Juanito really enjoyed seeing that the kids had pencils to study with and asked to use his pencils and pens to write letters for his Compassion siblings! What struck me was that there weren't enough pencils for each child to have his own…we have more pencils in our house than we know what to do with! We send tons in each Operation Christmas Child shoebox we pack and yet we seem to still have extra pencils. I just can't wrap my mind around the concept of not being able to study because of not having a pencil. Anyway, enough on that…please watch the video...
Since we were discussing learning, we sang "Instruye al Niño en su Camino" or "Train Up a Child" (from Steve Green's CD…it's in English and in Spanish) and we discussed how we can learn many things. We can learn about God and how to follow Him and we can learn how to read and write!
After reviewing our memory verse Matthew 6:9-13 we read the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and multiplying the loaves and fish (John 6:9-11). (On a side note, I love how easily kids believe…I asked Juanito if he thought the little boy had enough food for all the people and Juanito replied, "God can feed them." It helped me see what Jesus meant about having faith like a child!)
As usual, we read A Country Far Away and Manuel & Manuel. But we added a third book today: One World, One Day, which shows how kids all over the world do the same things but differently. The photos are stunning!
We finished by making cards for Jenny and Rebecca, two of our correspondent girls. Juanito likes to look through the photo album and pick the kids (although sometime I help guide him because otherwise he would end up with sending letters to just Franco and Nancy!). He was really struck with the pencils used at school and wanted to know if the girls used pencils at school. I just translated the message from Spanish to English for him!
While Juanito was drawing and putting stickers on his letters, I took a moment to color a page for one of our younger girls. I follow the blog Connected in Writing and Svenja, one of the contributors, once shared how she colors pictures for her sponsored kids, in addition to sending blank coloring pages. While I send a lot of uncolored pages, I thought it would be fun to color pages for our kids! I know how much I love receiving a drawing from the kids. So while Juanito was busy with his artwork, I was able to color too. And even Rosie joined in!
About Hannah Hinojosa...Hannah is a long time Compassion sponsor and writes about her sponsorship journey at Because of Shamim. In addition to being a wife and mother, she is a part-time math professor and loves to read.
