Happy Compassion Mail Day!

 Today there was a new letter with a drawing from Abner!!!!

 

Abner is one of my Compassion correspondent kids. He lives in Colombia and we have been corresponding for about a year now. He is such a sweet boy!

Here is what his letter said:

"Dear sponsor Yvonne,
I greet you with a big hug filled with peace, love and blessings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today is a very cheerful day for me because I have the opportunity to write you again. I thank you for the letter, drawings and pictures. I am very proud you are my sponsor since you have a very kind heart and you help other children. My family and I will be praying for them and their families. We also will continue praying so that God takes care of you and gives you wisdom every day and good health. I hope you pray so that God uses me as an instrument to his work. I tell you that my mother had her birthday on August 11. I am going to decorate a card with a beautiful rose. I am doing well in school too, and I got 2nd place in my classroom. I feel very happy at the project. I hope you read Joshua 1:9. I say goodbye with much love. You are always in my heart.

Abner"

This little boy is just 9 years old and I love how he shares his heart with me. If you have taken the time to read through Abner's letter, will you say a prayer for him and his family?

Happy Mail!! :o) ...and sad mail :o(

On Monday, there was a Compassion cream colored envelope in mail addressed to me!

The envelope held not just one, but two letters from Lina!

 

Letter number one was dated May 25:

 

"Dear Yvonne,

I salute you with a great hug, hoping you and your family are doing well, it's very pleasurable to receive news from you. Thank you for the sponsorship you give me and all of your details. I really liked everything you sent me, the cards I am going to used them to make art as well as the colors, pens and the sharpener. I shared the candies with my brother and my parents, the balls are very pretty and really like them, the tweezers I will use them tomorrow to go visit a great friend who lives in another neighborhood. Do you like to go and visit your friends? What do you do with them? I ask you to pray for my family I will be praying for your family and for you. I want you to read Psalms 139:13. Farewell with love, Lina."

 

In the spring, I was able to send a package of items with someone who was traveling to Colombia. These were the gift items that Lina thanked me for in the letter. One thing I noticed in this letter that I hadn't seen before is that the questions were typed in bold. I know on the Compassion web site, they suggest that we number questions to the kids or highlight them in our letters. Something to remember as we prepare to write letters again this Friday!

 

Letter number two was dated July 12:

 

"Dear Yvonne,

Loved Yvonne I am glad to be able to write to you, thank you for being so special, I am fascinated because I have your sponsorship, I love the letters, the stickers, the cards and the bible verses, those were nice gifts. My peers would like to have a sponsor like you, thank you for showing me your love. I want you to know that bonus you send was a great blessing to me, I got a skirt and a yellow blouse because it is my favorite color. Do you like yellow? In one of your letters you asked me about my country, well it is the door of south America, it's big, and it has a great variety of flora and fauna and weather, according to the regions, its people is valuable, there is people like you: Loving, generous, kind and with a nice heart, here we only have two seasons, winter and summer, my favorite is winter because it's cooler and I can play under the rain. Please send a warm salute to your family from me and tell them I appreciate theirs prayers, I will be praying so God's grace will leak upon your lives. I think it's great you enjoy learning about Jesus, Jesus is my favorite hero. This year I have liked the most my natural science class and I can say it's my favorite. Who is your best friend? Mine is called Karen and we have been friends for 10 years, I really love her and I like to count with her. I send you a Bible verse I really like about friendship and it's in Proverbs 17:17. As for the Christmas letter I tell you we had a great time, we spend it in family, I got a lot of giftss and of course I was praying so God would bless you. I ask you to pray for my family, especially for my dad so he does well in his job. Farewell, remember that I love you until heaven. Lina"

 

In the two years that we have been sponsoring Lina, this is by far the longest letter we have received from her!

 

With these letters, we received something extra! Months ago, I had found a project on Pinterest where you trace your hand onto cardstock, cut it out, and write a Bible verse on the 'hand'. We did this for each one of the kids and sent additional paper along, with a note asking them to do the same, then mail it back to us. Imagine how happy I was when I saw this with the letters:

 

 

I will treasure this!

 

 

Then today, I received a letter from Compassion in a plain white envelope from the Sponsor and Donar Relations Director. This letter said:

 

 

"We appreciate your involvement in the lives of God's precious children by serving as a correspondent. We have just learned that the supporter for Xiomara in Peru has ended their sponsorship; therefore, you will not be able to continue correspondence with this child."

 

 

 

 

Over the last year, I have been corresponding with Xiomara and have just loved this young lady. I have known this could happen, and it is one of the reasons why we have not taken on any more sponsored kids. However, because we are working on paying off some debt, this may not be the best time to add one more sponsored child to our family.

 

 

I posted about this on Facebook and said we would be praying about this. Then I received a message from a friend that made me cry! She has been considering sponsoring and was wondering if they can take on Xiomara! We will both be praying about this over the next few days. I will be seeing her next week and will show her the letters I have received so far. If you are reading this post, could you be praying for this situation also?

 

 

So even though I this post the title of  'Happy Mail!!! :o) ...and sad mail :o(', there is a chance that even the sad part of this post could end up being a blessing! I know that God will provide and I need to remember that and trust Him to watch over Xiomara and her family.

 



Summer Monday at Home

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” - Jane Austen

Monday is usually a home day for us. Not really sure why, but it has just always seemed to work out that way. After a busy weekend, Monday just has always been a day to get the laundry done and stay close to home.

Matthew started his orchard job today, so we won't be seeing him at home most of the day for the next few weeks. He drives a tractor during the apricot harvest. They start early in the morning (about 5:30am!) and are usually done around 2pm. He is usually pretty hot and tired by the time he gets home.

So today, Kelsey and I stayed home and were able to do a few fun things together...

Making and spending more money than we will ever see

Homemade Snickerdoodles...yum!



It is Monday, so there was laundry to be done



No sense of baking all the cookie dough, so we flash froze some to be baked later



Letter from Lina arrived!



We started taking all the pictures off of the project boards from Matthew's graduation...



...and started adding them to the album for him to keep

This letter was an extra surprise today! There was a letter addressed to Kevin from Compassion. There was nothing on the front of the letter indicating that it might be a letter from his correspondent child, Murimi, from Kenya. Back in November, we put some items together for Murimi and sent them to Kenya with our friends who are over there this year working with Agape Children's Ministry. They dropped the package off at the Compassion country office to be delivered to Murimi.

Along with a nice long letter, we received these 3 photographs of Murimi! The first picture shows Murimi holding the gallon size ziploc bag of items we sent over. The next picture shows Murimi wearing the t-shirt and shorts we bought for him and he is holding the 2 Hot Wheels cars that were in the package. The last picture at the bottom shows Murimi holding the snowman picture the my husband made for Murimi as well as the paper snowflakes on his head! What a special treat this was!

Did anything special happen on your Monday?



Little Abner

I just love this little guy!

Since I became Abner's correspondent sponsor back in October, I have received 3 letters from him. It seems to take about 2 months for his letters to arrive in my mailbox. Abner is the little guy who lives in Colombia and has a parrot named Rebeca.

So after being gone for a week, I was so excited with a new letter from Abner! There were 2 pages! The first page was on typical Compassion stationery and it says:

"Dear Yvonne:

I greet you in the love of the Lord hoping that you are enjoying good health. I want to tell you that I have lots of fun in the project with my teachers and I do nice things; I made a snowflake and I am learning to dance, drama, and folklore music. In drama we are working in our emotions and about our daily activities.

I thank you for your letter and the beautiful pictures. I had a nice birthday, I had a great time and ate cake. I received a heavy duty truck and a couple of toy limousines too.

I pray for all of you that God blesses you more each day.

I now say goodbye with a strong hug hoping that God blesses you always."

OK, so reading this almost makes me want to cry! But imagine my surprise when I looked on the next page and saw a picture of Abner smiling!



This next page says:

"This is me one day with my brothers and we are playing. We took a lot of pictures and this was one of them.

This is the mascot of our house. Her name is Rebeca. We had talked about her before. I hope you like it. I love her dearly.

On a good day, I will see if I can send one of everyone in my family, for now I send a hug and kisses. God Bless You. Thank you very much."

Recently, I was blessed with the opportunity to send a package for Abner with another sponsor who was traveling to Colombia to visit her Compassion kids. I know Abner loves to draw and I can't wait for him to receive the colored pencils I sent to him.

One day I pray that I will have the opportunity to visit one of our Compassion kids. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with how important these kids have become in my life. We pray for each one of them daily and send them all at least one letter each month. I pray they realize what a blessing they are to my life, knowing that one day, we will all be rejoicing together in heaven!

Two letters in one day!

Monday was a great mail day! Two creamed colored envelopes came in the mail from two of our correspondent Compassion kids.

The first letter came from Victor in Ecuador. Here is what he wrote:

Dear Yvonne,
I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks for writing and telling me more about you. I am happy to hear from you. I have some flowers in the garden of my house and we also have fruit plants such as mango. I like to take care of them. My favorite verse is Proverbs 12:2 "A good man will obtain favor from the Lord, but He will condemn a man who devices evil." My family and I keep you and your family in our prayers. Please have my mom in your prayers and my studies too. How is your weather? I made a picture of my garden on the back. I close sending you hugs in Jesus Christ.

And here is a picture of his garden drawing:

I love all of the details he put into his garden drawing. And he even put a drawing of himself smiling!

The next letter is from Abner in Colombia. For a 9 year old, he wrote a long letter!

Dear Yvonne,
Greetings and bear hugs. I want to tell you that I traveled with my cousin Juan and my aunt Elisa on Christmas, we visited a town named Guaduas and there I saw colorful butterflies but not just that, there was also my favorite animal, the horse; there were many fruit and I've never been in a place that beautiful outside of Bogota. I want to tell you that my aunt and I were scared because of snake, black and long but my cousin was laughing because I was afraid. We ate lots of bananas and coconuts; I helped my aunt with the cooking. I love horses and my favorite horse is Canelo, he is brown and beautiful. I spent most of my Christmas time with my aunt, cousin and siblings and then I came back home and came back to school 2 days after that; I'm in 4th grade and I'm enjoying school with my friends. My favorite subject is English and my favorite verse is Psalms 8:3 "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" I'd love you to pray for me that I can do well at school. Blessings and goodbye. Thanks for all the letters that are beautiful.

Abner told me in his last letter that his family has a parrot named Rebeca. I asked him if he would send me a drawing of Rebeca and here it is!

I pray that I can continue to be an encouragement to these boys as they continue to grow their relationship with God. I pray for their families and for their studies. I pray they will grow up and make a difference in their communities. Thank you Lord for allowing these boys to be a part of our lives!

Meet Our Compassion Kids Monday: Abner

This week I would like to introduce you to Abner. He is my second correspondent child. Abner lives in Colombia with both of his parents as well as 4 sisters and 1 brother. He loves to play soccer, loves horses, and likes the color green.

In his first letter to us, he told us about his parrot Rebeca. He says she is 'so fun and I love her a lot.' I asked him to draw me a picture of Rebeca. The verse he shared with me was 1 Timothy 4:12 - "Always act in a manner pleasing to God and you may win people over to believe in Christ."

Meet Our Compassion Kids Monday: Lina

Since we are in a new year, I thought over the next couple of months, I would introduce our Compassion kids each Monday.

We have been sponsoring Lina since August of 2010. The first little girl that we sponsored moved away from the Compassion center, so Kelsey decided we needed to choose another little girl from the same country.

Lina lives in Colombia and her birthday is April 7, 1999. She lives with her dad, mom, brother, aunt and grandpa. She likes to swim and her favorite color is yellow. In her letters, she always asks for prayers for her family and that she does well in school. We have been blessed with four letters from Lina.

Next Monday, I will introduce the young man that Matthew is sponsoring!