Always with the letters . . .

We can't find a way to effectively express just how important receiving a letter is to the kids living in the orphanages. You have to see it with your own eyes. I know we make this point a lot, but we do so because it matters. We wouldn't belabor the point if it wasn't really important. The letters give the kids a connection to someone else, someone who shows that he or she cares enough to take the time to write a letter. If we could pinpoint one thing that these kids need (not that there's ever just one thing, but hypothetically...) it would be a secure and healthy attachment to other people. While having an American pen pal won't solve this issue, it can be one experience that helps them learn how to have a relationship with someone else. After all, no one is an island. We all need other people to help us know who we are and how we should live our lives.

That said, we know from experience that it can be difficult to keep up with writing letters consistently. It becomes especially difficult when your letters are not reciprocated with letters from the child. It can be hard to know what questions to ask. And you can only tell them so many times about where you live and what you do for a living and what your pets are named. We keep challenging ourselves to be creative, just sharing in a paragraph or two what we did on a particular day or writing about an interesting trip we took.

Now that we have a trip to Sovietsk planned for this fall, we would love to tell them that we're coming and ask them what they would like to do for fun while we're there. That's not allowed, though, because if the trip didn't work out for any reason the kids could be very disappointed--something they certainly don't need more of in their lives. But we can talk about the last time we were there and all of the fun memories we made. We can tell them that we miss them and that we think about them often. I think I'll write Sergey a note.

(For letter writing tips, look along the right side of this blog.)