Geography and Our Sponsor Child

This year we are learning about Africa in our geography lessons. Which has been a lot of fun since we're already "in" Africa with studying about Ancient Egypt for our history lessons. We are on Winter Break right now, no formal lessons until January. But last night I found a very sweet book at our church library "Beatrice's Goat", and decided I couldn't pass it up! I would use it as a review of our geography lessons AND use it as an opportunity to introduce the boys to the Ugandan child we've sponsored for around 8 years now.

N and I started sponsoring Emanuel before we had children. There was a big push at our church with hundreds of sponsor profiles to choose from, because our church (2,100+) was going to sponsor an entire village. This was during a very trying point in our marriage, as we were dealing with infertility and pregnancy loss at the time. Emanuel's little face popped out at me and called my heart. He was born on our wedding day, so I thought it was meant to be. :-) So we picked up his profile packet, signed up and have been sponsoring him ever since. We have watched him turn from a tiny, chubby, sad-faced little 4 year old into a lanky, ornery smiling 12 year old. 

For whatever reason, I've just never found the "right" time to introduce this part of our lives to our very own biological children. But upon seeing "Beatrice's Goat" at the library, I knew it was time and the book was going to be the perfect tool. So that is what we did today. Read the book, talked about life in Africa and how hard it is, and then introduced Emanuel and some of his life details. JK was immediately interested, because all of Emanuel's updates explain how much he loves soccer and JK loves soccer! We decided to send a little package to Emanuel, including some of the details of both JK and B's lives. We plan on gathering some small gifts and plan on sending a care package. This will be the first time we've reached out personally to our sponsor child, so I am a little nervous and a little excited. I'm thrilled the boys are involved with it!

We typed up a little questionnaire for the boys, which asked them the same questions that Emanuel gets asked to send us personal details: favorite game, what does he do with his time, what are his chores, dreams, etc.