Martha Flores from Mexico The story I am going to tell you about happened 11 months ago, in December of 1999. Christmas was coming, and all the little children were happy because they are going to receive a lot of presents. Every December the most important radio station in my city of Guamuchil in Sinaloa, Mexico makes a program in which all the poor children of Guamuchil can send letters asking for some Christmas presents. The radio station reads all the letters that they can on the air. When they are reading the letters, listeners can call and say they want to be the sponsor for that child. Then they have to buy the presents that the child wants for Christmas. One day I was listening to the radio when they started reading the letters of the poor children. As I listened, I felt that I had to do something for those children, so that afternoon I called four of my friends, and I asked them if they wanted to help a poor child. They answered, "Yes, of course, but how can we do that? " I started to explain to them how we could do that. When I finished explaining, we were very excited. That day we started to work on out idea. In the afternoon, we listened to the radio station for about 4 hours looking for the child that we wanted to help. We listened to a lot of letters, and we wanted to help all the poor children, but we only could help one little child because we didn't have much money. Finally, after a long time, we listened to a letter from a child called Juan Sanchez. In his letter this little child asked for some blankets because the winter was so cold, and his family didn't have money to buy blankets, he also asked for some clothes and a pair of shoes for his little sister. He said in his letter that he wanted to help his father to fix the house because his house was in a bad condition, and every night he and all his family felt cold because his house didn't have windows. After we listened to the whole letter, we thought that Juan Sanchez was the child that all of us wanted to help. We called the radio station and we told them that we wanted to help that child. After that, my friends and I started to think about how we could collect all the money that we needed for buy all the things that poor Juanito needed. We started to do different things. We made cakes, and then we sold all the cakes. We got some money for that. We also started to work as baby-sitters. We sold candies too, and we did a lot of things to collect all the money we needed. Finally, after 5 days, we had collected a lot of money, and we bought a lot of things for Juanito. We bought two blankets for him, a pair of shoes for his little sister, some clothes for him, and some items to fix his house. We also bought some food for him and his family, and we bought some toys for Juanito because we wanted to give him a little surprise. Finally, on December 22 the radio station made a big party in which all the children that asked for help were invited, and also all the people that helped these children. We went to the party. I was so excited and happy and my friends were too. In the party we met Juanito, his mom and his little sister. First, we played some games with Juanito, and we talked with him. He was so nice and a really cute boy. After that, we gave Juanito all the presents that we had for him, and also we gave him the surprise that we had for him. When he opened all the presents, he was excited and happy, and my friends and I were too. At the end, Juanito gave us a letter, and we read it at home. The letter was so beautiful and in this letter Juanito told us: "Thanks for all your help I really appreciate it, God bless you". That day was one of the most beautiful days in my life, and I learned something important from that day. It is that giving help to the people that need it is one of the most beautiful things that you can do because this makes you feel good and happy and also makes the persons that you are helping happy. This December I hope that I can help another poor child. I really want to do that, and I think that I'm going to keep doing that all my life.
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