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GIVE HOPE 2 KIDS
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Our History
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    • Statement of Faith
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    • Building Families
    • Education and Outreach
    • Self-Sustainability
  • Get Involved
    • Gift Catalog
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    • Volunteer
    • Short-Term Trips
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  • Sponsor a Child
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Give Hope 2 Kids

GiveHope2Kids Additions

10/11/2016

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This year has been a year of adding finishing touches to our myriad of building projects from the past 8 years.  Too often when we urgently need to get to the next project, we've rushed past the finishing touches our spaces need.  So this year we've painted walls that have never seen a coat of paint before, trimmed windows, and added on a much needed storage shed.  We've finished off our community areas better too, which makes things run smoother for our Friday Night Youth Group.  Currently we're finishing a road for better access to our agricultural projects and we're expanding and improving housing for our pigs.

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An exciting addition here is that we recently traded out vehicles to purchase two 2001 Landcruisers.   We're ecstatic after eyeing these for nearly a decade!  These are the ultimate vehicles for us.  They should last us 15+ years of daily use up and down our horrible road, which really says something.  They can comfortably seat 10 people out of the daily rain showers, and with kids on laps, we've squeezed 14 people in just fine.  These trucks have been such a blessing already!  (So thanks to everyone who has donated towards vehicles in the last several years!)

Another big win for GiveHope2Kids recently, is that we were able to purchase another smaller property in our village.  We are using this land for cattle grazing and other agricultural projects.  And it's only a 10 min walk from home, which makes it quite convenient.  Our cattle herd is really starting to multiply, and we're up to 30 head, so this purchasing opportunity was perfect timing for us.
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Our top new investment though is in people:  We recently welcomed in a new house-parent to our team, Grandma Gladys.   We're also caring for three new siblings, Kathia, Dilmer, and Briana.  Giving a stable home to these kids is why we push through all the other projects.  This is the heart of  GiveHope2Kids.

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The Bridge is Finished !!!

7/26/2014

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The bridge project was completely finished this week, and just after it was done we started to get our first big rains of the year. This bridge is going to be a huge blessing!  Many thanks to the Sowers family and their expertise in these projects and the youth of Cornerstone Assembly of God for making this project possible.
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Making Strides Towards Self-Sustainability

9/3/2013

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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. 
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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.

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New Laying Hens = Lots of Eggs

12/7/2011

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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.
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Jason the Farmer

11/4/2011

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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). 
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.  
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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.
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Steps in Self Sufficiency

10/18/2011

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Last October we began working towards more self-sufficiency with our food and we started raising sheep.  We started with 14 sheep last fall and as of this October, we have nearly 30 sheep, including 17 pregnant ewes. 

Since the main motive for this project was to produce food, we butchered our first two sheep this past week and experimented with different ways to prepare the meat.  Our first efforts included roasting, barbecuing, and making sausage, and all the results were tasty.  Here’s a picture of us making sausage with David and Wilfredo (one of the houseparents). 

This year look for us to make major strides in our food production ability -- in meat (beef, lamb, chicken, and fish), dairy, eggs, and fruits and vegetables.  It’s not going to happen all at once, but we are growing in our ability to produce our own food. 
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Celebrating 5 Years of Ministry

10/18/2011

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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.


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Life Changing Agriculture

6/12/2011

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Last week we enjoyed hosting Dr. Grace Miller and some of her students from Indiana Wesleyan University taking a Sustainable Tropical Agriculture course.  While they were here we asked some of the kids from our village if they would like to come and learn how to graft trees.  It was neat to see their interest and how quickly they grasped the grafting techniques.  

We also pulled out another frame of honey from one of our beehives and gave out samples to everyone there.  The comb was more than an inch thick and dripping with delicious honey.

It is so neat to see kids get excited about projects like these ones.  You can see the light come on in their heads as they realize what a difference such projects can make to their lives.
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Simple things like this can help people get out of poverty.  Grafting is a very simple procedure to learn and it's what makes trees consistently produce good fruit, yet almost no one in our area has grafted fruit trees.  Beehives are a project that require little start-up cost compared to the revenue it can produce for a family, yet they are very rare in our region.  We are excited to be teaching young people about these agricultural opportunities, as they are often the ones willing to try something new.  This is just a small step forward in offering our neighbors better agricultural technology and techniques. 
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Update on Agricultural Projects

4/17/2011

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In the last few months we've seen a lot of growth in our agricultural projects, both figuratively and literally.  We're starting to see the results from years of planning and planting.  The orchards are beginning to flower and fruit and we've now acquired the animals we need to help provide food for the future. 


Our sheep are prospering.  They are grazing underneath our mahogany trees, keeping other vegetation down. Their population has already grown by seven new lambs in just a few months and we’re expecting more lambs soon.  One ewe even had triplets, but because a ewe can only feed two lambs, the third one moved up to David and Olga’s house for bottle-feeding.  This lamb is named Chepito and he wanders around the yard munching grass, hanging out with the dogs, and bleating.  He's decided that he is a dog and now comes running down to eat dog food when we call for his canine companions. 
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Just the other day we got our first chickens.  We've started with two dozen and will purchase more when we finish our chicken coop.  So far, the roosters haven’t kept us up at night with their crowing, thankfully.  (Roosters tend to start announcing the upcoming dawn at about 3am.)  David’s wife Olga really enjoys looking after chickens and she is excited to care for these ones.  We are looking forward to the eggs.
The other day we harvested our first taste of honey from our bees.  The bees are close to filling seven panels with honey and we already had to expand their hive, in just 3 months!  This is faster than any honey production we’ve read about.  We stole one panel of honey just a little early and wow was it good! 

We’re already teaching Josiah all about farming so he’s ready to work in a couple years.  He is studying “The Encyclopedia of Country Living,” which is THE book for what we’re trying to do with agriculture.
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Our Udderly Wonderful New Milk Cows

1/27/2011

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We now have three future milking cows living in the mahogany plantation with our sheep.  With our 2010 Gift Catalog that we had up during the holiday season, people seemed quite excited about our dairy project.   So, with the funds that came in for the dairy we decided it was time to add cows to our land.  Thanks to all who gave towards our dairy project!

For significantly less than the price of a full-grown, good milker, we were able to purchase three cows that are a year-and-a-half old.  They will be ready for milking in about another year.  Since we’re not ready for gallons of milk every day at this point, we figured this would be the most cost effective way to go. 

One interesting thing we’ve just learned is that cows supposedly make good shepherds.  They are supposed to have a calming effect on a flock of sheep.  Right now the sheep that we have are a bit wild and unused to being around people.  They are quite literally very jumpy (who ever thought counting sheep jumping over a fence could be literal?).

The cows had their wild and crazy time too though, as our guys worked to get them to the mahogany field.
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Contact Us
Give Hope 2 Kids
P.O. Box 221
Waconia, MN 55387
Serving near La Ceiba, Honduras
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Give Hope 2 Kids  is a US 501-c3 non-profit.  We are a non-denominational, Christian ministry.  All donations are tax exempt to the full extent of the law.
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Our History
    • Our Team
    • Statement of Faith
    • Ministry Partners
  • Our Work
    • Building Families
    • Education and Outreach
    • Self-Sustainability
  • Get Involved
    • Gift Catalog
    • Pray
    • Volunteer
    • Short-Term Trips
    • Current Needs
  • Sponsor a Child
  • Give
  • Blog