New Faces and Places

Movement would be a word to aptly describe the HOH on any given day.  With 80 resident children and youth to care for, as well as countless neighborhood kids constantly coming and going; there is always something happening at our home.   These past couple of weeks have been no exception...

Since our last update, Judson, the little baby who arrived in our home is coming along splendidly.  

You can see here,
 pictured with one of his many "mom's" - Jessika,

 that he is looking much healthier

We have also added 2 more malnourished children 

to our number over the past weeks:

Lancina is just a year old

and

Djivensky is 2 years old.

These two are both here with a family member who will stay as well to help care for them.  We find it an important part of the healing process of these malnourished children to have a parent or family member stay with them.  The child remains in the care of someone they know, love and trust.  And the family member has a chance to be educated on proper food nutrition and care of the child so they don't fall back into malnutrition when they return to their homes.  Children like Lancine and Djivensky generally remain 3 to 4 weeks at the HOH before returning to their homes with their family.

Of course caring for so many children in need requires a lot of help and supplies and this past week we were blessed to receive both from a large group of our supporters.  There were those who provided financial gifts to help us purchase the things we needed.  There were those who graciously purchased, received and shipped the items to us.  And there were those who helped with all the transition parts in between.  We are very grateful for each person and each part of the process that allowed us to receive much needed.....

Food

 

  Clothing & other supplies

 

 And New Chairs!!!

 

Thank you to everyone who had a part in getting these items to us!

We were able to get some work done on our vehicle these past weeks as well.  We are thankful that it is still limping along, it is such a valuable tool for us to use in this work.  We are trying to start to raise funds in order to be able to get a new (or at least new to us) vehicle at some point in the future.  If you would like to help us pray for this that would be great.  If anyone also wants to help us out financially in that way, gifts can be sent to Extreme Response marked for the House of Hope.  You can find information on how to do this on their website.

Another item we'd love for you to pray with us about is a change of place that has happened over the past couple of weeks for some of our young adults.  Our goal for our young adults has always been to give them the hope of a future through education.  As a result, it is our desire to help them get enough education so that they are able to get a job and take care of themselves.  In Haiti, this means helping them get either a vocational or university training in a subject.  One thing that is helpful in Haiti is that there are lots of higher education schools and they aren't much more expensive than paying for High School for our kids.  So, as long as God provides the means, we want to help our youth with this hope for their futures.  

This year we have several young men who are stepping out into University.  We attempted to allow them to attend a university near our village, which allowed them to also still live at the HOH, but that has proved not a very good choice.  The school is poorly directed and they have not had good results there -- teachers not showing up and classes have been canceled more often than they are held.  

Enter Basketball.  Our boys love to play basketball and over the Christmas break one of them was asked to try out for a university team in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.  Reginald succeeded and was accepted to the university team with a full scholarship for his University education!  The coaches have since asked him if there were any more young men like him from the HOH who also would be interested in scholarships!  This week some more of our young men have gone down and have started classes there as well.  They will be going through some try outs over the next few weeks to see if they can also play on the team and receive scholarships -- please pray for Stevenson, Herby and Dieujuste. Pray also for Linda and our young leaders Junior and Jn Daniel as they work through all the logistics in having the boys in PAP and what will be best for their futures.