It’s a sweltering hot day in eastern Uganda. A young man runs across the dry, desolate plain on his way to draw water for his family from the only well in the area. The drought has dried out the entire country, killing crops, herds, and people. The young man and his family thank God for his Providence. The family knows without the help of Compassion International, they might not be alive.

A small kindergarten girl at Central Maine Christian Academy in Lewiston, Maine, has a star painted on her cheek by a high school student. A second grade boy throws a pie at a high school senior. A half dozen other children laugh along with their peers as they plunge their feet into a bucket of “slime” and search for the hidden objects placed there by seventh and eighth graders. The Compassion Fair has an atmosphere of fun and festivity, and most of these young students are oblivious to the trials and death in Uganda.

But the children do realize that by paying their dollars to play the games, they will be supporting their sponsor child and his family in Uganda. The students, though young, may have saved lives that day. Their older friends in the seventh and eighth grades and high school also have helped as they have planned and organized the games and events of the Fair. They know about the events happening in Uganda, as they have corresponded with the young man who lives there. They know of the happiness that he has expressed because of the Christmas gift of the goat that his family received last year and the education that he has had through the Compassion program. The giving seems trivial, but they know that the results are huge.