Outgoing Mail: May

I am continuing with my new series! Since I have birthdays coming up in July, I thought I had better get another batch of letters out in the mail!

I did continue with my online letters of a devotional titled The Greatest Book and shared a sidewalk game from Ethiopia with my kids!

And since I only mailed letters for the upcoming birthdays, I decided to use the new card template online to send a fun spring letter to our kids! It was so fun to be able to add two pages of photos!

I wrote a general letter and edited to respond to our kids' letters. Here's the version I sent to the kids without the personalization:

Dear Name,
It is springtime in Florida! We have been enjoying the beautiful weather. We live about 20 minutes away from the Gulf of Mexico and we spent one day hiking along the sand dunes on the shore. We also have been preparing our garden where we planted lots of beans and peas, tomatoes, carrots, jalapeño and banana peppers, and basil. Eric and Juanito plan on planting some flowers and squash too. But we have also been enjoying seeing the flowers around our home that are growing on their own! We took some photos to show you. And we took a photo of a squirrel. Do you have squirrels where you live? We have lots of squirrels here! We also have many birds out front because Eric likes to feed them. I hope to take some photos of the birds to send to you in the future. The hot rainy season will be starting in June. In closing, I would like to share Proverbs 16:9, "A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." I went to a women's event at my church and a missionary from Papua New Guinea in Indonesia spoke about trusting God's plan for our lives and she shared this verse. God bless you! Much love, Hannah

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One thing I had to adjust to was the six page rule and I made myself a chart to make sure I didn't exceed six sheets of paper per child! (If you are just learning about Compassion's new letter writing rules, click here for an overview and here for FAQ.)

For the kids who we have sponsored for a while, I was focusing on getting them their birthday cards. I also wanted to send some extra photos to those kids who asked for them and for other kids who had photo updates, I wanted to send copies of their photos.

For our new correspondents, I wanted to include more photos.

I had printed the photos prior to hearing the new guidelines and needed to figure out how to send more than five photos with the new six page rule! So I put together these collages! I think they came out nicely and I hope the kids enjoy them.

I had found the nice paper at the dollar store and had the stickers on hand. I know that Compassion will scan them and email them to be printed for our kids, but I think the quality will be really nice for the kids. And I don't have to worry about the glue not sticking well enough!

I hope this gives you ideas as you write to your sponsored and correspondent kids!