January Compassion Share & Tell

I have only been back from our Compassion Mexico Sponsor Trip for two days, but I knew I wanted to get a letter off to Felix today, my very first letter to him!

When we sponsored him last month before our trip, I decided to wait until after our trip to send him our first letter. This way I would be able to send him pictures from our visit. I am really excited about the photos I am able to send to him with this first letter!

Here is what I wrote to Felix in my letter:

Hello Felix!

I am really excited to write this letter to you as your new sponsor! And I am so happy that I can send you some photographs from when my son and I were at your home and your center to visit you and your family.

Let me remind you a little bit about me and my family. My name is Yvonne, and my husband's name is Kevin. We have been married for 23 years and live in the state of California in the United States of America. We have two children, Matthew (who was on the trip with me) and Kelsey.

We are so thankful that we can be a part of your life! We will be praying for you and your family, and we pray that you learn about how much God loves you. Here is a Bible verse I want to share with you from Mark 12:30 - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."

Do well in school, help your family, and keep that big smile on your face!

I Love You, 

Yvonne 

Did you have a chance to write to your Compassion sponsored child this month? I sure do hope so! They love letters from their sponsors and I learned on our trip that they would love more photos from their sponsors. So won't you take time today, write to your sponsored child, and send them a photo or two of something that makes you smile.

Once you have written your letter, be sure to come on back here to link up with my monthly Compassion Share & Tell link up!

Join me in Mexico!

Tonight (Lord willing!!), my son and I are in Houston, Texas, awaiting the arrival of the rest of our team for our Compassion Sponsor Tour to Mexico!! I would love to have you follow along on the trip with us! There are a couple of ways you can do this:

1. Follow my Instragram account! We should have wi-fi access each evening at our hotels, so I am hoping to upload a few pictures each day. As much as I would love to upload blog posts each night, I don't want to put that kind of pressure on myself. So the blog posts will have to wait until after our trip.
2. Follow our Facebook group! There should be daily posts here, as well as photos to share with our family and friends.

Gifts for Felix, our new Compassion sponsored child we will be visiting with on Saturday!

Thank you to everyone who has been such a big support of this trip and for your prayers!! 

Compassion Joy Dare: December

I am linking up with my friend Jill today over at Compassion Family for her Compassion Joy Dare monthly link up. December was filled with Compassion joys for me!

• received a letter from Lina, she shared with me that she has a dog named Riki
• wrote a blog post for Compassion's blog
• wrote another Compassion Share & Tell post
• our tickets and itinerary arrived for our Mexico trip!
• we started sponsoring Felix in Mexico!
• we shopped for Felix and his family

But the really big Compassion joy I was able to experience last month was attending a graduation ceremony at Denver Seminary for Olive Akullo!!

Olive stayed with our family about a year and a half ago when she came out to California to speak at our church and another nearby church. We stayed in touch through Facebook and I was so happy that all of the details came together so that I could fly out to celebrate her big accomplishment with her!

Have some Compassion joy to share? Be sure to link up with Jill each month as we celebrate God's blessings we experience with Compassion!

The Lord has provided!

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you feel like you are falling through the air, wondering if someone is going to catch you? This year has been kind of like that dream. In May, we took a big leap of faith when I signed up to join Compassion for their Mexico Sponsor Tour for January 2014. As a single income family, we just don't have a lot of extra money laying around to pay for a trip like this. But we knew, if God wanted me on this trip, He would provide.

When I started my ledger back in May to keep track of money that was being earned for the trip, I wrote Genesis 22:14 at the top, "The Lord will provide." On my own power, there was nothing I could do to earn the money for this trip. But God allowed me to use some of my gifts and talents to make and sell various items over the last 8 months. He also provided for a few donations, a couple even from people I have never meet in person! What an abundant blessing that has been! And even more of a blessing is that I will be traveling with my 19 year old son! Warms my mama heart knowing that he will be with me on this trip!

So in these last few days before we leave, I have been knitting dishcloths as gifts for some of the moms we will meet on our home visits.

My daughter and a few of her friends have been helping me make friendship bracelets for the many children we have a chance to love on.

As a family, we went shopping to buy some gifts for Felix and his family.

And we bought a few other things we might need on our trip!

As I continue to prepare for this trip, something really stood out to me last night as I was reading 'Crazy Love' by Francis Chan: "God, bring me closer to You during this trip, whatever it takes..."

That is my prayer, I want to experience God like I have never experienced Him before. Will you pray this prayer with me over our trip?

Empty Shelf Challenge

Do you like a good challenge? I know I do. So when I read about Jon Acuff's Empty Shelf Challenge over on his blog, I just knew I needed to join this one!

I love to read, so that part of the challenge would be easy for me. However...

...trying to find an empty bookshelf? That is a bit of a problem in our house. You see...

...most of our bookshelves are quite full, some are even overflowing. But, I moved a few things around and...

...I now have one empty shelf to start the challenge!

I love that Jon encourages us to start the challenge now! Why wait until January 1st? So here are a few books I am currently reading: 'Crazy Love' by Francis Chan, 'The Reluctant Prophet' by Nancy Rue (reading this one on my Kindle), 'Working with the Poor' by Bryant Myers and others, and 'Understanding God's Heart for Children' by Douglas McConnell and others.

Now what I should do is go around my home and make a list of all the books I hope to read this year...