabbing, here are some pictures of the new addition to our sponsor family. What a super kid!

First 5 minutes of us meeting each other…cautious looks

We weren’t so scary afterall

Iphone, the universal language…had to add a Mac plug

Freaky Jaguar eyeing us…

They asked if my hair grows like this…

Trying to get him to stick his tongue out. I think he thought it was rude…probably is

His little, super cute, brother Christian

Miss them already..

They couldn’t get a babysitter, so it was our blessing that Christian was able to come along. #unexpectedblessing!

Little guy got all tuckered out…

I’m a big leadership nut. I love reading about it, hearing about it, studying Scripture on it and learning from everyone and anyone about it. Today our Compassion Canada exposure team had the privilege to tour the head office of Compassion in Peru. What Compassion is doing in Peru is phenomenal to say the least, but more on that in a future post.

What struck me this mroning was the testimony I heard over and over about how much pepople appreciated their supervisor and country directory, Christina.  So, when I had the opportunity to meet her, I asked her.

“Chrisina, your team loves you, the Holy Spirit is blessing you, what can you teach me about how you lead so well?

Here are three leadership learning’s from Peru:

• Teamwork – Work with people smarter than yourself and learn from them. “You cannot do enough things together”
• Love Scripture – “Ensure your team reads, studies and memorizes Scripture.
• Serve - “My role is to serve the pastors in our country and my team who serve the children”
• Yes I know I said three. I added this one for her. Live humbly and with much thankfulness
• Christina epitomizes a humble and thankful life. She is so grateful to others and her Lord Jesus Christ.

So thankful for the consistent, sanctifying, work of the Holy Spirit in my life. He never stops convicting, teaching and extending me grace.

Loving life!

When I think of Peru, I think of sunshine and hot…

No one told me that in Winter the sun never really shines in Peru…AND…that I should be wearing a jacket. It was warmer in Edmonton today than it was in Peru. Still doesn’t really make sense to me. However, the people are as warm and friendly as I have ever met.

I decided to write a daily blog entry as a way to help me journal what I am praying is an encouraging, life changing experience for Naomi and myself. I’ve even turned off my work email. Wow! Seriously, don’t think I have ever done that before.  I want to introduce you to some of my pondering’s, experiences and people we meet at various Compassion projects. I trust their faces and my poorly worded thoughts would encourage and challenge at the same time.

Day Number One

Where:

• Today we visited a project in Northern Lima, Peru. This Church of the Nazarene has been partnering with Compassion for 22 years and have helped over 2300+children. You can see some of their beautiful faces below.

Creating a healthy staff culture is something that over the past couple years has been written extensively about. Leadership, Teamwork, all play a role. Even just saying or thinking those words bring John Maxwell to mind.

The Question. – How do you effectively assess the health of your staff team?

Now, I’m a big fan of systems, and efficiency. One of my frustrations in leading teams, staff and peers has been in determining where/how I should be spending my time so that it has the biggest positive impact on the team. To add to that questions is to also determine the impact my action has on the overall staff health of the organization. I have found it much easier to determine a staff need, versus evaluating the effect addressing that need will have on my organization.

For example let’s assume an organization scored low on both these two example questions below.

Staff are satisfied with their salary and benefit packages?

AND

Staff recommend this organizations programs and services to friends and family?

If you only had time to address one issue, and yet both concerns seemed pressing, which one should become your priority.

Possible Solution

Over the past four years our church has been partnering with Best Christian Workplace Institute in helping us assess our staff health and culture. In addition to providing a great assessment tool, their biggest help to us has been in showing us which staffing questions/concerns have the biggest impact on overall staff health.

We’re still making mistakes, still learning, but are also having a lot more fun along way.

Feedback?

So, how do you do this at your organization. I’d love to hear and learn from your experience.

Loving the journey.

Judah and I had the opportunity to spend an evening together recently and all we did was talk about Star Wars, play Star Wars and watch Star Wars. The only time we didn’t do something related to Star Wars was when I wanted to watch my hockey team play out the remaining 10 minutes of the third period. (they lost)

Judah decided this was boring and declared, “I’m going to go make some fun.”

Here he is “making some fun”

I love watching my son play with his Star Wars toys. Everything is so real for him. He literally does create a preferred reality to his current one. (He didn’t like watching the Oilers lose) Like most children, he goes and “makes some fun” when there is none for him. He creates this world where he gets to live out being a hero and save the princess. Simply put he decides to choose change and then acts on it.

Why does our willingness to create a better narrative, create a better story for our lives seem so much more difficult as we get older? I know we can, I know I can, but the willingness to do so….Are you willing to go and make the change you are thinking about?

“A powerful truth is…if you know you’re not living a good story, do what a writer would do. Grab a blank piece of paper and start writing. Amazingly God has given us blank pages, our lives are blank pages that we get to write our story on. Start writing a better story.”

~Donald Miller~

There’s no better time than right now to “go make some fun”.  I love how God uses our kids to remind and teach us each and everyday.

I love being a Dad!