Wednesday, August 31, 2016

We need your help...

When you are involved in a work such as the House of Hope there are several things that become very clear as time goes by.  Two of these things stood out for us these past couple of weeks.  First of all, we are more convinced than ever of the necessity of the work we are doing.  Just this past week two sets of twin boys have come to our home extremely malnourished.  These and every new story of lives being changed brings new excitement and understanding that what we are doing is the most important thing for us.

The second thing that has stood out for us is how dependent we are on others to accomplish this ministry.   We are totally dependent on God to provide everything we need to love, care and provide hope for these children.  But we are also dependent on our partners to help us out in the ways that they can.  

We have come to a place where we are really in need of your help at this moment.  We have mentioned the financial struggle we have had off and on for the past couple of year.  We are so grateful for everyone one of you who has been a part of the House of Hope family over the years; whether it is through giving of your time or resources, or your encouragement and prayers.  

The past couple of weeks have been tough as we are receiving more and more pressure to pay off the debt that we have to our local hospital.  It is a debt that has been around for a long time and no matter how hard we have worked to reduce it, we haven't been able to as more expenses continue to be added to it.  We have mentioned it as a need in our latest newsletter that you will see below, but since writing the letter it has become an even bigger need as the pressure to pay it off has become more intense.  

We realize not everyone is able to help us in a financial way.  But if you are, would you please consider helping us with this need by sending a gift to one of the organizations listed on our page?  If you cannot help in that way, could you please pray with us that our God who has provided for us so faithfully in the past would do so again in this moment of need?  Either way you can help, we are thrilled to have you partner with us in this exciting ministry.   We hope you are encouraged as you read our latest news in this link below...

   Sept 2016

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Welcome Baby Jeremiah!!

A new addition to the HOH family arrived this evening with the birth of Jeremiah Liam Justin.  He weighed in a 3.7 kg, just over 8 pounds -- a big baby for us -- we are used to the under 4 pound crowd!  
Both baby and mother are doing great.  By this evening the doctor had given Fafane one hour to give birth or he was going to have to do a C-section... we are thankful everything went well.

Thank you so much for your prayers together with us.  We are excited to have another "grand" baby in our family.  And he has many "moms", and "dads" waiting to show him lots of love.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Prayer needed

Good Evening, we hope this blog post finds you all doing well in your respective areas of life.  I know I promised you more stories of my latest travels to the HOH and the goings on there -- and I will be posting more about that.  But for the moment, we have an important prayer request we wanted to share with you.

You might remember last summer when I went to Haiti I attended a wedding of one of our girls, Estephanie (Fafane).  She is expecting their first child and has been having some issues since last month.  She is 8 months along and has started to have contractions.  While we are thankful that she was able to hang on a bit longer than when the troubles started at 7 months, we would like the baby to stay in just a bit longer!  The doctors have admitted her to the hospital and she is on bed rest.   They are watching her blood pressure closely and we are just waiting to see what will happen.

Please pray for Fafane, her husband Ronald, Linda and the medical staff giving her care.  You can see Fafane and Ronald here in this picture (along with our boy Mits).  

On the same praying note, continue to pray for Lyse.  The doctor in Miami has the medical report now, and we are just waiting to hear from him if anything can be done to help her out.

We appreciate your prayers on our behalf very much.  We are very blessed!  Thank you for your part.

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Catching up

I am back from my trip to Haiti.  It was a wonderful time for all of us and as always ended too soon!  I have many stories to share and hope to do that in bits and pieces over the next few weeks.  

Of course, seeing my two girls just made my trip and we spent as much time as possible together over the weeks I was there.  Every time we had a chance to hug Nannie (on the right) would tell me, "I'm not done with you yet" and the hug would go on for a while longer.  They are both doing really well though, and Lala (on the left) is just a huge help to Linda with all of the younger kids -- I'm so proud of both of them.  Lala brings a seriousness of someone who knows the importance of bringing order out of chaos, and Nannie comes along behind and brings an insatiable joy to every aspect of life.

Another highlight for me was finally getting to hold little Lyse.  What a precious little girl.  I was surprised to see how alert she was; she is a fighter and is just fighting for her life with all her might.  Here we are...
Every day is touch and go for little Lyse as she can hardly go a week without needing a blood transfusion.  This makes each day stressful for her mom and dad as blood is not always easy to find.  They asked me to pass along their thank you to you all for keeping them in your prayers.  

On my way into Haiti, I received a phone call from a friend in Miami who has a doctor friend who wants to see if he can help us help Lyse.  While we do not know if anything really can be done to help her complicated condition(s), we are so thrilled to have that possibility arise.  I was able to get all the information we needed to write a complete medical history for her.  We have sent it to the doctor and are just waiting for him to get back to us with his thoughts.  

In the meantime, please continue to remember this family in your prayers.

Some other prayer requests at this time are:  
  • I will be traveling again this week, heading to our friend Bonita's wedding in Ontario.  I'm really looking forward to seeing a number of our good friends and supporters, and also excited to have the chance to swing by our great supporting church in Simcoe.  
  • Linda is already busy in getting things together for the new school year.  She has many uniforms to get made as well as decisions as to who should study in which school.  One of our biggest needs as the start of the school year looms before us is the finances to pay the tuition, books and uniforms for the year.  Please pray with us as we watch God supply this need.
We appreciate you all and the various ways you help us bring hope to the children and youth of Haiti.