My hope is to give you encouragement and inspiration in your letter writing. I would like to encourage you to write to your child! Here's what I generally do for letter writing...I don't share it to guilt you, but hopefully you'll get ideas from what I've found helpful!
I try to write to each child once a month using Compassion's online options. Compassion provides beautiful templates and allows you to attach photos! But I'm kind of a traditionalist when it comes to correspondence, and so I aim to send a hand-written letter every other month.
For the hand-written letter, I take time to read through any recent letters that I have from each kid, and then I right a personalized letter for that child only. In these letters I'll answer questions, ask specific questions, and send messages to family members. These letters take longer to write and I've found that I usually need two months to finish up a batch! I love including stickers and other paper stuff with these letters.
The online option has this great "duplicate letter" option, and so usually I write a general letter and send a copy to each kid...I just change the name and any other pertinent information.
The topic for this month's online letter was inspired by a question from Nelci.
Nelci asked if we have mountains where we live. Since we're in Florida, we don't...but I am originally from Massachusetts, where we have hills! So in this letter I wrote that I am from Massachusetts, Eric is from Texas, but with live in mountain-less Florida. I continued by sharing that in Massachusetts there are mountains and that they are beautiful in the fall when the leaves changed colors! I asked the kids two questions: "Do you have states or provinces in your country" and "Do you have mountains?" (I try not to ask too many questions...I figure if I ask only one or two, chances are, they're more likely to be answered. Also, although these are things I could look up, I like to ask the kids in an effort to build a relationship with them.) I ended the letter by sharing Psalm 121 with the kids (or Psalm 121:1-2 with the litter kids!) since every time I see mountains I am reminded of this Psalm. Finally I found photos of Massachusetts in the fall and included them in the letters.
Here are some pictures of the letters...this one was for all the girls.
This one was for the older boys.
And this one was for the younger boys.
I hope that this inspires you to write to your kids! Feel free to "steal" any of my ideas!
