Capture Your 365

We are now entering my favorite time of the year (summer, yay!) and I have a few photos from the Capture Your 365 Challenge to share with you this week!

signs of summer

ISO 100, 86mm, f/4.2, 3 sec

Day 152 – Signs of Summer: Our town has a festival at the beginning of June each year and Saturday night always has a fireworks display. We love sitting out in front of our home and watching the fireworks over our neighbor’s houses. I set up my tripod and just continued taking a lot of pictures during the display. It was a great way to end an almost-summer day!

butterfly

ISO 400, 190mm, f/5.6, 1/50 sec

Day 154 – Dandelions: No dandelions in my backyard and not the sharpest picture I have ever taken, but I was able to capture a butterfly! Boy, that was hard work!

negative space

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.5, 1/15 sec

Day 155 – Negative Space: My husband surprised me with a bouquet of ‘just because’ flowers. These were the perfect subject for today’s photo prompt!

documented

ISO 400, 50mm, f/3.2, 1/60 sec

Day 156 – Documented: When it was decided that I would be joining the Compassion trip to Mexico in January 2014, I decided to start a ledger to keep track of my ‘earnings’. To remind myself that God is in control, I wrote out “The Lord will provide” from Genesis 22:14. There is no reason for me to worry about the funds for this trip because God will make it possible if it is His will for me to go. He has been providing abundantly, it has been exciting to see Him work in all of this!

What have you captured this week with your camera?

Compassion Keep In Touch Box

Since our pastor has allowed us to keep a Compassion table in the lobby of our church, I have been wanting to put together a box of items for our many Compassion sponsors. As a Compassion Advocate, I want to do what I can to encourage sponsors to be writing to their kids on a regular basis. My prayer is that this box will make it easier for our sponsors to take the time to write to their sponsored kids.

Here is a list of items I have included in this box:

• Monthly Compassion prayer calendar
• Blank birthday cards
• Blank note cards
• Tips for mailing small gifts print out from the Compassion web site
• Copies of the California coloring page from the Crayola web site
• Pages from activity pages I have found at the Dollar Spot at Target
• Variety of stickers
• Copies of a Bible verse printable I found on Pinterest
• Copies of old Explorer magazines

The box was very well received this morning with many people finding new things to send to their kids. My goal is to update the box at least once a month with the new monthly Compassion prayer calendar and any new printables I find on Pinterest.

What do you do to encourage Compassion sponsors at your church?

Let’s Take a Journey to Nicaragua!

Have you heard the news?? The Compassion Bloggers are heading to Nicaragua this month and they have invited all of us to join along! Well, not really travel with them to Nicaragua, but they would love for us to be praying for them as they prepare for their trip, and to follow along with their blog posts as they write about their experiences on this journey.

When you go to this Compassion Bloggers link, you can find links to the bloggers who will be travelling on this trip. I hope to take time this week to visit each one of their blogs, get to know them a little bit, and let them know that I will be praying for them. Will you consider doing the same?

I know I have really enjoyed the blog posts from previous trips (you can read the previous trip blog posts here). This time, I will be reading with new interest as I prepare for my own Compassion trip to Mexico in January!

Get ready for June!

There are a couple of things I look forward to at the beginning of each month!

Compassion has been making these desktop calendars available for a while now. I love having these on my computer!

Also, Compassion puts out a prayer calendar every month. You can sign up to be a Prayer Partner, then each month, the calendar will be delivered to your e-mail.

What do you look forward to at the beginning of each month?

Compassion Letter Writing Club on Pinterest

Have you seen the new Compassion Letter Writing Club board on Pinterest?

I was able to write a blog post for the Compassion blog to share about this new Pinterest board. That was pretty exciting for me since I have found a lot of creative paper project ideas to make for our Compassion kids on my own Compassion Pinterest board.

The focus for May on this new board is Mother’s Day, and some of the new contributors shared some great ideas with all of us.

may compassion mailing

Here is what I included in this latest mailing to my Compassion kids:

• two photographs from my latest day trip to Yosemite, one is of Yosemite Falls and the other is of dogwood blossoms
• paper dogwood blossoms
• a printable of flowers for my kids to color and give to their mom
• a card similar to this one for the kids to give to their mom

I also included a short note to each of my kids, sharing with them this verse:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” - Romans 5:13

I shared with them that I pray that each day for them is filled with joy when they remember how much God loves them.

Have you sent anything special to your Compassion kids lately?