Thank You for Being a Guardian Angel

Holt CEO Phil Littleton shares a special message with sponsors. 

Recently, I went back and reread a story in one of our older Holt sponsorship magazines. It’s a sweet story about an adoptive mom who also sponsors children in India, the country where she adopted her two daughters. It got me thinking about my own children, who are also adopted, and how incredibly meaningful sponsorship would have been in their lives.

My wife and I adopted our kids domestically in the U.S., so we know they didn’t have sponsors before they joined our family. But I often think about that — about how vulnerable they would have been if they had lived in an orphanage overseas, and how grateful I would feel to the people who so generously cared for them during that precarious time in their lives.

In the story, adoptive mom Linda Holm shares how she often wondered about the children her family had sponsored through the years — where they are now, what their lives are like. Some of them had lived with their birth families and needed help with nutrition and educational expenses while their parents worked to get back on their feet. Others had needed the love and care of a sponsor while they waited to join an adoptive family.

As sponsors, we so briefly step into children’s lives. We act as guardian angels in a way– working invisibly behind the scenes to care for them in a time of need.

This made her think of her two daughters, and wonder if they too had ever had sponsors while in care in India. She contacted Holt to find out, and here’s what she discovered:

“I found out that my high school graduate had received support from a sponsor family,” Linda writes of her oldest daughter. “I thought that perhaps her sponsors might have wondered how her future had unfolded over the years, and so I created a special scrapbook for them.”

As sponsors, we so briefly step into children’s lives. We act as guardian angels in a way — working invisibly behind the scenes to care for them in a time of need. Like Linda, I often wonder where my sponsored children are now. I would love to receive a scrapbook in the mail someday with pictures of one of my former sponsored children — showing me the incredible person they’ve become. But whether or not I ever receive a special package in the mail, I know that my sponsorship has made a powerful difference in children’s lives. I am reminded of that every time I look at my three children, who thankfully never needed a sponsor — but easily could have.

I hope you, too, realize the powerful impact you are making in the life of your sponsored child — every time you look at their picture on your fridge or every time you receive a progress report, sharing about new skills they’ve learned and how they’re doing in school. You are helping them become an incredible person whose achievements and celebratory moments will someday fill an entire scrapbook.

Thank you for being a guardian angel for a child in need. You may be an invisible presence, but they know you are there. And your kindness and generosity will continue to be felt in their lives, long after they no longer need you.