I'm still around...!

Wow, has it really been about 6 months since I posted? Sheesh!

A lot has happened in that time period, including starting a job teaching kindergarten in November (talk about stressful--but there are enough "cute" moments to keep me coming back to work every day!). My nephew Riley just turned 1 year old on the 16th...I also recently got a letter from Nells (12 year old in Peru) that her mom had a baby in September and named it Riley!

Another letter from Yuni in Indonesia was responding to several things I had sent in letters dating from last April to June. She wrote in late August. So I'm figuring that my letters can take as little as 6 weeks to as much as 3-4 months to arrive at the projects. I think I've read that the letters are translated and sorted (by project) in the country offices, and are collected until someone from the project comes to get them. It's possible, then, that some projects only make a "mail run" once a quarter, after the kids have a letter-writing day...but it would seem in this case that they would have gotten the letters from the sponsors before the kids wrote their letters, in order for Yuni to be responding to things I had sent. Who knows...maybe they pick up sponsor letters once a month, and write once a quarter. Speculating here. :) However they do it, I'm glad to have heard from her (even if it took 4 months to get delivered to me).

There haven't been a lot of Compassion "events" in the New Orleans/Baton Rouge area since my last post. This past weekend was the first. Matthew Smith was in two churches near Baton Rouge, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Since I had Monday off for MLK Day (a perk of working in a school) I was able to make the trip both days, knowing I could sleep in Monday and therefore not worry about getting home after my usual bedtime. There was an amazing response from the audience in regards to child sponsorship. Both events had maybe 200 people in attendance--rough estimate. The first night, 12 children were sponsored, and 11 on the second night--23 children sponsored in two nights! How exciting! It was nice to meet the other sponsors who were helping staff the tables each night, hearing about their experiences with their own kids. Both of the volunteers commented on how much I knew about Compassion, having received the additional training for an Advocate. I didn't realize I knew that much more than I might have otherwise, had I not gone through the training. But, thinking back to my first event, as a sponsor and listening to the Advocates answer questions, I guess I can understand where they're coming from. Who knows, maybe there will be a couple of new Advocates in the area (dang--I should have brought some application packets, then I might have remembered to ask if they wanted to become Advocates! Oh well.)

I'm hoping to come up with other opportunities to present Compassion, to find sponsors for kids on my own, now that I've gotten the "shot in the arm" over the weekend. Seems like I've gotten lazy recently...with Advocacy, and even trying to lose weight. I've been attending Weight Watchers for a couple of years, and I've been maintaining my weight over the past year, even though I have about 15 more pounds to lose. I could use a shot in the arm to get me motivated to finish what I started.

But, it's time to get on the road to head in to work.