We recently decided to work with Compassion International and sponsor a child in need. We did our research; we determined the organization was reputable; we made the commitment. About the price of going out to dinner as a family once a month.

Our child is H, and he’s an eight-year-old in Burkina Faso, a poor landlocked country in Africa. A few facts from Wikipedia:

According to the Global Hunger Index, a multidimensional tool used to measure and track a country’s hunger levels, Burkina Faso ranked 65 out of 78 countries in 2013. It is estimated that there are currently over 1.5 million children who are at risk of food insecurity in Burkina Faso, with around 350,000 children who are in need of emergency medical assistance. However, only about a third of these children will actually receive adequate medical attention. Only 11.4 percent of children under the age of two receive the daily recommended number of meals. Stunted growth as a result of food insecurity is a severe problem in Burkina Faso, affecting at least a third of the population from 2008 to 2012. Additionally, stunted children, on average, tend to complete less school than children with normal growth development, further contributing to the low levels of education of the Burkina Faso population.

Nothing short of depressing. We feel fortunate to help, blessed to be able to help.

Tonight, we wrote as a family (more or less — the kids were in and out) our first letter to young H. In writing it, I realized anew how ridiculous the Occupy Wall Street slogan “We The 99%” really is, how wealthy my family truly is.

We read in the material we received that there is a three-month rainy season in Burkina Faso, so we asked what that’s like, explaining that it never rains here more than a few days in a row. I thought of our recent flooding in the basement, when the plugs for the termite treatment holes gave way and our basement flooded because of the hydro-static pressure. “The boy probably doesn’t even know what a basement is, and he certainly doesn’t have one,” I thought.

While I was thinking about water, I thought of our problems in the crawl space, where a leak in the line from our sink to the refrigerator (a really old house) caused some substantial damage and necessitated mold remediation and the replacing of a large amount of insulation, something that’s still on-going. These apparent “problems” for us are blessings. We have a refrigerator that keeps our food fresh. We have water from multiple sources in our house. One of his chores, in fact, is to bring water to the family. We use cleaner water in our toilets than H’s family naturally has access to — an absolutely absurd thought.

And so writing a letter to a boy growing up in complete poverty, a boy who would view us as absolutely unimaginably fantastically rick — it was a challenge. “Ask him what toys he likes,” L suggested. Later, helping E clean up his room, I realized that there, spread on the floor, were more toys than H has likely seen in his whole life in one spot. I thought about asking him what’s his favorite subject in school, and then I remembered the fact sheet we received about him explained that he is currently not attending school.

These are of course almost cliche thoughts in the Western world. They are the stuff of dinner-table guilt trips: “You know, there are children in Africa…” We hear it all the damn time. But to have a name, a picture, a short personal history connected to the stories — it makes a world of difference. Suddenly, terrorist attacks in remote countries have personal meaning. World Health Organization statistics have a face behind them. Stock images of houses made of scrap sheet metal become homes.

Last week, everyone in the States it seems was daydreaming and talking about what they’d do if they won the ridiculously huge Powerball jackpot. We could buy this and that; we could do this and that; we could pay for this and that. It’s sometimes hard to remember in the midst of our conspicuous consumption that we are not the 99%. We are the 1%. We have already won the lottery in the eyes of most of the world. The question is, what are we doing with it?