Compassion Joys: January and February

Because I'm having a little trouble keeping up with my regularly recurring blog posts, I decided to space them out a little further. So I'm trying to share about my Compassion news every two months instead of every month. Let's see how it goes!

Letters! 

Between January and February, we received 53 letters!! The vast majority of those arrived in February, when we received between 2 and 5 letters most days. We also received some mistake letters, meaning some letters from kids that we lost as correspondents quite a long time ago were mistakenly given to us. It was nice to hear from Sithum, Elifagason, Jemal, and others, even though we weren't supposed to get those letters. :) There were also a few first letters mixed in there, including one from Anahi's brother Isai in Honduras!

Photo Updates!

A couple of our kids had photo updates in the new year, too! We are expecting plenty more as the year goes on, since many of our kids last had a photo update in 2015.

Prayer

Bauner

Anggi

Abdias

Extra Photos! 

This has been a good month for extra photos! We received a few gift photos from some of our kids, as well as a fun bonus photo or two. :)

Some kids at Milder's project celebrating Sponsor's Day

Gift photos of Carla in Boliva

Gift photo of William in Bolivia

New Kids

It's been exciting to receive a few new correspondents so far in 2017! Here are the new faces who have joined our family recently.

Simon, Bangladesh

Amilcar, Guatemala

Shanta, Bangladesh

Kenia in Nicaragua

Graduations

We had four graduations in the first two months of this year! Laura in the Dominican Republic actually graduated in November of last year, but because of some software updates going on, she sort of lingered on our account for a couple of months. We are now facebook friends and I'm happy that I get to see more of her life and get to know her better there! Yesenia in Peru also graduated in February. We had only received two letters from her in the time we had her as a correspondent, but I'm glad I was able to send her off with lots of letters! Austin in Kenya and Carlos in Peru also graduated early, which was a big surprise! I heard that Austin moved away to another city and has his own apartment, which is amazing, and he is working to open a garage with his mechanic skills! Carlos is currently working in Lima and is preparing to start some university classes this month! I am now also facebook friends with Carlos, and I am so ridiculously thankful for this opportunity to keep in touch with him. We have even chatted on Messenger a few times! It's awesome!



Prayer Requests

This week, we received a response from an inquiry for Said in Tanzania. I had asked about an inquiry because his information recently updated to say that there was only one child living at home. Said lost one sister a few years ago, but he still had one. I'm glad to learn that Moshi is ok, but sad to hear that they had to send her to another city to live with a relative because it was a financial struggle to keep the family together. I am praying about ways to help reunite the family that would be a long term solution for the family. Please pray that something will come up and Moshi can return to her family soon.

I am also working on putting together some fundraising opportunities to purchase a wheelchair for our Jefferson Joel in Ecuador. Seeing his photo makes me hurt for him, because he is all squished up in the stroller so they can move him around more easily. I have been praying about this since he was added to our account last month, and while we can't get a solid number on what exactly it would cost for him to get this chair at the moment, I do believe that God has given me the figure that I need to try to raise. Please pray that my fundraising efforts will be successful and that we will be able to provide him with this much needed device as soon as possible. And if you have some good fundraising ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Compassion Joys: November

I can't believe November is over already! That means it's time to recount our Compassion joys for the month!

Letters! 

More and more letters are making their way through the backlogs, which is great! We had some first letters, some long-awaited letters, and some letters that arrived within two weeks of being written! All in all, here's who we heard from: Tamirat, Benji, Sandier, Herlan, Maribel, Pitchaya, Amisha, Angelina, Zalifina, Julian, Geison, Michel, Milton, Thanakan, Kevin, Said, Fatuma, Desire, Isabela, Nehemiah, William, Enal, Merlyn, Carlos, Anggi, Yesenia, Bonifas, Elisha, Kaue, Anahi, Isac, Yisleidi, and Mary A.! That covers almost every Compassion country!

New Kids!

Several new faces joined our far away family this month. I took over writing responsibilities for the last three of my mom's correspondents, so I now officially have Hassan (Kenya) and Swati and Mathumitha (India) on my account.

Three other correspondents were added to my account this month, so we now have Imakulata (Tanzania), Imasha (Sri Lanka) and Bauner (Guatemala) as well!

I also had found out right after my trip that Isai, Anahi's little brother, was available for sponsorship. It took several weeks, but he now has a sponsor and I get to write to him! I'm so excited about that. Yay for Isai!

Birthdays!

Many of our kids who had birthdays this month are kids we have had for a long time! This month, Jayid turned 11, Carlos turned 20, Yarianny turned 6, Vandana turned 16, Laura turned 20, Isac turned 7, Kaue turned 8, Mary turned 21, Geison turned 11, and today is Said's 18th birthday! I hope they all had wonderful birthdays and I can't wait to hear what they got with their gift money!

Sponsor-versaries!

We also had several anniversaries this month! We celebrated four years of sponsoring Jayid after taking over for his financial sponsor, four years of writing to Victor, three years of writing to Bonifas, and one year of writing to Francisco, Milder, Amitie, and Herlan!

Blog Posts!

This month I wrote up my Honduras trip in a series of posts. I will eventually add the links to the "mission trips" tab at the top of the page, but haven't had time to update that yet! In the meantime they can be found just by scrolling backwards through these posts. :)

Photo Updates!

We did have a few photo updates this month! We only have one kid that is officially due for one, so we might not see any new photos for a while. I can always hope, though! Here are this month's updates.

Benji

Elisha

Kevin

Mishel

Mjay

Sintayehu

Zalifina

Karla

Extra Photos!

We got two fun extra pictures this month! We received a gift photo from Anggi in Indonesia, who was able to get some new clothes with her birthday gift, and we got a photo of Maribel with the gifts we were able to send this summer! A sponsor in Canada and I did a bag swap- I took a mini backpack to Honduras for her, and she took a mini backpack to Bolivia for me. So I picked Maribel. She looks really excited about her gifts! I'm so glad they made it ok and that we got this extra picture. 

Compassion Joys: September

It's the end of the month- that means it's time to reflect on our Compassion Joys and share them here!

Letters! 

Letters really seem to be picking back up! There have been several days when we received four or five letters from the kids, and in one case, a letter arrived about a week after it was written! That's amazing! This month we heard from Mary (twice), Edmundo (twice), Jeferson, Festus (three times), Sukumar, Jayid, Pitchaya, Eyo, Marc, Thanakan, Ruth, Christine, Frainelyn, Abdias, Rachelle (who we lost as a correspondent this summer, but apparently there was a letter waiting for us in the backlog), Merlyn, Motempa, Vandana, Kevin, Milder, Laura, Nkoyio, Bijay, Reine, Jaki, Mary A., Sandier, Teresia, Jeannette, Brian, Barry, Prayer, Rose, Patricia, Celestine, Amelia, Caleb, Bonifas, Emmanuel T., and Kajal! Some of those were first letters, and others were from kids we hadn't heard from in eight or nine months!

Birthdays! 

We only had a couple of birthdays this month! Jeannette in Rwanda turned 14, Edwing in Nicaragua turned 15, Elisha in Tanzania turned 10, Eyo in Burkina Faso turned 12, and Carla in Bolivia turned 9!

Sponsor-versaries! 

We celebrated two anniversaries this month! We have now been writing to Angelina for two years, and Kevin for one year! I'm so thankful that these sweet kids are in our life!

Photo Updates! 

Several of our kids had photo updates this month!

Caleb and Reine

Edmundo and Emmanuel

Jayid and Isac

Anahi

Amitie and Mary

Christine and Amisha

New Kids! 

We got a new correspondent this month, too! Little Yarianny in the Dominican Republic is turning six next month! I asked to be added to the list for a child in the DR since our Laura will be graduating soon, and Yarianny showed up! She's so cute. :)

We also got a new correspondent in Uganda! Jowan has been in Compassion's program for three years, and has never received any letters. I'm so glad that we get to write to him now! 

Special Photos!

Two special photos came in this month! We got a gift photo of Milder in Peru, who is holding the pencil bag full of presents that I sent with Marissa when she visited Peru this summer. She also took gifts for Kevin, who mentioned a photo in his letter, but it must have become separated from the letter, because there was no photo attached. Compassion is checking up on that for me, and I hope to see his photo soon! Manna 4 Lempira also did some updates recently when the kids got new shoes and our letters, so I got new photos of Zoila! I can't wait to meet her soon!

Upcoming Trip! 

As of today, my trip to Honduras is three weeks and one day away! I am so ridiculously excited, I can't stand it. This week I received my itinerary for the trip, so I know exactly where we are going and when. I know the hotels and the restaurants (restaurant food! We didn't have that in Tanzania!) and I know which centers we are visiting! We will be going to HO229, HO341, and HO409! We will actually spend two days with 409- the first day is a focus on the child survival program, with visits to the homes of some of the moms. And the second day we are going in the afternoon and will do a VBS type session with the kids! It's extra exciting because Marissa, one of my sponsor friends who is also going on the trip, sponsors a girl at 409, so she will get to spend extra time with her! That's so cool! I have heard that there is another sponsor who has a child at that same center, which is just great! I can't wait to get to spend time with my kids and learn about the great work Compassion is doing in Honduras!