Letters from Taryn

As you may know, we sponsor a child (Taryn Chichina) in Kenya through Compassion International.  We enjoy receiving letters from our child.  She is such a sweet girl and is doing so well.  In her last letter, she stated that her new favorite sport is running- a girl after my own heart.

As the kids get older, we are going to try to get them more involved with writing to Taryn.  We think this is a good way for them to learn about life in other parts of the world.  This is also a good way to get them started in mission work.  The Compassion program has a mobile "experience" that travels around the country.  This group sets up a series of rooms that are re-creations of the environments in which some of the sponsored children are raised.  The Compassion Experience is free the visit.  A few weeks ago this program came to our area, so we decided to check it out.  It was wonderful.  When you check in, you are given a headset hooked to an ipod.  As you move through the different "scenes" of a child's life, you hear the story of this kid in his/her own words.  We walked through the life of a girl in Uganda, and it was very moving.  After we finished the kids wanted to go through again, so we did the walk through for a boy from Bolivia.  I think what Olivia and Owen took away from this experience was a little bit of understanding that not everyone in this world is as fortunate as they are.  Hopefully this will lead to future conversations about helping others who are less fortunate.