Dear Diego,

Thank you for telling me about your family. I will pray for them!

I’m not married yet and I don’t have any children. I’m still waiting for the right woman. Sometimes it takes a while to fall in love.

I do have lots of young cousins and friends. My grandmother’s youngest brother had three sons, and all of them have children. I’ll include some pictures of them.

Every November, on the fourth Thursday of the month, Americans celebrate a holiday called Thanksgiving. We gather with our families and eat a meal. I think I’ve showed you some of the fun food my cousins bring to eat. Several members of my family have young children, and I try to play with them at the family gathering to give their parents a moment to rest. We made up a game about tossing a ball into a jar. We also played with a construction toy. It was about using colored plastic screws to make a picture.

My friend Justin is 10. He likes to play sports. We also play video games together. I have to work hard to learn these games. When I was young, video games were simpler because computers were slow and only had a small amount of memory. Now, computers are so fast and have so much memory that games are almost like making a movie. You move a person around in a game by using a controller. It has lots of buttons and two sticks that you move with your thumbs. One stick makes the person walk and one changes where he looks. It takes a lot of practice.

I know too many grownups who love their children and grandchildren, but never sit down and play with them. That’s not good for any of them. Jesus even had to teach his disciples to play with children. In Luke 18, he says to the grownups, “Let the children come to me. The Kingdom of God is theirs, too.” So I don’t mind sitting on the ground and playing silly games with children.

— Garrett Mitchener