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.