Confusing Letter From Sponsored Child Cancel Se requiere un título

I was recently so excited to receive photos of my two sponsored girls with purchases from their EG, which made them seem more “real.” But just now received a letter from 8 year old Janeth which seems to be replying to a letter I did not write.
"Dear Mary
I hope that you are doing well. I am in good health thanks to God, …… I am glad to hear that you went on vacation and you have met new places and you heard those waterfalls and I can only imagine. It is nice that you went to both places, I am glad that you can share your hobbies with me through pictures. Thank you for your letter and for telling me about your beautiful moments, goodbye”
In one of my letters I talked about a trip where I fished in a lake. But I didn’t go to two places and didn’t see or hear a waterfall. And I’ve never sent pics of my hobbies. This really seems to be more than just an inaccurate translation issue, and definitely not helping our relationship to seem more real. Was there a letter mixup? Have other sponsors experienced this?

Could it be a letter to a previous sponsor? 

Maybe?  The poor girl had 3 sponsors before me.  I wish this issue would be looked into.

I bet that's what it is.. I have never had that happen. With three previous sponsors there could have been a mix up along the line. 

Hi! wow, that is confusing. Did you reach out to the Care Team to ask that they look into it for you? 

Yes, thanks!  I phoned this afternoon and spoke with Bert. She was wonderful and said she would have it checked out and let me know when they figure out what went wrong.

Letters sometimes take a long time to get to a child. When I write letters to my sponsor kids, sometimes it is 6 months before I hear back from them. She possibly could have recently received a letter from a previous sponsor and was writing back. She's only 8 so she may have gotten confused.

Remember they can only respond to their sponsors letters once every 90 days. 

Really hoping I’ll eventually find out why I received a letter that didn’t make sense.

@guatemama: I checked with Bert and we are still awaiting a reply from the staff in Guatemala. She'll reach out just as soon as she hears back from them. Thank you for your continued patience. 

I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I find it hard to write to a boy I'm sponsoring as the letters are clearly written by an adult, the language and manner are not representative of a 10-year old boy at all. So my assumption is that the family aren't providing letters (for whatever reason that may be and that's perfectly fine) - but that some kind soul at the local office is writing on behalf of the children to fill the gap. 

What's hard is that you don't KNOW. This could be a child genius with the spirit of a 1950s movie star (that's the style), and I'm not providing a response. But how do you when it feels like a sham. I'd much rather, personally, that someone from the center just explains who they are and provides whatever high level update they have. 

Hi Lisa- you might just give CI a ring and ask. If the letter is written by a volunteer or another family member that that info is easily available. I’ve had a couple of kids who I could _not_ believe their letters- be it being wise beyond their years, the soul of a poet, differences in cultural expectations surrounding correspondence or just florid translation, there are many reasons your sponsor child might not sound as expected. At 9 one of mine writes like a novelist, with detail that is very surprising. So, you never know! 

@Lisa_57e5e: I mean you're basically jumping from "it's not the child writing the letters" to "the letters are written by a stranger and CI is covering it up"... How do you know it's ​not a family member writing the letters? What do you think would be the difference if the letter was written by a volunteer as opposed to the child's mom, for example?

Even the children who do write their own letters probably get lots of help from an adult - especially up to a certain age. Of course the letter won't sound like it was written by a child with zero assistance. I find it hard to imagine someone NOT helping an 8 or 10 year old child to write a letter to a stranger in a different country.

For years, I sponsored a child whose mother wrote all her letters, but signing them with the name of the child. I could tell and I hoped the child would write as she got older, but she never did (and yes, it was frustrating). At the age of 13, she left the program. Reason? She refused to write one of the two letters the children are required to write every year.

That's a rare situation, though... I think in most cases it's much more likely to be an age/confidence thing.

So interesting! Thank you for sharing that! I just got my first letter from Eyprid in Guatemala and the person didn’t identify themselves but wrote as the child. Out of all my sponsorships Eyprid is the only case where the person writing hasn’t identified themselves and is writing as the child. It will be interesting to see where this takes us. She is a 3 so it will awhile of writing to a mystery person unless it eventually it will come out. Should I even bother asking ? :) I don’t want to make the person uncomfortable.

Because of new processes developed during the pandemic, we are no longer requiring them to travel to the community center to write letters like they had to in the before times. Letters can now be dictated over the phone by the children (or their parent/guardian) to someone at the community center who will dictate their message into a letter for their sponsor. Sometimes the children will write a physical letter and a parent will take a picture of it on their cell phone (if they have one) and send the letter electronically to our staff that way. When a child is too young to write for themselves, a parent or guardian will typically write on the child’s behalf.
As always, if you ever have any questions or concerns about letters you receive from your sponsored child, please contact our Care Team.

That's really interesting - I will contact CI, see if they can find out. I'd love to have some communication with someone on the child's side, as it's great to hear how they are. Perhaps I should just write a letter to the child rather than thinking of it as a response to the last letter. If that makes sense :)

I know, right? I love meaningful connections and am tempted to as who's writing it - but the letters could be opened directly by the child and that would be very odd. Maybe I could write two letters in one :)

I've gotten some weird update letters as well, sometimes referring to the sponsored child using ​different pronouns (like she instead of he - maybe a translation issue?) and once signed with a different mother's name than we were provided. I've been a sponsor for ten years, but I sometimes sense the letter part is not authentic.

I would agree the incorrect pronouns could be due to translation, especially when it's Spanish to English. Please contact the Care Team with the confusion of the mother writing. They can look into the who and why for you. 

Thanks for replying.  Clears up some confusions for sure. 😇❤️

I have exactly the same feeling.
The happiness I felt when I received the personal letters have gone.The previous letters were with some errors in spelling and grammar errors, and it was just charming.
I am not a native English speaker, but the last years (I know the pandemic is part of it), there is no doubt the letters are either written by adults speaking perfect English, or they use some sort of AI programs to write them. There is absolutely no personal feel in the letters.
The joy receiving letters have the last year or so changed to annoyance!
If this is the future, just send me an update-letter about "all my children", instead of these clearly fake letters.

Oh yes, I have contacted CI, and received non-satisfactory replies.

Rgds
Sailor