Letter Stats: 2018

It's time to wrap up the year with my typical end of the year post. It's just about midnight on New Year's Eve as I write this, so there is no better time to post this!

2018 was a year of many lost correspondent children, for various reasons and while I did receive letters from many of them, they will not be included in this post. I'm choosing to only count the letters of the children that I will go into 2019 with.

In 2018, from my current children, I received 262 letters!

My best month for letters was March with 30 letters. My slowest month was this month, December, with only 10 letters received.

My champion writers this year were Agness and Zenebu (who coincidentally are very first and very last in my list of kids alphabetically). They wrote me 7 letters each!

I received 6 letters each from: Kelvin, Airin, Tamire, Faith, Jule, and Rebecca.

Each of the following children wrote me 5 letters (it's a lot!): Brian, Ernest, Jhoyra, Ayling, Tern, Dagim, Jhonrex, Marilyn, Rodrigo, Jonathan, Kwizera, Marinelis, Baraka, Lenin, Jhojaira, Yohannis, Muuo, Carolin, Milkias, Bryan, Nicol, and Brisa. 

These next kiddos all wrote me 4 letters each; Mulwa, Nico, Daniel, Maria Eduarda, Joel, Shakilla, Tumbu, Ronaldo, and Lina. 

I heard from these next kiddos 3 times each: Jonatan, Mariela, Daniel, Enmanuel, Hillary, Carlos, Joseph, Jaw-buh-keh, Prity, Lemayian, Emanise, Jhon, Celeste, Muzuro, Keyla, and Nicol.

I received 2 letters each from Vitor, Juan Camilo, Raibel, and Naji. 

Most of these next kiddos are new, so I haven't heard from them much yet. I received just 1 letter each from Hansen, Habtamu, Mirajul, Romli, Dennis, Sevenson, Alice, and Anny. 

Lastly, I have not received letters yet from Shallom, Angeline, Semira, Elvis, or Kevin. I hope I hear from them soon!

2018 was a great letter year! Onto 2019! 

Letters to My Kids: August 2018

I stuck with my Popular Children's Stories theme in August and I shared the story of the Princess and the Pea with my kids.

I myself have always thought this was a funny story when I was a child, because it's just so ridiculous. I hope it made my Compassion kids laugh, as well.

Letters to My Kids: May, June, July 2018

I'm not sure why I can never write these posts on time, each month. You know, like an organized person. But, it seems that the last time I shared about the letters that I have written to my kids was in April. So we'll play catch up today.

My summer schedule has been crazy busy and I haven't found the time or energy to write more than once a month. So, for the last three months, my kiddos haven't heard anything personal about me, but I've been keeping up with my theme for this year, which was to send a popular children's story to my kids each month. I've been getting HUGE responses to these letters. I know that in many cultures around the world, storytelling is considered a huge pastime and I've really been able to see how many my kids enjoy hearing stories. Some of my kids have even shared popular stories themselves. It's been quite an adventure!

The stories I've chosen typically have to be shrunk down, so many of the details we may know and/or love have been omitted, in order for the story to fit in the space of just one letter. But, I made sure to keep the integrity and moral of the stories intact.

You can click on the photo of each letter to make it big enough to read, if you'd like to copy what I wrote.

In May, I told my kids the story of The Ugly Duckling.

In June, I shared the story of Pinocchio. For photos, I just had to choose stills from the movie, as it's one of my favorites. I chose to leave out the part about Pinocchio and his fellow boys spending time on treasure island and being turned into jackasses. I also left out the part about Pinocchio being swallowed by the big fish. I don't want to scare any of the kiddos...

Lastly, in July, I shared the classic story of Jack and the Beanstalk. There just wasn't enough room for me to include every trip that Jack made up to the giant's castle, so I included just the first one and the trip where he tries to steal the golden harp. Such a good story, I think! 

Letters to My Kids: April 2018

Continuing with my goal to share one traditional children's story with my kids each month, in April I shared the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears with my kids. This story proved quite a challenge for me to shorten enough to fit in the space allotted for one letter, but I think I managed to do it and still keep the integrity of the story.

I have really been getting great feedback from my kids about these fun children's stories, which makes it even more fun to keep writing them!

For some reason, no matter how many times I tried to rearrange the photos, they would just not post in order. So I gave up and sent them as you see below. I guess it'll be like a little puzzle for the kids to put the photos in order that they happen in the story. *Shrug*

Letters to My Kids: March 2018

I only managed to write one letter last month, which is, unfortunately, turning into a usual pattern. I know that writing to my kids once a month is still a great amount. That's 12 letters a year, plus responses to the 4-6 letters that I receive from each letter. However, I still prefer to try to write more often. I've already written this month and hope to be able to write again.

Anyway, in March, I continued my idea to share a popular children's story each month and I wrote about Little Red Riding Hood. To make the story fit on the two pages allowed, I had to cut out some details and shrink the original story down a bit, but the essence of the story is still there.

I also found an illustrated version of the story online and cut photos from it. I have already had kids writing back to me about the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff that I wrote just last month. Mail is certainly fast these days!

Letters to My Kids: January & February 2018

Taking on a new teaching job last month has left me writing less than I usually do, which is unfortunate. I've made a plan to get my writing back up to two times a month starting next month.

In January, I wrote about a crazy snowstorm that we had where I live. I realized that most (if not all) of my sponsored kids have never seen snow and probably have no idea that it is possible for it to snow so much that it, essentially, traps people in their homes. They probably also have no idea that machines have been invented for the sole purpose of snow removal. I decided to send some fun photos of some of these vehicles. I sent this letter on January 6th and amazingly, I have already heard back about, with one of my boys saying seeing the trucks was great.

I also included a funny coloring page of a man shivering in the cold!

Starting this month, I got the idea that I want to share a popular children's story with my kids each month. Some of these stories may very well be popular outside of the U.S, as well, but I don't know that for sure. So, this year, my kids will hear 11 children's stories. My teens may be too old for them, but then they can share them with younger siblings, cousins, children at the project, etc. 

I started off by sharing the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I admit, it was a bit of a challenge, as I had to "rewrite" the stories a bit in order for them to be condensed enough to fit in the limited space in a letter. 

I had fun looking up clip art photos of the story. I chose varying styles and types, to really get across the imagery in the story. I included a coloring page too. 

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!