Surprise!

I found such a wonderful surprise in my inbox this afternoon! My coordinator emailed and sent along an update on our kiddo! She’s grown half an inch since the last update in October. I’m starting to wonder if all of the clothes we bought are going to fit her… I think they will. We bought a size larger than we thought we would need.

We also learned a couple more things she’s interested in – board games and drawing! My husband and I LOVE board games so we look forward to play with her. We’ve found a couple board games that require little to no English and will hopefully be able to play more complex games with her in the future. We love Euro-style board games, but they require a lot of English to play. In the meantime, we’ll teach her simpler ones like this cake building game I found.

I mailed off Cin-Ru’s care package this morning. It is supposed to arrive in Taiwan before our Skype call so that they can give it to her during the call. We sent her a t-shirt, a pair of warm fuzzy socks, a book, and a mosaic to put together. We are hoping that we will have time to work on the mosaic with her during the call. We sent her one of the photos and a pile of mosaic pieces and kept the others here. It’s an activity that requires no English but will keep us busy for five to ten minutes if we can do the activity together. I meant to take pictures of the care package this morning but completely forgot.

Then we received another fun surprise in the mail. Letters!

We received five letters from our sponsored kids today, four of them with photos. I love receiving the new photos and the letters! Now I have lots of letters to respond to this week. Two of our sponsored kids have birthdays next month so I need to get cards in the mail soon as well. I do my best to keep the Post Office in business!

Knitting for Thailand!

Well, I’m not actually knitting for Thailand. I finished a knit project for a specific young lady in Thailand whom I have gotten to know through letters over the past year. I hope she likes what I’ve knit her.

Getting ready to start

Bruno watching over my knitting efforts

Blocking in progress

Bruno inspecting my blocking

Finished hat and scarf

Lace detail

I will be mailing these off tomorrow, along with a couple of pictures of me knitting them. I’m afraid to say that I’m too shy about being photographed and have not yet sent any pictures of myself to my sponsored kids. I do send them photos of other things, just not of me. But my Thai girl asked for a photo in her last letter so I’m sending her one. I guess it’s only fair, as I look forward to her upcoming photo update!

The sponsorship trip is in just a couple of weeks. I am so, so, so grateful to the sponsor who offered to deliver my gift. If it wasn’t for her, I’d never be able to send anything more than paper. And while studies have shown that the sponsored kids are most encouraged by the words we write, it’s a blessing to be allowed to send something I made and prayed over especially for her.

Snow hat!

I’m so excited! Another Compassion sponsor has offered to hand deliver a small package to our sponsored girl in Thailand. I’m knitting her a hat and scarf!

My project so far has gone from this:

To this:

The hat is almost complete, other than seaming up the back side. I wish it had been written to knit in the round, but the pattern said knit flat and seam. All that’s left is the seaming! I’ve also started on the scarf but there isn’t really enough to show yet. I’ve been praying while knitting for her. I know our girl’s favorite color is green; I hope she likes the hat and scarf!

Child sponsorship

Lately I’ve been trying to think of fun ways to send letters to my sponsored kids. I try to write to them once a month but have only included a couple pictures to my Compassion kids through the online letter writing tool. Unfortunately, I can only send snail mail letters to my girls in Korea so they have not received any pictures from us. Until today!

On the Compassion forums, some of the sponsors were talking about online photo collage programs. I thought that sounded intriguing so I tested out PicMonkey. It is so easy to use!

I created these two collages and then resized them in Word to fit both on a single sheet of paper. I added numbers next to each photo and then wrote a letter and explained a little bit about each photo. So easy! Today I wrote letters to both of my girls in Korea so now they will have pictures of my trip to Colorado. I didn’t realize it could be so easy to send photos to the kids. Now I’m sure I’ll be sending a lot!

If you sponsor a child, please send them a letter! I know it means a lot to the children to receive letters from their sponsor.

If you don’t sponsor a child, will you consider doing so? It could change their lives and it will definitely bless yours!

This is Do Young, who is 17 years old and whose favorite subject is reading. She’s available to sponsor through Children Incorporated. If you have questions about this particular organization or child sponsorship in general, please email me! It’s such a blessing to know that you have the opportunity to change a life.

A letter!

On Monday, I received a letter from one of my correspondent children. The Compassion International correspondent program allows financial sponsors to reliquish their letter writing to another sponsor who wants to write to their child. I love the correspondent program as it allows me to send letters to more children than I can afford to sponsor myself!

Salif is seven years old and lives in Burkina Faso. In this letter, he told me that he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. The sponsorship program gives him the opportunity to succeed in school and fulfill his dreams. If not for his financial sponsor and the help of Compassion, he might not otherwise have the opportunity to someday attend college.

This is the drawing he sent me, a little boy who loves his sports!

I’m still trying to find a sponsor for this adorable boy, a seven year old in Guatamala named Angel. Will you consider sponsoring him?

Child Sponsorship – a 2 way blessing

My husband and I are very happy sponsors of several beautiful children. As a child, I remember seeing the commercials about starving children and a plea to sponsor one of them to provide food and shelter. When I started college, I signed up to sponsor a young boy from India. I don’t remember how long my sponsorship lasted but I loved receiving letters from him. Sad to say, I only wrote a few but he was very faithful in writing to me.

For the last several years, my husband and I have discussed getting involved in child sponsorship. Finances have been tight for a long time and we’ve been paying off debt in the hopes of eventually being able to give. In December, we started researching various child sponsorship organizations and praying about which child God would like us to sponsor.

Our first two girls:

Sun Kyung is going to be seven in June, lives in Korea, and is an orphan. When I was led to sponsor her, I didn’t know she was living in a children’s home. I received her information in the mail and was heartbroken to find that she has no parents. I have no children but I now I have the opportunity to love on a little girl who doesn’t have a mother.

Fill just turned 13 and lives in Thailand with her parents. Despite her parents’ lack of employment opportunities, Fill sounds like a typical early teen, enjoying hide and seek, reading, playing house, and swimming.

I share these girls with you because I’m so excited to have the opportunity to support them. They don’t have much in the way of tangible belongings but they are now involved in a program that provides them with nutritious meals, tutoring, the opportunity to learn life skills, medical care, and they are both being taught about Jesus.

My blessing is not only that of being a financial sponsor. I have the opportunity to pray for these girls, to love them, to send encouraging letters. They are blessed by the programs they attend and I am blessed by the opportunity to love “one of the least of these.”

Next Sunday is Compassion International’s Compassion Sunday. Sponsors are encouraged to share their story and to advocate for children currently available for sponsorship. Compassion is offering sponsors an incentive – if I can advocate for two children, they will send a $50 family gift to one of my children. It’s a great incentive but it’s not why I’m sharing my sponsorship story. I want to give others the opportunity to be a blessing to a child in poverty and to receive the blessing that comes with sponsorship.

After much prayer and searching, I was led to advocate for this little boy:

This is Angel, a seven year old little boy in Guatamala. He has the most adorable smile! His birthday is approaching and I can think of no better gift than to be told he has a new sponsor, someone who will pray for him, send letters of encouragement, and love him. Will you sponsor Angel?