In just a few days ...

In just a few days, our team of 26 volunteers will be leaving for Ethiopia!  Months and months of planning ... and we will finally be underway.  Last year was a huge endeavor with just over 150 kids sponsored at our 2 Children's HopeChest CarePoints ... and this year will be even bigger.  Because of our very dedicated sponsor team, our CarePoints have grown and we are now serving just over 260 kids!!!

The kids at "Kind Hearts" CarePoint in Ethiopia

We will be spending 3 full days at each CarePoint where we have a full curriculum planned.  The kids will hear 10 different gospel lessons with an activity or a craft project to reinforce what they learned.  The wonderful thing about the craft project is that these kids rarely (if ever) bring a project like this home from school - so when these projects come home from school, it will be a novelty and the entire family will want to see it and hear the story behind it!

We will also be delivering a care-package to each child from their sponsor family!  This was the highlight of the trip last year for the kids ... as well as the travel team members that got to read the letters and look at the photos with each child.

For the last few months ... the mail-lady has been dropping off over 260 care-packages at my front door.  And when she saw me in the driveway one day, she asked what was going on and I told her where all those packages were going!  She told me it made her job feel so worthwhile knowing those packages were going to specific kids in Ethiopia.

One of our travel team members, Apryl Harbaugh, asked me about starting a blanket drive so that the kids could each have a warm blanket for those cold nights.  Our hope was that we could collect 300 blankets and be able to give one to each child.  But our hopes were surpassed as Apryl collected nearly 500 hand-made fleece blankets. 

People all over the country have been busy making blankets and mailing them to the 26 travel team members!  If that sounds like A LOT of blankets  ... IT IS!!  And somehow we are getting them all to Ethiopia so that kids who normally sleep on a packed mud floor with a few rags and bits of clothes to keep them warm at night, will now have a cozy, soft, fleece hand-tied blanket to snuggle up under.

In addition to spending time at Kind Hearts and Trees of Glory CarePoints, we will also be delivering over 100 care-packages and blankets to the kids at Kechene (from their sponsor families) - and we will be delivering blankets and essentials to the kids at Onesimus.

We would appreciate your prayers during the trip, Nov 10 - 21, as we minister to these kids we have come to know and love, while we are far away from our own families.