Have you ever met someone who shares a birthday with you? I remember when I was much younger (in elementary school), there was another girl in my class who was born the same day. Even though we weren't really good friends, there was a special connection.
And even now, if I happen to discover that someone shares the same birthday as me, I feel a special connection to that person - regardless of how well I know them.
Years ago I was talking with another Compassion advocate and mentioned that if I ever ran across a child born on August 24th, that I would try to find a way to sponsor them. I wasn't going to go searching for a child born on that date, but whenever I worked an event, I looked through the birthdays on the packets to see if there was a birthday buddy for me.
Not long after this meeting, I received a child packet in the mail from Compassion - a child they were asking me to consider sponsoring. I hadn't requested the child packet, but I opened it up and there was the photo of a precious girl in Ghana....
I read a little bit about her and then saw her birthday...August 24th.
I quickly remembered my conversation with my friend and realized she had requested this child packet for me. I sponsored her, one month before our birthdays, and it as a birthday gift I'll never forget. I imagine she learned about the sponsorship right around our special day.
Since then, we've added more birthday buddies to our family. We sponsor Yoselin in Dominican Republic who shares a birthday (exact date) with my oldest daughter and Joylyne in Kenya who shares a birthday (also exact date) with my youngest daughter. Although we love all our Compassion children equally, those of us who have birthday buddies feel that special connection with that child. Having these birthday buddies has also made our birthday celebrations more meaningful and special...it's added something to the relationship that we have developed with our sposnored children.
It's never been hard to find a child with the same birthday....Compassion developed a way to enter a specific date into their search engine and children born on that day would pop up on the screen. But now it's even easier....Compassion has created a page that features children waiting for sponsors - and they were all born on the day you click on the page.
So on your next birthday, give yourself and a child the most wonderful gift - the gift of friendship and hope. Simply click HERE to see which children were born today and who are waiting for YOU to sponsor them! If it's not your birthday today, but you want to find a birthday buddy, you can also do that on the same page.
