Give Hope 2 Kids Blog

A Construction Update

We wanted to give everyone a little update on our current construction projects.  

We’re getting really close to finishing the Furrow house and we (the Furrow Family) may be able to move into it in the next few weeks.  For awhile now our Honduran crew has been finishing the final stucco coat and they've poured almost all the floors and countertops. 

During the past two weeks, we were blessed to have a few electricians and handymen come down and help further the progress of the house.  They were a tremendous help and did everything from spending time with the kids, to installing shelves, to finishing the electrical work in the house.  We want to say thanks to these guys who came and helped us out so much.

Our other main project right now has been putting an addition onto the Library.  We quickly found that our small building struggles to hold the 30-some kids that attend the Library Program.   Also, we've run into storage issues with all the chairs, instruments, and sound equipment we use for the Youth Nights.  So far we've got the walls up and the floors poured.  Once the roof and door are installed it will be ready to use.  We are excited to get our Library Program organized and all our new books in circulation for the local kids.

Introducing More of the Give Hope 2 Kids Team

Ever since we started Give Hope 2 Kids, we've had endless projects to do without the human resources to get them all done.  Recently though, we've been really excited to watch  a great team of people gathering around us.  We feel that we're able to accomplish so much more now.

We've yet to introduce our house-parents to everyone on the blog, so we want to take this opportunity to have you all "meet" Wilfredo & Cindya and their two kids, José (6 yrs) and Dana (1 1/2 yrs).  They've adapted really well to life in the country with us and have done a great job accepting kids into their family and life.

This season, we are excited to have four volunteers here with us.   They'll be with us for most of this year. With the arrival of new kids and never-ending construction and agricultural projects, we are thankful for the extra hands.

Kelvin and Monica have always had an interest in missions.  With their newborn baby Kelly, they made the decision to sell their house and move down for year.  So far they've been living with some of the kids and helping parent them.  Kelvin is a great dad and handyman and loves to work on agricultural projects.  Monica has been an excellent mom for the house they're in and has helped with organizing and running our Youth Night, Library Program, and English classes.  We are blessed to have them as good parental figures on the property.  Kelly is practicing sitting up on her own and is Josiah's little buddy.

Brayden came to visit us on a short-term summer trip with his church.  It didn’t take long to for him to realize God was calling him back to continue building relationships with the community here.  He spends his days working outside with  construction and agricultural projects and hanging out with the kids (and most of that time the kids are literally hanging off him).  Our village soccer team recently invited him to play goalie for the season and Brayden is excited for the opportunity to make friends with and minister to his teammates.

Erin has always had a desire to serve people in Latin America and felt God was calling her to volunteer with Give Hope 2 Kids after her college graduation.  Erin spends time working with kids in the Library Program and English classes and enjoys dabbling in the agricultural work.  She also works a lot with administrative projects (like helping to put together this blog).

 We're really grateful for all these awesome people working with us and helping to make Give Hope 2 Kids a success!

Five New Kids in the Children's Home!

We are excited to announce that we have five new kids living with us.  

On January 5th we brought in a sibling group of three -- Carolina: 9, Javier: 7, & Fernando: 4 -- along with two more 4-year-olds, Carlos and Lilian.  

This bunch of kids is so full of personality and energy that they're hard to keep up with!  We're so thankful that we have the Activity Center and Playground so the kids have a place to burn off their energy.  The kids are thriving on our property, with so much room to run around on and so much to do, like learning how to take care of the chickens.  

All of these kids desperately need sponsors.  With all the extra mouths to feed we're really feeling the strain on our budget.  Please consider sponsoring one of our children.  For only $35/month you can help sponsor and care for one of these kids.  For more information click here.

Gift Catalog Success: Lots of New Farm Animals

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our 2011 Christmas Gift Catalog!  We had a great response this year.  People showed the most enthusiasm in donating towards animals.  With the funds that came in, we were able to buy four cows (two for meat and two for milk), two pigs, and one hundred baby chicks.

We will soon be adding two more pigs and thirty more laying hens.   Then, once we have more pasture fenced off, we plan to buy one or two more steers.  

We’re making progress towards our goal of self-sustainability, meaning that a large portion of our food intake will come right from the property we live on.  Many of the animals will be used for meat within the next year and unbelievably, the new chicks will be ready to be made into chicken nuggets in about 40 days.

The 2011 "Cows Edition" Gift Catalog

Here it is:

The 2011 “Cows Edition” Gift Catalog

Just click on the link above to see what it's all about.  Why is it the “Cows Edition” you might be asking?  Good question.  That’s going to be our focus this year, because we’re rolling out two major projects that have to do with cows. 

The first cow-project is pretty obvious.  We are planning on raising our own cows both for milk and for meat.  Last year we bought 3 milk cows, and this year we are hoping to buy 3 more milk cows and 4 young males for meat. 

The other “Cows” are not as obvious.  It’s our new “Computers On Wheels” program (get it…COWS!).  This is going to be a mobile computer lab that will allow us to give computer classes to students from three local communities.  We received a donation of 15 laptops, which arrived on our container, and we want these machines to be used extensively in our library and our community schools.   Giving young people training in this practical skill can often make the difference between having a job and not.  We’re hoping to sponsor the computer carts we will have to build, the voltage regulators to protect the machines from the frequent power surges, the computer desks, and the teachers who will help us instruct the students.

There will be other projects available to sponsor too, but this year, it’s all about the cows.  

 

Our Graduates

November is graduation month for schools in Honduras and we've been partying with lots of graduating students.

First we celebrated with Ruby and Ronald at Instituto El Rey's graduation.  These two were part of a class of twenty-one students that graduated with a Bachillerato (a degree that lets them go on to university) and a technical degree in computers.  These were the first students Jason taught as 7th graders back in 2006.  

We are so proud of this whole class, but especially of these two that have lived at our place for the last couple years.  We know how hard they've worked.  Both Ruby and Ronald have overcome a lot to be were they are today and they're the first ever in their families to graduate from high school.  They also both received a special award for their proficiency in the English language.  

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We were also invited to celebrate with the graduating 6th grade class at our elementary school in Urraco. They asked Jason to be the padrino (sponsor/guest of honor) for the graduating class.  This was to honor Give Hope 2 Kids and what we've offered the kids of the community through English classes and Lee's Library.

One of Ruby's younger sisters, Jenny, graduated with this class.  Here's a picture of Jason presenting her with an award for academic excellence.  We are excited that she and her next older sister, Areli, will be entering Instituto El Rey as 7th graders in February.

New Laying Hens = Lots of Eggs

Well we’ve got some good news in the egg-laying department.

This past week we were able to purchase 20 new laying hens to see if we couldn’t up the ante of the egg production around here.  The hens we had previously may have missed the memo…or maybe they didn’t read over their job description.  Either way, their daily egg average was, well, not meeting expectations.

In any case, the new ladies in the coop are doing some serious work.  It was a big surprise how many eggs we already had before a day had gone by.  Now, they’re averaging about 17 eggs a day and breakfast just got tastier.  Jason’s excitement had him checking the coop for eggs more than a few times before daybreak last week.

The idea behind all of this is to continue increasing our self-sustainability.  That way, we are becoming more cost-effective and better stewards of the ministry’s land.  With how well these new hens have been doing, we hope to buy 20 more in the near future.  This will allow us to have enough eggs to provide for everyone living on the property these days.  

This year we were able to purchase chickens thanks to donations from last year's Gift Catalog.  If you’re interested in contributing to the hen fund to provide us with more eggs, check back soon for our 2011 Gift Catalog.

Written by (and photos of) our volunteer Erin.

 

Assembling Our Computer Lab

We want to share the news that we're about to start computer classes with our new mobile computer lab (otherwise known as COWs: computers on wheels).  The kids in our area are very excited to start learning about computers and this is a great way to give them a head-start if they choose to study beyond the 6th grade.

In the next couple of weeks we will be expanding our Library Program to include computer classes and music lessons.  We'll offer these extra classes to the most faithful Library attenders first and go from there.  Once the school year starts in February we will be doing computer classes at the elementary school here in Urraco.

We want to say thank you to Eric (far right in photo) who traveled down from Minnesota to help us network the computers.  Thanks for contributing to make our work possible!

Friday Youth Night

We just wanted to share a quick photo and show you how great things are going with our Kids/Youth Ministry.  We're up and running on Friday nights now and the community is loving it.  The attendance and participation has blown us away.  Our goal is not to be just another village church, but to teach people about God's love and be a unifying force for people, instead of a dividing one.  We're so encouraged with how well this going.

Jason the Farmer

Somewhere in the last few years Jason has turned into a farmer.  It wasn't what we necessarily expected, and we're not sure when the transition occurred, but it's now safe to call him a farmer.  He's planted and fertilized the orchards, tended bees, elastrated sheep (you don't want to know), and more.  

This week's farming adventures included making homemade chocolate and butchering the roosters.  So, not only is it sweeter around our place (with chocolate), but quieter (without roosters).

It's been a really fun season right now as we're beginning to enjoy the literal fruits of our labor.  We're eating as many delicious mangosteens, rambutan, and oranges as we can right now, with their bumper crops.  With the container we recently brought down we now have the equipment to process a lot more of the food, thus we've been grinding cocoa beans for chocolate, dehydrating bananas, frying up yucca, and making sausage.  We're trying to find the most cost-effective ways to feed our little band of workers, volunteers, and kids, which means a lot of eating from the land.

Note: We can't neglect to give David and the crew credit for maintaining the farming projects while Jason wears his other hats, like Jason the General Contractor, and 
more importantly, Jason the Dad to Abandoned Kids.