Thursday, October 23, 2008

Pen Pals

Take time today to write your sponsored child! Your letters will establish a special relationship between you and the child you sponsor.

Ms. Abbi Crutchfield,

How are you doing? Praise God I am fine. Thank you so much for all your support to me. Happy New Year and Merry Christmas. I got your letter and 2 photos. I am so happy. I am doing well and I am happy. My family is also happy. Bye for now.

Keep your letters simple. Emphasize things you have in common.

Dear Friend,

Thank you for writing me! You sound very happy. I am happy too.

Send pictures of yourself and your family.

Here is another picture of my sister. People say we look alike. Here is my mother. She is white like the people who send you my letters. Some people in America think I am from Ethiopia, but you probably don't think I look like anyone you know.

Send postcards of where you live and places you've visited.

Here is a postcard of my home state: Indiana. You are looking at a theme park called Indiana Beach. A theme park is a place for people to eat food that is bad for them and get on rides that may kill them. It is fun.

Flat paper items are the only things we can forward. Items such as jewelry are usually confiscated by customs officials in other countries.

Please enjoy these stickers shaped like fruit. They are called "scratch-n-sniff", and are made of chemicals to simulate the smell of food. You may want to, but you should not eat them. In America we are obsessed with food. Our soap, shampoo and lotion smells like fruits and spices and chocolate. We make candles that smell like food too. We don't use candles for light anymore. We use them for decor. I am running out of room on my card.

Please do not send sexually explicit materials or comments.

Remember I told you I am getting married to a man named Luke? We look forward to being married because then we will have more time to...write lots of letters and smell lots of stickers together. I am happy.

Your friend,
Ms. Abbi Crutchfield

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Ms. Crutchfield,

Thank you so much for your letter even though I did find it patronizing that you didn't think I would know not to eat the damn sticker. What? You don't think I realize that scratch n sniff is a just a sticker that has been treated with a microfragrance coating through the process of micro-encapsulation? (FYIWhen you scratch the sticker, tiny micro-capsules are ruptured which than excrete the aroma of the chemical compounds).

Christ, you Americans really piss me off with your patronizing. Oh, oh, is that what marriage is about, sending off stickers to a child from a third world country?

Petulantly yours,
a "foreign" friend

Anonymous said...

Oh, how can your humble readers sponsor a child?

Abbi Crutchfield said...

Hello again my young friend,

I'm sorry I told you not to eat the stickers. I wasn't sure about your diet, because every time I think of children in need I think of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, when they shoo flies off of what looks like gray scrambled eggs.

Nurturing self-righteousness and masking guilt caused by an imbalance of justice in the universe,
Ms. Abbi Crutchfield

Abbi Crutchfield said...

@ Chris:

So glad you asked!

Sponsoring a child through...
World Vision
Compassion International
SaveTheChildren.org
PlanUSA.org
Children International
"World's largest orphan charity": SOS Children

And more options via Google...

Mo Diggs said...

Dear Abbi,

Thanks for the stickers. As your son, I assumed you would give me some money but I guess American mothers and Rwandan "orphans" are sd different as [apple scratch and sniff stickers] and [orange sns stickers]

Abbi Crutchfield said...

In some countries, stickers are as good as money young man. Actually just in Japan.

PS: Interested in sponsoring a child through a non-religious and non-political development organization?