The girls and I woke up bright and early (3am) last Thursday to get to the airport on time. We had a smooth flight and arrived in Denver by 9am. We met up with Kevin at his hotel, then he went off to meetings and we went off on our own adventure. We drove 1.5 hours south to Colorado Springs to visit Compassion's Global Ministry Center. I'd never been before, so I was excited.
The building itself is much bigger than I anticipated. It's impressively huge. But when you think about the fact that they are serving more than 1.4 million children around the world, it kinda needs to be big. Even more impressive is the fact that they consistently devote more than 80% of their funds directly to the needs of the children...last year it was 84%. That means that less than 20% of funds are used for administration and salaries.
This was the view from the parking lot...
Inside the main lobby are several gorgeous statues...one of Jesus with several others of children from around the world. All the children look like they are happily and eagerly approaching Jesus and his arm is outstretched - welcoming them.
We went on the tour, which did a great job of introducing and explaining what Compassion is all about and how they work.
There is a "mock" house you can look through...the girls loved this, and couldn't get over how small it was. Our tour guide said it would be common for 6-8 people to live in this size of a house.
We also got to go to the mail room and see where they process all the letters. And we got to see all sorts of sample letters.
The final stop on the tour was a mock project. They change the country of this project every year, and this year it was set up to look like a Compassion project in Tanzania. There were screens all over the room and they had videos of children from Tanzania playing so it would sound like the room was full of children. On the front screen you could watch a song and dance the children were doing.
They even had a small room set up to look like the Compassion project director's office.
After our visit at Compassion, we headed up the road to see Focus on the Family.
They had a large children's area called "Whit's End" and the girls had fun exploring and playing.
We also found a Narnia exhibit. Focus on the Family does an audio recording of the books and our girls love them. You could walk through this wardrobe into Narnia and hear the recording.
They also had a display about Foley artists....
And here are my "Foley" artists...
We woke up the next morning to a tiny bit of snow. The girls were thrilled.
So that was the first stop on our trip. I'll be back with more later.
two really awesome places to see. thanks for sharing!!!
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