Bem vinda, Idalina!

This isn't the post I was planning to write -- I'm PLANNING to write Bolivia posts -- but my Compassion family just keeps growing. On New Year's Eve -- the day of my last post, in fact -- I was assigned 16-year-old Jean Bosco from Rwanda as a correspondent child, my third. Today, March 20, I received his first letter to me. He thanked me for Christmas money (donations made to the Christmas fund are all pooled so that every child gets a gift, whether or not their sponsor sent money or not), with which he bought rabbits. I'll ask him about the rabbits in the next letter. But my really exciting news, and the reason for the strange looking words in this post's title, is that today I was assigned 12-year-old Idalina from Brazil as a 4th correspondent child. Usually, 3 correspondent children are the limit, but Compassion asked for correspondents for 150 more kids last week, and I requested a girl from either Honduras, India, or Brazil, any of which would be a new country for me. In my mind, Brazil was the last choice, but as soon as I read Idalina's info I got really excited to write her, so excited in fact that I still can't think of the right words. I'm going to sleep on it and see what happens tomorrow. I know that part of my nervousness is my own self-consciousness about my rusty Portuguese, which I haven't spoken with a Brazilian in years (Portuguese comes in Brazilian and Portuguese flavors, like US and UK English.) Another part is something more akin to "I can't believe I get to love on this girl." Something just tells me we are going to have a fantastic relationship. :)