Dia del Nino
Dia del Niño, or Kid's Day, is probably every kid's second favorite day of the year (after Christmas). For this fun-filled Kid's Day, all the kids in the village met at the elementary school for a morning of games, fun, food, and—of course—candy. But the highlight of the morning for all the kids, was getting a turn to hit the piñata. And we didn't just have one, but three whole piñatas! There were so many laughs and so much sugar.
Dia de Independencia
September 15th is Honduras' Independence Day. All the school kids get a chance to march in a parade through their town. This year our kids participated in many special roles in the parade: Miss Independence, the Beautiful Indians, traditional dancers, and cadets. Our awesome house-moms worked hard putting together all their special outfits, and our volunteer Daniel, made ceremonial wooden machetes and rifles for the march. They looked incredible! The march started up at the Urraco school, and the kids paraded the length of the village and back again, with a crowd of family following behind.
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Deepening Our Well
Like many places in the world, Honduras has experienced a serious time of drought this year. In southern Honduras this has drastically affected crops and caused concerns of food shortages.
While our climate in northern Honduras is not nearly as dry, we've also experienced some issues with water shortages. Because so many people live on our property, we've decided to take steps to guarantee that we are not left without water in years to come. For that reason, we are working on improving the well that we dug in 2012. We're increasing the amount of water that we can pull from our well so it will be sufficient for future growth. Hand-digging a well is about as tough a job as you can do, but our guys are doing a great job! We've more than doubled the well's water capacity. Kind and Responsible.
Daysi and her three brothers have been with us since Christmas 2013. Daysi is currently in 7th grade and is doing wonderful in school! Her grades are very good, and her teachers love her. When Daysi isn't working hard in school, she enjoys readig and cooking with her house-mom and sisters. Daysi also loves dancing! She and the other teen girls on the property frequently choreograph dances for our Friday night Youth Group. Overall, Daysi is a kind-hearted young girl, who loves to help.
Recently, Daysi was considered for the Miss Independence role in the Independence Day parade. Contestants for this position include one individual from every grade who are quizzed on various facets of Honduran history. Even though Daysi didn't end up getting this position (which is typical for first-year students), the fact that she was considered for this position is a testament to the wonderful young lady that Daysi is becoming. We are currently looking for sponsors for Daysi! If you would like to sponsor Daysi, please click the button below.
We started our sponsorship program nearly 4 years ago. We estimated the amount of money it would take to raise our kids, without having actually ever taken care of children. Now we see, as is too often the case in life, that it takes nearly twice the finances we thought to provide education, a family to look out for them, food, etc. For this reason, we'd like to ask if you would help us provide one of our children this chance for a better future.
Over the next few months, we will be featuring one child a week. Our goal is to have all of our kids fully sponsored by the end of the year. If you would like to be a part of our sponsorship team, please read more here. School starts right at 8 o'clock here. (Of course, by that time our high school girls have been up for hours and are already studying at Instituto El Rey.) All of the kids start with Bible class, learning about different aspects of God and heroes of the Old and New Testaments. Next, it's time for math and science. After a quick recess, they study Spanish and reading. While the younger kids are now done for the day, the older kids get an hour for lunch and back they come! Depending on the day of the week, they could have English, art, computer, social studies, geography, or physical education. We have incredible teachers: Our house-moms, Sinndya and Belkis, teach our Kindergartners and 1st graders. Doris is a former student of ours, who has worked with us for almost 4 years, and is now teaching three subjects. Kaitlen is a great volunteer who came for a year and is still here more than two years later. She is also teaching three subjects. Our newest teacher is Ruby, who has a long history with GH2K. She comes with her baby Jason and teaches math every morning. Once a week, Jason (geography) and Sarah (art) teach a class too. We are blessed to have Sharon Washburn come and share her schooling wisdom with us. The Washburns are the former administrators of Instituto El Rey, and our mentors, so we love adding their heart and experience to our work. Our kids do love to chat and get distracted, but when they're focused, they do great. Our teachers have done wonders encouraging positive attitudes and behaviors. We are seeing a lot of positive growth in the kids this year, and we are very encouraged for their future! Thanks to Our Summer Groups of 2015!
We had absolutely wonderful groups come this year. The people were lovely, with great hearts and attitudes, and we made many new friends here at GH2K. We accomplished several great projects, and they all did a great job investing in our kids.
Our first group of the summer, Destiny (AL), came and blessed our socks off with great tools for the Trade School. This group always accomplishes so much when they're here. This year they helped us break ground for the Trade School, they built us school desks and furniture, and they trained our guys how to use a new welder.
Cloverhill (VA) has sent a group to us 7 years in a row! Through the years, they've built great relationships with our kids and staff, and we really appreciate them. This year Cloverhill focused on doing a VBS for our community. They also helped with some painting, cleaning and organizing.
In July, we hosted a great team from Parkside (MN). We enjoyed many thoughtful conversations with these friends and they accomplished so much with the number of people they brought! Their main project was doing a makeover on the first house we built. They repainted all the window bars in this house and put up new screen and window frames, among other projects.
For more than a year now, we've felt led to branch out and add a new facet to our ministry. We're starting a Trade School!
We see the difference that education can make in the lives of young people, through our years of working with Instituto El Rey, village elementary schools, and our After School Program . But we've also seen that the majority of young people never make it either to 6th grade or beyond in school. We feel like we need to take a dramatic step of faith to give local young people more options for post primary education. The most practical step for us to take is to offer classes in specific trades.
Many of you may remember that in February, we sent out a Facebook message asking for help to purchase a bus. We were successful in finding the perfect bus for our ministry. We have now used this vehicle for several months, and it has revolutionized our ability to transport kids. We safely bring young people to youth group, move our groups that come to volunteer, and we get to take our kids from the Children's Home on excursions. We've been making some improvements to it, and we expect it to live a long life with us. We want to say another huge thank you to all that were a part of the fundraising campaign to purchase it. We believe that it will be a huge blessing to the ministry for many years to come. Many of you have heard the story of Ruby and her sisters. These girls have made it through incredibly tough times and are thriving. We are so proud of them. We now have the privilege of having Grisel, the second to youngest sister, staying with us at GiveHope2Kids. We are excited to see Grisel as she grows into a young woman. She is doing well with her studies and is surrounded by people who love her and want to see her thrive. This past Saturday, we celebrated her 15th birthday, which is a huge affair here in Honduras. Rain threatened to interrupt the festivities, but it turned out to be a great party with more than 50 people attending. To learn more about this Latin American tradition of quinceaneras, click here.
After a few setbacks, our solar project up and running! Currently, one of our components needs to be replaced, and we're waiting on that part from Outback Power. But even with just half of the system functioning, we are able to provide a substantial amount of power. When the full system is working, we'll need almost no power from the grid. This is awesome for us. When we turned the system on, we literally became 5-6% more self-sustaining. Now the money that we save on electricity will go right back into helping more kids. We’ll also put some of our savings into getting our trade school off the ground. Over the course of the next couple of years, we'll be using these savings to buy more efficient refrigerators and change all of our lights to LED lights. These small changes will make our solar capacity go even further. Long term, our system should cover not only our current electricity needs, but also our future growth. We are extremely excited with this project.
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