It's Official!

We have an orphanage! Over the last few weeks, I've been working with the guys from Red Letters Campaign (RLC) and Children's HopeChest to find an orphanage that we could be involved with. Right before Christmas we got everything nailed down. We will be working with Moses' House orphanage in Ethiopia. I only have few details right now but I know there are 70 children there in need of sponsors. Right now, we have 11 sponsors and RLC has 20 other sponsors. So we have almost half of the children sponsored!

If you are interested in sponsoring a child, please let me know. I have been emailing the people who I know are interested. If you have not received an email from me and are interested, please either leave a comment on the blog or drop me a line using the 'Contact Me' widget on the right side of the blog. I'll be posting more information about Moses' House as I get it. Again, thank you for your willingness to make a difference.

Red Letters

This video gives some good information about Ethiopia and sponsorship from some of the folks at Red Letters Campaign. Please take a few minutes to watch the video and pray about how you can be involved.





Check back in a coupe of days for information about the orphanage we will be working with. The name of orphanage is Moses' Home. I'm gathering information right now and hope to have a new post very soon!

Just Getting Started

I'm sorry it's been a while since I posted. I've been trying to figure out what to post about. I thought I would start out by letting you know where we stand on sponsors. Currently, we have 5 commitments to sponsor orphans in Ethiopia. How cool is that! However, we still have room for more people to be involved. I've added a sponsor tracker on the right side of the blog so you can keep up with our progress.

I know things are tight for a lot of families these days and I'm not saying you should take food off the table to be a sponsor but please pray about what you can do to help. Brea and I have talked about how much we can do. Right now, we are considering sponsoring 5 children. After a lot of prayer, we have decided to re-allocate some of our tithe to support orphans. I'm not saying that anybody else should do this but it is what we feel God wants us to do. All we're doing is giving back to God (whether it is to our church or to His work in Africa).

As we get closer to Christmas, please take a few minutes and ask God what He would have you do to help those in need. When you're trying to decide what to buy for the person on your list who has everything, take a minute and think about what you can give to a child in Ethiopia who has nothing. Even a small gift will make a huge difference in an orphans life. They deserve to have someone who cares about them. Someone who will pray for them. Someone who will write them letters. Someone who will love them. YOU can be that someone.

What Next

I wanted to clarify how things will work for everybody. I am just trying to determine if there is enough interest to get this sponsorship off the ground at a small orphanage. Then I would help coordinate things between us and Children's HopeChest. We would be partnering with Children's HopeChest. All payments would be made to them via auto draft or by physically sending them a check each month. The sponsorship would not actually get started until late December or early January at the earliest. There are a lot of details to get worked out and exchanging of information that needs to be done. Right now, we need at least 25 commitments to sponsor children to get the ball rolling. That could be 25 people sponsoring 1 child each or 5 people sponsoring 5 children each. I need to now pretty quickly if we have enough interest to sponsor 25 children. You can either leave a comment on the blog or use the Contact Me form on the right side of the page to send me an email (my button broke over the weekend so I have a form instead).

I appreciate everyone who has taken time to visit the blog and give me feedback. I have included an overview of Children's HopeChest to give you a little more information about them and what they do. I've also included a Franciscan pray at the very end of this post. Please take time to read that before you leave.

What Is Children’s Hopechest?

Children’s Hopechest is an international ministry to orphans, both during their time living in orphanages and as they transition into independent life. This means that Hopechest goes beyond ensuring that children without families have the basic needs of today to preparing these children for productive adult lives.

How Does Hopechest Do It?

To do this, Children’s Hopechest recruits and trains U.S. churches to care for an orphan community. Hopechest is enabling its partner churches and their members to be the hands and feet of Christ around the world. Hopechest, itself, does not operate orphanages, nor is it an adoption agency. Instead, the organization brings proven experience and resources to churches who want to develop a long-term, community-based orphan ministry.

What Does A Church Sponsorship Look Like?

Churches that work with Hopechest agree to:

1) Pray for the children regularly

2) Recruit individual child sponsors ($34/month financial contribution) for all the children

3) Plan an annual missions trip with the staff and sponsors of children

What Does the $34/month Go Toward?All sponsorship funds are combined to provide direct assistance to the children, spiritual discipleship and teaching for the children, Christmas parties, and administrative expenses. You can review the financial stewardship of Children’s Hopechest at Charity Navigator (link).

Franciscan prayer
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.