Today we got to hold babies.

Imagine being nineteen years old, living in a mud hut, making about $2 a day, if you’re lucky. Once you realize you’re pregnant, you are already maybe a couple months along. There is no such thing as prenatal care. When it is time to deliver, you go out in the bush and hope everything works out. Then maybe your husband leaves, or loses the job that provides just enough income to rent your mud hut for $15 a month.

Oh, and there is no such thing as pediatrician visits – not that you even know there should be such a thing.

Sadly, in Uganda right now, 235 children die each day – mostly due to preventable diseases. It is this fact that led Compassion to add an essential program supplementing their child sponsorship program that everyone already hears so much about. The Child Survival Program (CSP) fulfills the same mission as the Child Development Sponsorship Program, but it works solely with children from conception through three years of age and their caregivers.

Today we had the chance to visit a CSP and hear from several caregivers and mothers who have gained more than I thought possible from the CSP.

(It made the six loooong hours spent at the back of a bus tumbling around pitted dirt roads today completely worth it!)

(We had plenty of time playing with the older kids in the child development center and holding some babies. Although, I have to admit that one ten-month-old seemed so downright frightened of me that he immediately started screaming once his mom thrust him in my arms. I imagine it had something to do with me so lacking in skin color.)

Some of the women in the program have had multiple babies die, others are teenage mothers, none have been educated, nor do any of them have any knowledge of simple life-saving techniques like getting their babies immunized or preventing additional pregnancies when they have no funds to support or care for their children.

Besides the education, pregnant mothers in the CSP are always taken to a hospital to deliver their babies and then have access to a support group of other caregivers in the local CSP. Most importantly, the CSP introduces Christ to these women. Many of them become Christians, grow in their faith, and can then be spiritual teachers for their children.

Uganda, like many other countries affected by AIDS and poverty, is a young country. People die early, but everywhere you look there are multitudes of children.

This is, perhaps, what makes Compassion International’s large program in Uganda so exciting. Compassion is effecting change in the lives of over 60,000 children here. These children will, in the not so distant future, be the country of Uganda. They will have survived illness, have educations, be disciplined and equipped to lead, and follow Christ.

The babies we met today, as is the case with all other CSP children, will automatically be enrolled in Compassion’s Child Development Sponsorship Program when they turn four.

Maybe you’d like to sponsor one of these precious four-year-olds. I cannot think of an easier, but profoundly essential, way to change a life forever.