Gift Guidelines

You haven’t seen excitement until you see a Chain of Love child receive a gift or a piece of mail. Your sponsored child will welcome letters or gifts, but please remember the following guidelines.

Mailing letters and small packages

  • Letters and small packages (never money) should be sent directly to your child in Brazil.
  • Please clearly mark the name of your sponsored child on the item.
  • Keep letters short because they must be translated.
  • Include photos of your pets, church, garden, home, family, etc. The children love photos from their sponsors.
  • Please make sure your parcel weighs less than one kg. Sometimes we are charged for parcels greater than one kg, especially during the holiday season.
  • Allow three to six months for surface mail and three weeks for air mail packages to arrive.
  • Our address is:

Chain of Love Homes, CP 2040
Novo Hamburgo
RS 93.511–970
Brazil

What can you send to your child?

  • Sports equipment
  • Clothes, baseball caps, sunglasses
  • Puzzles
  • Music CDs (Yes, English is OK)
  • School/Art supplies
  • Colouring books

What should you NOT send to your child?

  • The children speak Portuguese, so don’t send books written in English, English games, or things that require instructions to be read.
  • Please don’t send expensive things to your sponsored child. These parcels are much more likely to be charged a fee, and your child may not understand the value of what is sent.
  • Toothpaste, soap, Imperial tape measures
  • DVDs due to region coding
  • Valentine cards (Valentine’s day is only observed by adults in Brazil)
  • Things that require batteries unless batteries are included
  • Cash in any currency

What about Christmas presents?

More than tangible Christmas presents, we prefer to give the children at Chain of Love an experience. For this reason we encourage sponsors to send their child a small gift and also send money designated for their child as indicated below. All Christmas money is pooled and used to send Chain of Love children to a Christian camp for a week and to give the families a few weeks of holiday at the beach, usually in January or February, our hottest months. You will receive a personalized thank-you note from your sponsored child for this gift.

How should you send money?

PLEASE, PLEASE, NEVER SEND MONEY IN ANY FORM TO OUR BRAZIL ADDRESS. We cannot deal with it here and must send it back to North America for processing. Also, we don’t want postal employees to know money is being sent to our address. Since some mail mysteriously gets opened, we don’t want to risk having money disappear.

  • Money gifts should be sent to the NAB home office in Canada or the US and be clearly designated for your sponsored child. Chain of Love works with the housemother, to determine what your child needs or wants. Many children get clothes or shoes, or take their friends and family for pizza.
  • To send money gifts by electronic fund transfer or credit card, contact Lisa Dieterich at North American Baptist Conference: 916–932-1222, or ldieterich@nabconf.org.
  • To give online, go to the NAB website
  • Checks may be made payable in the currency of your residence to North American Baptist Conference and mailed to:

North American Baptist Conference
PO Box 1910
Folsom, CA 95763–1910
USA

(or)

North American Baptist Conference
PO Box 57235 Station A
Toronto ON M5W 5M5
CANADA

Thank you for your consideration. More questions? Please send us an e-mail at chainoflovehomes@gmail.com