Sponsorship Project

Most of you who read our blog or receive our newsletter already sponsor one or more children.  We appreciate you so much.   We need more sponsors, especially for some children who have waited for a long time.  We are hoping that some of our  faithful sponsors  might help us reach out to some areas outside our own circles to some  relatives or neighbors who might be willing to do what you do.   We can send you a photo of a child who needs a sponsor and a fill in card.   Would you  talk to someone you know who might be interested?  If you can find one more sponsor, you multiply  the help you are already giving.


There is no obligation and no need to explain if you do not find a sponsor. No need even to send anything back.  You  can keep the photo and use it to pray for the child.   Contact us!

Orphaned in Nepal

   Sabita and  Jeewan are orphans-- not because their parents died.  As far as we know, both are still alive.  But both have abandoned the two children, leaving with no contact for some time.  They were living with grand parents until the earthquake, but the house was destroyed and the grandparents are struggling for survival.  Sabita and  Jeewan have come into one of our children's homes in  Nepal.   We will care for them and educate them, disciple them in God's Word and someday launch them into life where we hope they will lead and minister to many others.   Life is hard.   Earthquakes are hard.  Yet our God uses the hard things to move his people to the places he wants them to be.

Nepal and the devastation

 During our visit to Nepal, it was easy to drive through parts of the capital city and forget that an earthquake happened here. But turn a corner and  a reminder might loom before us-- a building crumbled to the ground or an empty shell dangling the reminder to all  who pass. A five story building might have uprooted and now leaning against its neighbor building.  Or-- it might be standing as if unaffected, but a closer look  reveals frightening cracks, as if one more small shake might bring it down.  People were still living in tents, whether their building stood or not. If it still stood, there was the fear that something might bring it down.  The ground still shook almost daily.  I was aware of some of the tremors and sometimes I heard about them from others or read in the daily internet news.                                                    

Outside the city, whole villages have been destroyed.   Houses built  from mud and stone went down with the first  tremors.  Some of them can be rebuilt from the same materials, but in other cases, the ground was left unstable.  The people need to move to another place and start life again with nothing. The suffering is impossible to grasp, especially as rainy season is upon the land.  The rains make shelter a critical priority and  it needs to be more than fabric tents.  The rains mean the time of planting -- and those who miss planting also miss reaping. The agricultural cycle is a fact of life in the village-yet the land that the family owned might be gone, or no longer habitable.

Please pray for our people in  Nepal.   Even if they have no personal loss, the suffering is all around them.  Allow was able to help as we wired earthquake relief funds to four different areas.  Our trusted partners carried food and water, tents and medicines to people that the government agencies seemed to forget. Now we are busy with plans for a new children's home to  orphaned and homeless children from one village which was forced to move.                    
                    

A House on the River

This is the house of one of the new children in our sponsorship program in the Amazon.  Actually, it is a better house than most.  It is the home of the pastor and his family for this village. The ministry in the Amazon is very much like our work in other countries.  The people are poor.  We want to disciple and educate children from believers' families to be the next leaders for the community.  We want to support and encourage and enable the evangelism already in progress in the villages.  Let the church in America and her resources stand beside these dear believers as they labor in the Amazon.

Children of the Amazon

Boats are a way of life on the  Amazon.  Children paddle their way to school and home again. One school we visited was three classrooms, the only building in the area that was still above water and it only barely so.   Flooding this year was higher than in  many previous years.  We have taken some children of pastors into our program  for sponsorship. We hope to  help and encourage them in  their ministry work.

Amazing Amazon

  In the last week of  May 2015, I  spent a part of my life on board this boat.  We  zipped along  waterways, like roads, in the Amazon  River, braving  hot sun, sudden  torrential rains, fellow boaters and river creatures.  The driver, that is the man handling the motor at the back, used a GPS device to navigate  canals that looked identical to me. Unlike  American waters, there were no recreational boaters here.  Everyone was going somewhere, usually with boat loaded down as ours was--with supplies, livestock and children.  I noticed that dogs seemed to enjoy the experience more than other animals.  The best part was the beautiful scenery and of course the ministry among the villages. The worst part was sitting with no back rest for hours.  I suffered  from my lack of  Spanish fluency, except when we stopped in a village.  The indigenous people did not speak Spanish which put us all on a level field.  Life in the village was like villages in many places where we work.  Homes were simple shelters,  Food was home grown-- plentiful in harvest and perhaps scarce at other times.  Fishing is important. Many of these villages have a church building and a body of believers planted by the missionary who was hosting me.

The Earthquake House in Nepal

  An earthquake house is one that will not kill you if it falls. We are building one of these for the Action Love Children's Home.  It is basically structured from bamboo and sheet metal.  Rainy season is rushing towards us and this  should be a good shelter from the rain.  Even more than that, it will be a place to call home and a place where the children can sleep without fear.