Hi Candy! I do not work for CI, but I would recommend giving it a little more time. I know CI is working very hard to iron out glitches in the new system. I wrote to my child on 4/12, and had the "in translation" status the entire time until yesterday. This letter now shows in my account as a normal sent letter like all of mine before the new system went in place. If that means my child received my letter yesterday....then that's amazing that it only took 2 weeks!!! CI's priority is our kiddos, and I have faith our letters will go through the new system just fine. Keep writing!

Hi Candy! It looks like your letters to Stefhany, Karla, and William are all going through the system just fine. Like Keeli mentioned, we are working on bugs in the system, but your letters are taking the happy path! Praise the Lord! That letter may have taken a little extra time to start moving through the system, but I show that William and Stefhany's letters are now both in translation. Karla's letter zoomed right through the system and has already been printed out at the country office and put into the box for her project :).

Hey! I promised I'd give this a while before I asked. I know y'all are being bombarded with questions right now. I have a letter from Janelle that was "submitted" 4-8-2016 and has not seemed to make any progress since then. I sent her a letter yesterday and it almost immediately went from "submitted" to "in translation". It seems like the letter from Janelle should have changed by now... but I understand some countries are still training. Is it possible to check on the letter?

I was also curious about letters I sent to Janelle and Emicah about 24 hours before the new system went live on april 11. I can't see those letters progress so I was wondering if they are being sent the old way or the new way. Thanks so much!!

Jamie, the same situation that Kristen's letters are experiencing is going on with your letters as well. The ones that have not moved are because the system didn't recognize your correspondent children in your account when we tried to send the letters through the first time. Manual work is being done to send them through now though :).

Dear Sarah in Christ'name. Praise the Lord oncegain thanks. I respect and honour you all on the behalf of God. And Lets me a little about me I am John from Myanmar. Two year one'year back doing Orphanage Children's and I do not have any sponsor I was very struggle financial to feed the orphanage children's so, i would likes to help by sponsor. I was very hard work with for the Lord. I will pray for you. Hope in new day. God bless.

The system shows I've had a letter from Micaela in translation since 4/6. Also, my letter to Joshua says it has a problem, since 4/17. Should I just write another to him? And finally, my letter to Sara has said "just received" since 4/13. I just wish there was something we could do on our end to help push some of these letters through a little faster. My letters to my kids in Ghana seem to go through lightening fast.

Hi Rachel! I am so sorry that Micaela's letter has been in translation that long. The Guatemala translators might just have a lot of letters to work through, reviewing that the translation done digitally is correct. It should move through the system soon though! Sara and Joshua's letters were having problems because they are linked to your account as correspondents. The system wasn't recognizing those relationships so we had to employ a fix for it. The letters before that fix are still having to be reviewed and manually processed, but they will get to the kids. So glad to hear the ones to your Ghana kids are going through quickly :)!

Since this seems to have become a little bit of a bug-checking post, could I get you to look at a couple of letters to/from my kids?

First, I wrote to all of my kids on 4/26 but the letter does not show up in the conversation history for Marlen, Predilien, or Irene. I got emails the day I wrote them that all had gone through but am kind of surprised they haven't shown up by now (especially since Marlen is a sponsored child, not a correspondent as I know there were some issues with them).

I also have flags saying I have two unread letters from Marlen on the 'write your child screen'. When I hover over the message it shows a complete letter from 3/18 and two letters in translation from 2/24. However, when I go to the 'communication history' page it just shows a letter from 2/24 in translation.

I know it's a new system and don't mind the letters taking a little longer, just want to make sure they're actually getting where they need to go.

On a side note, I saw that Marlen's picture updated recently as well and would love a jpeg copy of that if you don't mind.

Dear Susan in Christ name. Praise the Lord oncegain and thanks. I respect you on the behalf of God. It is about orphanage Children's. I had been start two year back ago. And It is very difficult to feed them only by faith doing. But now i need to help them the orphanage children. I will pray for you. Hope in new day. God bless.

Thanks so much for looking into this Susan! Good to know that the letters seem to have all gone through.

I haven't been able to access either of the letters from Marlen online. However, a copy of a letter dated March 15 arrived in the mail today, which I suspect is the same one labeled 3/18 on the website. So, that one clearly exists somewhere it's just not showing up on my online account for some reason.

Thanks for sending Marlen's new photo as well. I can't believe she's grown up so much!

Emily, would you be able to provide our tech team with screenshots of what you are seeing? If so, you are welcome to either post here or email them to socialmedia@compassion.com. They just want a better idea of what is going on here so they can fully troubleshoot.

So Marlen's letter from 3/18 did show up on the 'write your child' page and I could read it from there. It is the same as the one I got in the mail yesterday, so that's good. However, it did not transfer over to the 'communication history' page. The conversation history just shows the 2/24 letter in translation (which is also still shown on the write your child page.) I can't seem to find the 3/18 letter again but here's screenshots of what I can currently see:

'write your child''conversation history'

So now it basically looks like I just have a letter in translation from 2/24 with no record of the letter from 3/18 after I read it earlier.

Since we are on this topic, I too am having bugs. Panadda's letter has had a problem since April 20. Tuyishimire's letter has been in translation since April 20. It says I have a letter from Luis on April 16, but it won't let me view it. And I have had a letter from Yudith in translation since April 23

Hi Christy! Panadda's letter is going to go through the system. We had an issue with letters to and from correspondent children when we opened the new letter system. The program wasn't recognizing a connection between correspondent sponsors and their children, which caused the letters to need a manual review. The issue has been fixed now, but any letters that were pulled out for that exception do still have to be reviewed manually. There are a lot of them, but we are working as quickly as possible to send those through. Having letters in translation for that long is pretty normal. Though a digital translation can take just a few minutes, we have human translators that still need to check over the letters to make sure the translation is correct. These translators handle tons of letters a day and are still getting used to this new system as well. It looks like the letter from Luis has finished its translation, but isn't actually ready to view on your account yet. Does it have a message on it that says "Translation Complete"? Rest assured that your letters are going to your children and their letters are coming to you. It's hard to wait when you can actually see where the letters are though, isn't it? I'm chomping at the bit for a few of mine that are still in translation as well :).

I have wrote 2 letters, one on 23 April 2016 and one on 5 May 2016. They both are not shown on history at all. So I send a new letter photo today, before proceeding, I saw a message saying last letter is sent on 4 May 2016. After sending this letter photo today, I check on history and I saw it in translation. Just this letter is shown, the previous two are not appearing. Please let me know if the previous two letters, are they in translation and will they be shown on history after the glitch fixed?

Yes, I did received the confirmation emails of all 3 letters i wrote. I am told the first 2 letters are not showing because of the error or glitch. So I just want to know if the first 2 are saved and in translation?

Hope, both of these letters encountered errors in our system and need to be okayed before they can be sent. This is why they are not showing up in your communication history. Please don't worry though. As soon as a staff member is able to go in and manually send your letters they will go through just fine. They are saved in our system. The most recent letter you sent went through without any issue and is currently in translation. I am so sorry for the delay in and inconvenience.

Hi William! I'm sorry for the delay as I know you're eager to hear from your kiddos :). Please rest assured that your letters are not lost and are on record. They're just still in translation waiting to be finished and I pray that they complete for you very soon! Once they've been fully translated, you'll be able to view them in your My Account. I'm very sorry for the delay.

My account says I have a letter coming from Micaela. It had said it was in translation for about a month and now it says it was just received by the local office. It appears to be moving backward on the progress scale.

Also, of the two letters I've written Joshua, one went from "has a problem" to"under review" and the other more recent one doesn't show up at all.

The way my letters to my kids seem to just sit in translation for weeks, coupled with the lack of any communication from most of my kids lately is extremely discouraging. I feel like I should take a break for a few months while Compassion works out this new system, but I don't want my kids to feel abandoned by me. Still, if my letters aren't getting through to them they will probably feel that way anyway.

Can we get some sort of general update on how the new system is and/or isn't working and what we should expect at this point? When will it all be working as advertised? Would it be helpful if we wrote fewer letters now for Compassion to try to process?

Rachel, Micaela's letter is currently in translation and moving forward. It may just be waiting for a translator to review it before moving onto the next step. I know it's hard to wait for these letters, especially when you can see them for so long. Remember that translation can take a while, even for someone to just review it because there are quite a lot of letters going at once. They are being worked on, but it takes time. The letter you wrote to Joshua that says it is under review had to be manually handled because of the issue we were having with the connection between correspondent children and sponsors. That has been fixed, but there were a lot of letters that had to go the manual route because of it. That letter will still get to him. The other letter you wrote to Joshua was delivered and is now waiting for someone from his project to pick it up and take it back to him :). We are aware that letters are disappearing from sponsor's accounts right after they are written and are also working to fix that issue. Rest assured that your letters will be sent to your child as long as you get the confirmation emails. I'd highly encourage you not to stop writing to your children because of these issues. I know it's frustrating, but the letters are getting through to your kids. There is quite a list of the current issues being worked on by our IT team, one that is honestly too large for us to post every single issue. We are receiving updates and fixes more frequently as the teams are able to correct the bugs, but we do not have a specific timeline for when everything will be fixed. I know you are frustrated and hanging on to this as best you can.

I don't work for Compassion; I'm just another sponsor, but I would urge everyone to be patient. I work for a company that makes amazing education software--but when a new version is released there are ALWAYS tons of bugs. Unfortunately, there is just no way to anticipate or test for every glitch that is going to arise with a new technology release--there are so many moving parts that almost the only thing you can do is let it go and hope for the best, and then fix things as people report them, which is what Compassion seems to be doing now. I've seen the letters on my account slowly get better and better (I have one from Ghana that's been "in translation" since March!), but when some of my letters from kiddos "finally" came through, it was still way faster than the old system.

Kudos to Compassion for even letting us see the steps "submitted," "in translation," etc.... It would have been easy for them to just keep letters from the kids hidden behind a dark curtain until they magically appear in our inboxes, and they would avoid having to answer all these complaints!--but instead they've chosen to give us a peak into the process.

There are videos and photo essays out there showing the mountains of letters that Compassion processes--and how cool is that!?--but it also explains why there might be some growing pains when implementing a new system like this. We should just consider ourselves "early adopters" and "beta testers" and enjoy the ride!

Hi! I have just received an email from Compassion saying that I have received a letter from Jimmy (CO). However, I can only see the front page - not the back page, and the letter is on the back page - I can see it showing through the scan of the front page but can't read it. Can you check for me that it is there please, thank you! Also, just for information - I received this email saying that there was a letter from Jimmy, but I have found other new letters, e.g. from Eduardo (BO) without receiving an email. Having the emails comes through is really helpful as it saves having to check through each child for new letters.The new system is great though :)Thank you! Ceri 3615581PS Has my sponsor number changed? On the scanned letters my sponsor number is 02455873

Hi Ceri! I don't see that you have a child in Colombia. Do you mean Jimmy in Guatemala? When I pulled your letter up, I do see that the scan of the translation bled into the first page of your boys letter. I'm sorry it isn't showing for you! I'm sending you his full letter in an email.

We're working on issues with our email functionality so that sponsors receive a notice when a new letter comes in (if you have set your preferences this way). Thanks for your patience and I'm glad that this feature will be helpful for you! We're excited for it to start functioning properly!

You don't need to memorize or keep track of a new number :). Your sponsor number is the same. The number saw on the scanned letter is so that we can track it through our new system and link it to you. You can disregard it as it's just for internal processing.