How did this all get started? Where do I begin? Well, my name is Jennifer Bacak. I come from a pretty cool family (the Seay family). I am immensely grateful!

This story begins at Christmas time in 2007. My Mom and Dad decided our family was going to raise money for Compassion’s Child Survival Program. My Mom’s life work is at New Life, a pregnancy Crisis Center and adoption agency in Houston. (Two of our kids have come from New Life.) She has given all she has to babies, born and unborn, and their mothers, so it was not hard for my parents to connect to this work. They gave us $50 and told us to make more money with that seed money. At the end of the year, we would collect our money and send it to a Child Survival Project. We did. The first year, we did a measly little hot chocolate stand on a cold day at the mall, and raised a tiny sum of money as a family. We finished our assignment. Check. We did what Mom and Dad told us to do. But we wanted more.

During this time, God began stirring our hearts, breaking us, filling us with the passion to do what the Bible says; to love and care for the poor, the orphan, to DO SOMETHING.

This urge to do something, and to do more, became a burning in me. Isn’t that why God moves us in the first place? I couldn’t just be moved. We had to be changed. Our lives had to look differently. From this burning, a dream for Run For Compassion was born.

So, in Christmas of 2008, we got our seed money. We were ready for it. We jumped in with both feet and decided to become race directors. It seemed like a good place to start. We were runners…the idea actually hit me while running. But we had NO IDEA what it meant to be race directors, so we proceeded blindly, and learned everything the hard way. In the end, we had a faithful bunch show up for Run For Compassion ’09. We hit our goal of $4,000, which seemed like a mountain of cash to me! It went toward the Child Survival Program in Ethiopia, and we mailed it in, with thankful tears in our eyes.

Run For Compassion 2010. We had a little experience under our belt, and we doubled our goal. I asked the Lord, can we really do this? $8,000? Ah, me, of little faith. We raised $11,000. The money went to the CSP in Ethiopia and Haiti.

Run For Compassion 2011. We introduced online fundraising to our event. How much do I love online fundraising!? We hit $20,000. We sat in front of our computers, watching the numbers climb, with our mouths wide open. Again, our money went to Ethiopia and Haiti.

Here’s the thing. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel when God put this burning desire in us. God was already working in these places we were aching for. Compassion was already there. As I type this, they are doing what needs to be done, chipping away at poverty, one child, one family at a time. They are sharing the Gospel with each and every one of them. They are meeting their medical, physical, and spiritual needs in the midst of an AIDS crisis, a Food Crisis, the orphan crisis. We just had to figure out where we fit in. So I became an advocate for Compassion, partnering with them as a volunteer worker. You can be a part of this too!

You can start by running,walking, or even crawling Run For Compassion 2012. Then tell your friends. And would you consider making a fundraising page with us, doing utterly effortless online fundraising. IT’S SO EASY! Just set up a page and share it with friends.

This year, our lives look a little different than before. During the summer of 2011, we traveled to Ghana and adopted our daughter Ella. Obviously, a big part of our hearts are in Ghana! We visited a Compassion project there, got to see firsthand the fruits of our labors, and again, we were moved. We will be raising money this year to build a new Compassion project building in Ghana.

Will you join us?

If you are interested in partnering with Compassion by sponsoring a child, sponsoring a Child Survival Program, or becoming an advocate, you can go to www.compassion.com