"The African Letter " Sounds like a murder mystery or something.

The other day I was sorting our mail-we sort my Dad's office mail from our home mail-and I came across a letter addressed to me. It was a small envelope, there was no return address, and about five stamps labeled "Burkina Faso" were on it. Huh. The address was handwritten. I wondered if it was from a missionary? Naw, I never get that kind of letter. An old pen-pal writing me again? It couldn't be that, my two pen-pals I've had were both from Thailand. Well, I guess they could be in Burkina Faso now, but it seemed kind of unlikely. Then I figured out what it was. "It's Anthrax!" I yelled, and Aaron grabbed the envelope and held it up to the light in mock fear. No such luck, we weren't going to die after all. Everything was as it should be. The only contents of the envelope were a few sheets of paper.

This makes me remember something from a few years ago when the Anthrax scare was, um, a scare. It was a crisp morning in fall, actually that's not important but I put it in for effect. I don't think it did much for the story, though. Anyway, a bunch of my family was standing around the table as we sorted through the mail. When the mail comes we all hover about the person sorting it, ready to pounce on World or Anthropologie or Readers Digest. Mama, who happened to be the "sorter", picked up an envelope from some unknown company in some random Asian country. It's not quite clear how the idea got into her head, but somehow she decided the envelope contained Anthrax. She had us leave it on the steps outside, then we all had to scrub our hands in bleach water. We were going to wait till Daddy got home to see what he thought about the letter, but it flew away so we never found out what really was in it. I think it was a missionary group asking for money. I bet they never thought it would be mistaken for some bio-chemical-whatever they're called.

Back to "The African Letter." I opened the envelope, took it out, and was really surprised to see a letter ALL IN FRENCH! Eh wot? I could translate a few words here and there but not nearly enough to get the gist of the letter. I called Bria, but she was working at Fairwood, and there was no way I could read the letter to her. (My French accent is atrocious) Aaron worked on it for most of the afternoon, and managed to translate most of it.

It turns out it was a letter from a girl I sent a shoebox to through Operation Christmas Child. Every year our church participates in Operation Christmas Child, which is organized by Samaritan's Purse. People fill a shoebox with small fun gifts for a child in a particular age group. They wrap the box and drop it off at an Operation Christmas Child box drop off place, where the volunteers who work there send them out to all over the world to needy, poverty stricken people. For the past few years I've filled a shoebox at each Christmas, and it has become one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season. I usualy make a box for a girl in the 5-8 age group, filling it with hair accessories, play jewelry, hard candy, and art and school supplies.

I filled a box as usual last year, had it dropped off at the right place, then promptly forgot about it. I'll post the translated letter once I get the complete thing back from Bria who is working on it.

From what Aaron and I translated, the letter was from a five year old girl saying she was sorry she hadn't written sooner, she thought I was the nicest girl in the world, she can't wait for me to send her more presents, and she is five years old. Saying her age twice seemed to be a very five-oldish touch to the letter. I think it must have been written by her mother, because the handwriting was definitely not that of an average kid her age. Maybe they have really good handwriting in Burkina Faso.





And as to the Red Sox game, yes we lost, but we had an awesome time there. Fenway seemed so huge and small at the same time to me. To read reports of it visit Aaron's and Ryan's blogs. Here are the people who ended up going to the game: Daddy, Bria, Aaron, Ryan, me, Doug, Elizabeth, Katherine, Uncle Dave, Ben, Andrew B., and Katie A. It was such a party!!!