Give Hope 2 Kids Blog

Fun Times with the Kids

As the kids in our Children's Home have adjusted to our place, we've tried to teach them to expect a balance of work and play in life.   Along with their schoolwork, they're learning to help with chores around our property, from picking cocoa, to feeding the pigs, to collecting eggs.  Since they're kids though, life is mostly play now.

For fun things around home, the kids get to go swimming in the creek, watch a movie, or walk up to the village for a pepsi.  Occasionally though, we like to send them out for a bigger adventure.  

A couple of weeks ago most of the Give Hope 2 Kids crew took the kids on a jungle hike to visit the place where David, our property manager, grew up.  Everyone had a great day of swimming in the mountain streams and having a picnic.  Maybe the biggest adventure of the day though was when one of the kids spotted an iguana, which the men chased, caught, cooked, and everyone ate!  

We're now starting the hottest, driest time of the year in our part of Honduras.  This is "summer" here and the favorite time to head to the beach or the rivers.  So, to celebrate our Semana Santa (Holy Week) Honduras-style, we took the kids to the beach.  

Our first house parents are from a beach town and they wanted to introduce the kids to their family and neighborhood and treat them to a fun day in a new place.  People where we live rarely get to the city, let alone to the ocean, even though it's only 25 miles away.   For some in our group, it was their first trip to the ocean!

Once we hit the beach, the kids couldn’t get in the water fast enough.  They loved the waves and the salty water, but their favorite part was making new friends in the tidal pool.

While we enjoyed the fun the kids had, these trips have been great for unifying our group.  We're creating a big-family culture at our place and we're loving it.  

Plus, there's one more thing that excites us about these trips:  We've invited a particular family from our village to go along on these adventures and become a part of our "family."  They've spent a lot of time helping our current house parents and doing other projects for the ministry.   And now, just last week, they agreed to be our second set of house parents.  With their family, we will be able to open a 2nd house for kids in the near future!

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.

Celebrating Five Years of Ministry

We are celebrating five years of ministry!  God has blessed us with a very productive season and we are thrilled as we look back and see how far we've come in our quest to care for children who desperately need help.  

To celebrate these years we put together a memory book summarizing the time.  These pictures show how we prepared to, and now are caring for abadoned children, and how we've reached out to our community.  Click on this link, choose to make it full-screen from the bottom right hand corner, and enjoy watching a ministry be born!

http://www.blurb.com/books/2356454

Please feel free to share your comments with us

and share the link on your facebook page!

 

Bucket Bath

David and Olga's daughter Abi is walking now and toddles around the yard after the chickens.  We couldn't resist sharing this little video of her taking a bucket bath.

Monkeying Around

We wanted to show you our new pet kinkajou.  Her name is Chiquita, which means little girl (and is not just a brand of bananas).  These little guys make really fun pets.

But, since our monkey Chitlin' is jealous of our new pet acquisition, we need to include some photos of her recent antics as well. 

She is growing and getting more rambunctious all the time.  She loves swinging in the cocoa trees and chumming with the dogs.

 

Independence Day Marching

Every year on the 15th of September, which is Honduras' Independence Day, the schools all march in a parade.  It is one of the biggest events of the school year. 

At Instituto El Rey (www.ierschool.org) the students learn how to march and practice for months to get ready for this special event.  This is also the big show for the school's band for the year, so they put in a lot of work.

This year Ruby played a drum in the band and Roxana got to dress for the parade in a costume celebrating the Honduran indigenous culture.  So, it was particularly fun to see them in their special roles this year.

The Zoo Grows

              

Jason loves to get new pets.  These little guys are called Pisotes (pee-so-tays) and are tropical relative of the raccoon.  Are pisotes are still babies, sisters, that were bought from local villagers before they became dinner.  Their favorite activity is climbing around and around and around this wood beam in their cage.  We keep teasing Jason that we'll have a zoo up and running before we have an orphanage.

 

An Exciting Day: Honduras Defends Its Democracy

Read the Wall Street Journal's Article on These Events

We've had a very eventful Sunday here.  Honduras' President Zelaya was sent out of the country and replaced as president by the head of congress.

Most Hondurans have been concerned about Zelaya's efforts to prolong his time in office, beyond his legal 4 year term.  During Zelaya's more than three years in office, he has consistently aligned himself with Cuba's Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and other leftist governments.

This morning things came to a head.  Zelaya was trying to hold a vote to ask the people if they wanted to change the constitution.  They had sealed ballot boxes and ballots flown in from Venezuela.  Both the congress and the supreme court declared his actions illegal and almost no one in the country supports him, but he refused to listen.  So, they removed Zelaya from office.

Everything has been very safe and stable, considering.  Only about 200 people showed up in peaceful protest about the removal of the president, in a country of 7 million.  As things stand, the democratic government is still running the show here and the elections for the next presidential term will continue as normal.

This video below explains things pretty well.  It is presented by the former Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, so it's a person who understands leaders like Chavez.     

Our Baby Monkey

The other day a man came by and said he had a baby monkey for sale.  Jason has a soft spot for such pets and it may have ended up as someone else's dinner if we weren't interested in buying it, so we now own a baby monkey.  We think she is about 2 months old, but since we just got her, we haven't even looked up what breed she is or anything.  And you'd never guess it, but banana is her favorite food.  We're still working on a name...

We Have Our Residency

We are now residents of Honduras!  This is a HUGE step forward towards our goal of taking in kids.  We can now stay in the country without paying monthly fees and we can move forward in the process of opening Casa de Esperanza.

 

We’re just returning from a trip to the capital city, Tegucigalpa.  While we were there we got our residency finalized and we worked on Give Hope 2 Kids’ papers so we can be a Honduran non-profit organization.  We still have a few details to wrap up for that.  Then we’ll have to return to Tegucigalpa in about a month to apply with the social services to be a Children’s Home.  They will have to approve our houses, explain their rules for caring for children, etc.

 

Thanks to all of you who have prayed for this process.

 

Now we just need to find the right house mom…