Vincent's first letter!

It's been almost exactly 2 months since I first sponsored Vincent, my little guy in Togo, and I received his 1st letter today!  It was the "Who am I?" template, and also gave information on his project, which was neat.  This is the first time a child's letter has included project information, like what day he goes to the project, and how he gets there.
From the map Vincent colored in, it looks like his project is down at the bottom of the country, by Lome, the capital.  From what I can tell of the July sponsor tour, our hotel will be in Lome, so I am hopeful that it's a possibility we'll be visiting Vincent's center during the sponsor tour!!
Vincent's favorite color is red, and his favorite food is rice.  He also has something in common with my daughter, as his favorite animal is a bird ;-)

Another letter from Alphonsine!

I was so pleasantly surprised today to see another letter from Alphonsine in my pile of mail.  But, even better, there was a surprise picture of Alphonsine enclosed with the letter!  In the picture, Alphonsine is holding the very first letter I sent her (online through myworldvision).  

Alphonsine's favorite color is blue, and her favorite animal is a cow, for the milk!  

The volunteer also traced Alphonsine's hand for me, and I was surprised to see it's larger than my 5 year old's hand!  Alphonsine only just turned 4 in October.  She looked like a bigger kid in her official world vision photo, but I assumed it was the angle of the camera.  However, it looks like she is a pretty big 4 year old!

This letter was post-marked from Kigali, Rwanda on 11/11/13, and it arrived today, 11/18/13.  I am surprised at how quickly mail arrives from Rwanda, but I am assuming that the bulk of the travel time for a letter is from Alphonsine's community to the World Vision Rwanda office in Kigali.

So much excess

That is 18 bags of clothing to go to the thrift store up the street.  Today, I went through all of the clothing that my kids have outgrown, that we were "saving" for a potential future foster placement, and got rid of it all except for a small tote of 0-6 month clothing.  That's 18 FULL garbage bags of girls' 6 months - 4T clothing that my daughter has outgrown, and boys' 6 months - 2T clothing that my sons have outgrown.
What the 18 bags in this picture don't include is 1 bag of 3T girls stuff to go to my friend who needs long pants/long sleeved shirts for her daughter, 1 1/2 full garbage bags of infant clothes that were stained and thrown out, a bag of 2T girls that went to a friend last year, and a full bag of 18 months boy clothing that went to a local family in need a couple months ago.  Wow.  I think about how much excess is here, and then I think about my sponsored children.  Do they have more than a handful of outfits?  Do they fit?  Are they weather appropriate?
Before I came back to sponsoring, I made a conscious effort to pare down on the clothing I was buying for the kids.  I recognized that I was out of control when they were little--I blame it on being an excited new parent, and my first baby being a girl, lol.  We do much better now, and we only take the handed down clothing from friends that we will actually use.  If I already have an entire size 6 wardrobe for my daughter, I don't need to accept another friend's outgrown clothing!  I get a lot of handed down clothing, and I also enjoy buying clothing for my kids.  There were, shamefully, a lot of clothes in these bags that still had tags on them.
So all of this clothing will be out the door tomorrow after I drop the kids off at school, and I certainly hope to not have this problem again, lol!  Just thinking about my sponsored childrens' probably lack of clothing is seemingly enough to squash any desire to purchase more clothes for my 3 kids!

New Compassion Store!

The new Compassion store has opened up online, and I ordered shirts literally the day it opened up!  Can't wait to wear them!  They have tons of shirts, hoodies, bags, hats, etc.  Definitely worth checking out!  Easy to order, and my shirts arrived quickly.

http://store.compassion.com/

Playing with piZap

How did this happen?

Somehow, watching a documentary about the prevalence of young girls being raped in Zimbabwe on the same night Hubby and I decided that we are probably done at 3 kids (we're really tired of diapers and wiping butts, lol), led to me sponsoring another little one.

Meet Marina, and she is sponsored through World Vision.  Marina lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo with her mother, 5 brothers, and 1 sister.  Marina is 4 years old.

Sometimes I seriously wonder if all of my sponsored children are some kind of filler for the fact that I always wanted to adopt internationally.  Hubby and I did end up adopting, but we ended up adopting through the U.S. foster care system, and since we're done at 3 kids, I highly doubt an international adoption will be in our future.  Even if, in a few years, we decided that a 4th child would be a good idea, international adoption is a long, windy road, especially these days.

So, it looks like I will just have to sponsor a lot of little ones instead.

Wow!

Saturday, when my mail arrived, I was overwhelmed with THREE letters from my World Vision kids.  An introductory letter from Alphonsine, and an introductory letter from Willy, as well as a thank you letter from Willy for the package I sent.  I was just beginning to worry that the correspondence with my World Vision kids would not be as great as everyone else's!
The letters were full notebook pages, and full of information!  I am very pleased with how much information is in each letter, and how detailed the thank you note was for the package I sent back at the end of August!