Dear Yenenesh

Over a year ago, our family started sponsoring a little girl named Yenenesh through Compassion International. Yenenesh lives in Ethiopia with her 2 siblings and her Grandma. We chose her because her birthday was closest to Jack's bday and we wanted to find a child that was close to the age of one of our boys. Not to mention she is just darling in her little picture and was noted as being IN NEED of a sponsor soon, due to her living in an HIV/AIDS area. Yenenesh was born November 21, 2002 and Jack was born November 20, 2002. SO they will both be 7 years old next month.

We just received another letter from her in the mail Friday. Compassion is SO good about the correspondence between Sponsor and child. Our boys look forward to her letters as do we. It is a joy to read how she is learning about God in her country, she is going to Sunday school now, the weather there, what she likes to do for fun, how our small gifts are making a HUGE difference in her life. How the $20- we sent extra this spring bought her all new clothes. Amazing to me.

As I sat and wrote her a note back tonight, send an updated picture of our family, told her about the baby on the way...shared about the bible story we read tonight(she always shares the bible story she just learned in her letters)...it makes me smile and makes my heart warm to know that we are making a difference in a life of a child we may never ever meet on this earth. But our boys pray for Yenenesh, and we were just talking about how it is almost her birthday too. We know she will celebrate in a simple way, but God made her and loves her as much as any other child He has made.

And when I hear stories about families who DO get to meet their sponsored child, sometimes years and years after having been their sponsors....I get chills. What a wonderful thing that would be, okay now I am tearing up...can you even imagine what that would be like? To think that right now our family photo could be posted in her home, as hers is on our fridge, gives me chills.

A quick story to end this post...I read this summer, in one of the "Chicken for the Soul" books about a family whose daughter needed some sort of life saving surgery...and how this family "happened" to be in an area close to a hospital where some young specialist Dr from another country was in town teaching this particular specialty to this team of Physicians there. To make the long story short...her life was saved by this man who did the surgery...and after the surgery the parents met the young Dr. And do you know that it was the very man that they sponsored his entire childhood. After he was 18 and no longer being sponsored he went to school, medical school and now was this very young Doctor who saved their daughters life. No coincidences with God. NONE. Amazing stuff.