2017 Letter Stats

Whew! Alright, you guys. As you can probably tell, I don't normally put a lot of background work into my blog posts. As a huge majority of my blog posts are me just typing up letters I get from kids, it's basically just showing off my typing skills. ;)

But, this post, that I do every year, takes a lot of work! As the year passes, I get a tally document of each letter I receive from my kids. Then, when I do posts like this, I go through that document and count, sort, and calculate. Then I make photo collages to represent each set of data. It takes quite awhile, but it's totally worth it when it all comes together.

There is just something amazing about counting up how many letters I receive in a year. It's really a great way to see just how blessed I am.

If you remember from past years (or if you're a Compassion sponsor yourself), the magic number with Compassion is 6. Sponsors that write to their kids at least monthly, should receive 6 letters per year from their kids. With that being said, it very rarely works out that way. Kids are absent from letter writing day, projects still haven't updated to writing that often, mail gets delayed, etc, etc, etc. With that being said, my average number last year was 4. A majority of my kids wrote me 4 letters. This year, that average is up to 5 letters! Whoo hoo!

But, I have two champions this year! I received 8 letters each from Kwizera and Sunrei. You go, kiddos!

Another above average friend of mine is Daniel. He wrote me 7 letters!

I received that "magic number" 6 letters from Acram, Airin, Ayling, Jhon, and Jhoyra 

My largest group of kids all wrote me 5 letters each. That includes Celeste, Enmanuel, Bryan, Eric, Line, Carlos, Nicol, Rebecca, Brian, Marinelis, Ronaldo, Tern, Daniel, Prity, Faith, Carolin, and Rujikorn.

Moving on down to 4 letters. That's how many letters I received from Djimitri, Joel, Maria, Jhojaira, Nikko, Sevenson, Jhonrex, Jonatan, Gary, Rodrigo, Tamire, Agness, Dagim, Jule, and Mulwa. 

The next group of kiddos all wrote me 3 letters this year. That includes Mariela, Tumbu, Jonathan, Veronika, Joseph, Marilyn, Zenebu, Kamaldine, Muuo, Emanise, Lemayian, Baraka, and Hillary. 

The kiddos that wrote me just 2 letters in 2017 were mostly new kiddos. However a few of them are kids I've had more nearly a year or even for several years. I'm not sure what the hold up is on their letters. This group includes Dedilhomme, Ernest, Anju, Mor-Mi-Say, and Brisa.  

The kiddos that wrote me 1 letter each are brand new and I've only been writing to them for a few months. Some even less than that and their first letter came really fast. Those kids are Cedrick, Lenin, Milkias, Muzuro, and Yohannis. 

I have a handful of other brand new kids, who I have yet to hear from. I am looking forward to hearing from these kids in 2018. They are Shakilla, Joshua, Sandra, Nico, Keyla, Kelvin, and Samirul. 

There were 23 other letters that I received in 2017 that I will not include with the other kids. I am keeping these writers separately because I said goodbye to them in 2017. Some of the kids graduated, others moved, and others were dropped by their financial sponsors. I said goodbye to Derrick, Emanuel, Jose, Chokchai, Eric, Yahoska, Haji, and Brenda. 

And outside of Compassion, I also received letters from my Manna boys! I received 18 letters in total. Most of my Manna boys are very new. I've only had two of them for a whole year, so I know that I will receive many more letters in 2018. My Manna family includes Carlos, Brayan, Angel, Ivan, Noel, Antony, Defer, Yesbin, Levi, and Jarlen. 

If I counted correctly (I probably didn't, but you don't have to double check), I received a total of 293 letters in 2017. 

Wow! 

What a great year it was!