Elsa

For as long as we’ve been married, we’ve sponsored a child through Children International, a relief organization. We initially got a girl named Jessica, whom we sponsored for about 8 years. This past year she turned 18 and we were in our last year of sponsorship with her when we got a letter that she got married, thus being removed from the program. It made me feel rather melancholy to think that we would no longer have contact with her. We wrote her a nice letter and told her she would always been in our hearts and sent a few last photos and small tokens. A few weeks later, we got our next sponsored child, from the same community in Ecudor that Jessica was from. Her name is Elsa. Oh, how I wish that you could see Elsa! How I wish that I could meet Elsa! Just looking at her picture, you can see the sparkle that illuminates her dark brown eyes and the joy that dances over the smile with the missing front teeth. Elsa definitely rings a chord in my mother-heart. I was delighted that she was in our lives and our hearts were happy to take her in.

This time, the kids are old enough to understand more about Elsa than they did with Jessica. I decided to turn a new leaf and make her a family project. They reccomend that you don’t inundate your child with letters but write one every few months. So the first of every other month, we draw her some pictures, send her some stickers, etc. Of course we remember her in our prayers. And when we are feeling especially greedy, Elsa’s situation comes up. I wanted to go above and beyond though. Really involve the kids. So we decided that we wanted to send Elsa a special gift. Children International will use extra gifts sent to your child towards specific needs for their family. What they get depends on how much you donate. But they always get something that the family really, really needs. Such as a new cooking stove, a new roof, or new pots and pans. Those kinds of things. With Jessica, we always remembered her at Christmas, Birthdays, and others such holidays but we had never sent a (larger) special gift. Inspired, I decided that we were going to collect pennies for Elsa. The kids excitedly told their many grandparents and we also started collecting our own pennies in a glass jar. Cool-Whip containers, ziploc baggies, and coffee cans of coins (not just pennies) started pouring in. While I was very excited about the money, I have to admit that I was dreading the thought of wrapping it all. My mom let me borrow these handy little tubes that would fit exactly 50 pennies in, so you could wrap them without actually having to count the change, which saved us a lot of time. But she told us that she was in the market for once of these handy dandy coin sorters. (She sorts a lot of money seeing as how she is her church’s treasurer.) She said perhaps by next time, she would let us use one. I have to admit that I am hoping she does. While, it was a great learning lesson, wrapping all that money, it took us literally hours. OK, let’s be realistic here. It took ME hours. The kids gave up about 30 minutes into it. *heh* I told her that she should check out buy.com for a sale on the coin sorters. The one I found not only sorts coins from one another but it also keeps them in cool compartments that are the perfect amount for wrapping coins and it also keeps track of how much money is there! So handy!

So, here’s our gigantic pile of wrapped money:

$89….and counting!