It's Picture Day!

I used to love those words when I was a kid. It was always so exciting to get my picture taken at school, then, a few weeks later, get a packet of school pictures to take home. I know, some of them look corny now, but it was always fun back then.

Those words are still exciting to me, but not in the same way. I'm certainly not in school anymore, and, since my kids are homeschooled, we don't have the same type of "picture day". They're exciting to me because it means that new pictures of one of my Compassion International kids have come in the mail!

Many of you know that we sponsor six Compassion International children. No, not all of them financially. I wish we could afford to sponsor more than six financially though. Really, though, we only sponsor one financially and we are correspondence sponsors for five others. Compassion International assigns correspondence sponsors when a child's regular sponsor is unable to write or doesn't want to write. Writing to your sponsored child(ren) is a big thing with Compassion International. They say that it is equal to the financial support. We enjoyed writing to Marcelo, the boy that we sponsor, so much that we took on five more children to sponsor. We get regular updates about our correspondence kids just like we do Marcelo. In fact, we are treated like, and they think that we are, their financial sponsor.

It is such a joy to sponsor these kids. We write all of the time and get regular letters back from them. The cream colored envelope says "It's a letter from your sponsored child!" on the outside and we can't wait to open it to see who it is from. Every two years we get a special envelope. It's an envelope with updated pictures in it. Yes, we have to wait two years to get new pictures. Sometimes a Compassion country office will send pictures of the child with purchased items if you sent the child gift money, but usually we only get new pictures every two years. Boy, the changes that we see. Sometimes we hardly recognize them. I remember when we first got an updated picture of Marcelo. I didn't think it was him. I thought Compassion had made a mistake! Take a look and you'll see why!



That comparison was done a couple of years ago. We're now on our third picture of Marcelo. Take a look at our handsome 15 year old Bolivian son now!

Can you imagine, though, what it must be like for some of the Compassion International kids to get their picture taken? Some of them have probably never gotten their picture taken or seen themselves in a picture before. Think about Somi, our Indonesian child. He lives in a round hut with a grass roof. You can see one of those types of huts behind him in this picture.

Sometimes I marvel thinking about things like that. We take so much for granted here in America. Anyway, I've talked so much that I almost forgot to post the pictures the new pictures that we got. There of Ismael our Nicaraguan boy. He is our youngest child at 7 years old. I think the original picture was taken when he was four. See how much he has changed?

   

It has been a joy to sponsor kids through Compassion International. Financial sponsorship costs less than a cup of coffee a day. If you would like more information on Compassion International or on sponsoring a child, just click here or on any one of the hi-lighted links above. You won't be disappointed.