Outgoing Mail

Yesterday my mom, my mother in law, and I were having a conversation, and the topic of praying for our leaders came up. Whether or not you agree with a politician, you should always pray for them and for their decisions. And as a Christian, you can't ever really say that the wrong person won an election, because if you believe that, then you don't believe God's will is sovereign. Which is hard to deal with sometimes.

Anyway, between that conversation and the fact that Victor's most recent letter said he wanted to know more about my country, I thought I would make a list of different stuff about America that I could turn into letters. I wrote up the first letter this morning. It was about our president.

I opened the letters to all 10 kids by offering the usual greetings. In the second paragraph, I told them that I really like learning about their country. I told them that when I began sponsoring them, or writing letters to them, I read books about their countries from the library (that's one of my favorite parts about getting a new sponsor child- researching their country!) I told them that I also liked keeping up with news stories about their countries, so I can better know what is going on over there. This gave me the opportunity to tell Victor and Mary, who are in Kenya, that I am very sad about the recent terrorist attack there, and that I am praying for them. I told them that similar things have happened in America, and it is very sad, but Americans and Kenyans are strong people and they will work hard to rebuild and prevent something like this from happening again.

Next I told them a little bit about our president. I kept it pretty simple. I basically said the following:
"Our president's name is Barack Obama. He is 52 years old. He has a wife named Michelle and two daughters named Sasha and Malia. Mrs. Obama's mother also lives with them. They have two dogs named Bo and Sunny. Before he became president, Mr. Obama told his daughters that if he won the election, he would get them a dog! That is when they got Bo. He is black and white." I explained to the older kids that in America, presidents are only allowed to serve up to two terms in office, and each term is 4 years long. I said that our president will be president until the end of 2016, when we will choose a new president. I also told them a little bit about Mrs. Obama. I told them that she cares a lot about the children of our country, and encourages them to exercise and play. I said that she also has a project to provide healthy meals in our schools, and that she planted a garden. Then I told all the kids that it's important to pray for the people who work in our governments and take care of our countries.

At the end, I said "I hope you will pray for my president as I pray for yours." I even looked up the names of the presidents in all my kids' countries (Indonesia, India, Peru, Haiti, Tanzania, Kenya, and Mexico.) Then at the bottom I uploaded a picture of the president with his family. I put all of these letters on the world map stationery provided by Compassion with the online letter writing tool.

I'm looking forward to finding out what our kids have to say about this little US Government lesson.  : )