As we head towards the winter months and the holiday season, it means certain things to us in Honduras and at Give Hope 2 Kids. Since they don’t celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving here, things move from celebrating Honduras’ independence in September, straight to Christmas decorations in October. (Thankfully, I don’t think I’ve heard Christmas music in the stores yet, but now that October is over, I’m sure “Frosty the Snowman” will make the airwaves. Let’s not let Frosty get us too off-track though.) The end of October means that school is wrapping up for the year. We never quite know when the public school will end, until about a week out. This year there are two different heads over the public education system giving two different end dates for classes! For our Afterschool Program, we’re ending along with the private schools. All the kids just finished their final tests for the quarter and now we’re hosting a carnival day to celebrate how well they’ve all done. Our Afterschool Program went so well this fall. We’ve taught classes full of enthusiastic learners and seen so much progress in them. Having a more focused program, with kids that are attending because they want to be here, makes a great learning environment. The English students have made faster headway than in their previous classes, the drum class can keep time with a simple drumbeat, and the youngest class experienced learning as an adventure through oceans and cities and a pirate treasure hunt, among other things.
Here the winter months include long rainy days, where it gets cool enough to enjoy sweatshirts and warm drinks. It’s a time where things move a little slower, so we can take a few deep breaths and regroup from the busier months. During our months of school vacation, we’ll pare back our educational activities to a simple Library Program, more like what we did in the past. We’ll offer reading time and activities in an informal setting. So here’s to more time for family and friends in this next season of the year!
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September is a busy month in Honduras, mostly because two of the big holidays fall in this month. First we celebrated Dia del Niño, Kid's Day. This year the kids had a party with a piñata in either school or preschool, depending on their age, and then we hosted a carnival during Library time. Click here to see more photos of our Dia del Niño partying. Right after Dia del Niño comes Honduras' Independence Day. The biggest tradition here is that all the kids march in parades with their school. This year we had kids in every section of our village parade, from the military corp, to the pom-pom squad. The kids really enjoy participating in this show of national pride. This September though, we were even busier than normal, because of our new classes, called Tutoria Estudantíl La Esperanza. Below you can see all the kids lined up on the first day by class level. We have 60 kids coming, from 4 villages! The older kids are studying English and computers, taking a music class, and participating in Bible, library time, and sports. These classes are much more formal than anything we've done on-site before and the kids are really responding and rising to the occasion. More parents are asking when their kids can start. Somehow we always think we're building as much building as we'll need, and then we start a new program like this. We've already outgrown all our Library and office areas! The above English class is in the "garage." Plans are already in the works to add on more classroom space to this area. We're tutoring the younger kids in the basics: reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, and incorporating other fun learning activities into their class time, like pirate treasure hunts!
We just had a heartbreaking thing happen around 11:30 this morning. For reasons that are still unknown to us, the six new children that have lived here for less than a month were taken away by social services. We all gathered around them, gave them hugs and kisses, and prayed together with them. I don't know why things happen the way they do sometimes, but I do know that God has a plan for every one of those precious kids. Please help us pray for Carlos, Ingris, Agustín, Jorgito, Yensi, and Dennis. Even though we are all upset, I feel that in the time we had to watch over them, that we did the best that we could of showing them that we love them and that God loves them. We'll send out more updates as soon as we know more. We would appreciate your prayers for our ministry and our work here.
Update: These kids were put up for international adoption. The ministry of Give Hope 2 Kids couldn't function without great volunteers. We've been blessed through the years with awesome volunteers, people who have come and helped us love kids and do excellent ministry work. This season, we have our largest volunteer force to date. We're doing more than ever before with education for our community and it's all thanks to these great people. Kelvin & Monica Johnson, with their daughter Kelly, have served with us for over a year and a half now and have made a big difference in our ministry. They have tackled a wide range of projects while they've been here, from hosting groups, to working on construction projects, to throwing parties for our kids. They currently lead in the planning of the Friday Night Youth Group and the community classes we teach. The Johnsons plan to stick around GH2K for at least another year or two and we're certainly grateful for the role they've played in our lives and ministry. Recently, another family moved down to work with us: Jacob & Cynthia Baker, and their girls, Maddie & Myra. All four of them have jumped in here with hearts to serve. They expect to be with us for a couple of years and we're looking forward to spending that time with them. Their family is involved in a wide variety of activities, from collecting eggs (the girls big job), to co-leading the preschool class, to administrative work, to leading the volunteer "church." Leah is an awesome gal who is part-way through her year volunteering for GH2K. She is our resident librarian, who organizes the Library and much of the Library Program and classes. The spark she's added to the Library is huge! Leah also co-teaches the preschool class. We really appreciate her great attitude and willing heart. In July, Kaitlen came and started her year of volunteering here. Kaitlen is assisting with teaching English, preschool classes, and is using her passion for soccer to spend time with kids here. She has a great heart for the kids and we really enjoy that about her. And here's an updated photo of the our family. We're Jason & Sarah Furrow, the directors of GH2K, and our kids are Josiah & Eliana. In the past year, we’ve made incredible strides in producing our own food and working towards self-sustainability. This is an important value of Give Hope 2 Kids, for we try to stretch every donated dollar as far as possible. Producing our own food also gives meaningful work to our Honduran staff and is something for them to teach our kids. We want to raise up good workers and not people who have their hand out, expecting life to given to them. We have a new agricultural expert on our Honduran team, so we’re planting more of our own food. We recently moved the cows and sheep across the river, away since they kept eating everything we were trying to grow. The animals are doing really well though, even though we relocated some. We’re able to raise a good percentage of our meat now. We have great laying hens that produce three dozen eggs every day. Our cows produce all our milk and most of our cheese and yogurt. We’ll be putting in more pasture for cows though, so we can keep up with our dairy demand. Our best product to grow and sell for self-sufficiency is coffee. So, we’re planting more acres in coffee and learning better growing techniques. We've recently perfected our roast and we’re getting rave reviews on it. In the upcoming months, we hope to raise the funds to add some solar panels to our buildings. We have a solar plan that should easily cover half of our electricity usage. Since we pay more per watt than anywhere in the US, this will be a big savings for us. Please click here if you'd like to donate towards our solar panels.
We are in the process of moving our blog over to our updated website.
Click here to find our old blog. Thank you for your patience as we move!
We're ready now to offer English, computer, music, and Bible classes here on-site at Give Hope 2 Kids! Thanks to a great volunteer force and larger facilities, we can offer these classes and have the Library open three afternoons a week. We are excited for an ever greater way to reach out to the kids in our community.
We value being a Children's Home with an outward focus, a community perspective. We want to share our resources and knowledge with any willing kids from our area. For young people here, getting an education is the difference between growing beans and corn as a subsistence farmer and having an open world of opportunities. We hope to prepare many local kids to thrive in high school so they can go on to succeed in university and then do well the years beyond that.
You may be asking why there’s such a crowd living here, so we’ll explain. When a child comes from a background of neglect and abuse, we feel the best way to get them healthy is to surround them with healthy families that reflect God’s love. We’ve found three great families – mom, dad, and their kids – to take in and raise our “orphans.” Then we try to surround these families with great support, in the form of our volunteers and staff. By God’s grace we are creating a community where kids can grow up feeling secure and loved.
There are two families represented within the group of 6 kids. The first family includes Carlos: 9, Ingris: 8, Agustín: 4, and Jorgito: 1. The second family includes Yensi: 9 and Dennis: 6. We have seen so much improvement and growth in the lives of the kids here. It is a privilege to offer them a home and hope for a better life. We anticipate watching this new batch of children adapt and thrive.
(Sadly, since the above was posted, these kids had to leave our Children's Home at Give Hope 2 Kids. They are missed.) This summer we were privileged to host two amazing work groups. They helped us complete several important projects on the Give Hope 2 Kids property.
Our other group came from Virginia. This is the fourth year in a row that we’ve had a group visit us from Cloverhill Assembly in Midlothian, Virginia. Our good friend Rachel Kelly is the team leader. She always brings a group that's ready to work and have lots of fun with kids. This year they did a makeover of an elementary school in San Luis, a small village that's a 45 minute steep hike up from our village. We also painted the 2nd House for kids, installed bookshelves in the Library, painted the office, and several other projects. We are grateful to these groups who sacrificed so much to get here and serve others. Thank you to all who came! We enjoyed having you.
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