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.
