Another letter from Nanese in Haiti

written 4/24/10
received 5/29/10

Dan & Julie,

I am so glad to write this letter to you to ask you how are you and your family. My family and I are doing very well thanks to God. I am doing very well in school thanks to God. I still attend school every day. I need you to help me pray for the end of the school year. My church activities are going very well, thanks to God. I like attending church every Sunday. My church had a convention and they preached some good sermons. Many people accepted Jesus as thier Saviour. Did they have a beautiful convention at your church too? What date? did they preach some good sermons? There is a lot of food in my country like; corn & yam. Do you have a lot of food in your country? I love you very, very much. I pray for you everyday. So God can bless you more and more every day.

Nanese

Birth & Death

I was blessed to have been born in the USA & given birth in a huge hospital. Had I been part of the other 50% of mothers in the world who don't have this advantage I likely wouldn't have survived giving birth to my first child (seriously.)



(Double click to open the video in another window to see the entire screen.)

The end of t-ball season '10

Today was the last day of t-ball. How I'll miss the opportunity to watch my youngest play ball.

Another passion of mine

The For a Day Foundation

I will not post photos of the children on this blog but here is a great one of (some of) our volunteers at our most recent event. Visit us here.
Visit our national chapter here.

edited: volunteer photo won't show up! Sorry! Click the link to learn more about us!

Letter from Nanese

Dear Dan & Julie,
It is a pleasure for me to write this letter to you. My name is Nanese __ and I am 19 years old. I have 1 brother and 3 sisters. My mothers name is Zila. My mother is a vendor. My fathers name is Cleriyien and he is a cultivator. I live in Plaisance, Haiti. There are a lot of fruits like mango and avocados. I like eating them a lot. I am in 9th grade. I am praying for you and your family. Please pray for me and my entire family. Tell me, do you enjoy fruits? I like eating fruits. I wish God to be with you in everything you do!
Nanese

From Letters /Ethiopia & Haiti

Written 4/24/10, Recieved 5/24/10

.. more later when I have time


-----------
"My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
your dreams stay big, and your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
and while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this, is my wish." (Rascal Flatts)

First letter from Efrata

Oh how hard it is to wait for the first letter! Here it is!

From 2010_05_15

Date: 11/8/002 (April 19, 2010 on our calandar I think.)

Thank you for being willing to sponsor me.

My Parents:Nulu Emembet
(no sisters/brothers/ best friends)

My favorite things:
Best game: Jumping
Best food: pasta
Best School Subject: English
Best Pets: cow?
Best bible story: about moses
Best color: green
Best song: ?God is high/right? (Hard to read.)
Best Holiday: Easter

From 2010_05_15

When I grow up, I want to be a pilot.

Thank you for being willing to sponsor me.

Where do you live? Do you have children? What's your job?

Pray that God will make me a clever student.

Writers name: Tamiru Bikila
Translator: Sofi

(The letter also includes her finger print and a connect the dots goat that she colored with pencil.)

* She wrote this prior to getting any of our letters because the kids were included in all of our letters to her.

Choices

We are always affected by the choices we make, no matter what. Everything that we do potentially has some impact on our lives.

We affect others; they affect us. The law of Cause and Effect--it's irreversible.

Just for fun..

Come, follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. Matthew 4:19

(Click to feed them & move your cursor around to have them follow when they aren't eating.)




How about a little hamster to keep you company while feeding the fish?

"Support Africa" by my 6th grader

Caleb has been working HARD on this writing project at school. Today he wrote his rough draft, asked me for advice, re-wrote his rough draft, and typed it. This is NOT done. But I thought it was worth sharing! He does not enjoy writing but when you have a fire in your heart for something you work hard at it. He has a fire in his heart for the people of Africa.

Here is his editorial:
(Remember this is still a rough draft.)

Support Africa

The country Africa is a place filled with poverty and we need to send money to support them and their families in their time of need.

Basic needs of people are not being met. One out of six Africans do not have enough money to cover basic needs like water, food, and shelter. The average income of someone who lives in African is less than one dollar a day. A way to save money to send to Africa is to skip two trips to Starbucks every week this could save you $5 a week which equals over $250 in a year. You could send your savings to the needy in Africa. In East Africa alone there are 86.8 million people that are undernourished. One person dies every 2.43 seconds (worldwide). 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean or safe drinking water and often have to walk miles just to find water, most of the time this water is not clean.

I believe that the opposite of poverty is not being rich but instead simply having enough. This means that you have enough of what you absolutely need to live happily. You might be wondering how you can help. If you have two video game systems you could sell one and send the money to a charity that supports Africa. My family is sponsoring an 8 year old girl in Ethiopia named Efrata. She lives with her mom, her dad has passed away. Her mom makes $17 a month when she has a job. Efrata has to find water and carry it to their home every day. She sleeps on the ground and doesn’t have enough food. I am selling items in a garage sale to raise money to send to Efrata.

In Africa alone there have been 28 civil wars since 1980. From 1998 to 2002, 4 million Africans have died because of these wars and that totals up to 13 million refugees. There are hundreds of different diseases like AIDS, polio, and malaria, and one million people die each year just from malaria. In Sub-Sahara Africa there are 34 million orphans. To compare there are 24 million more orphans there than the entire population of Michigan. Could you imagine your life without parents to lead you in the right direction?

So go online to find a charity that supports Africa and donate as soon as you can.

Good Job Caleb!! Mommy is proud of you!

My poor attempt at making paper dolls...

...but I think Efrata will enjoy this anyway. :)

Kids from ET 807

A few days ago I posted about two kids from ET807- the project that Efrata is in. It appears that both have been sponsored!!!!
Yay!!!

May Package ready to go to our girls

Efrata's goodies on the left & Nanese's on the right.


I'm having a hard time NOT sending things more than once a month! Once monthly was my goal.. I should probably take on another child.. maybe that would slow me down. :)
This mailing contains a card, more stickers, photo's, and a world map. The map has both Michigan & their countries marked off. I am going to make a guess that Efrata doesn't know much about the World in general. I'm not sure about Nanese.

I would like to send paper dolls to Efrata. Does anyone know of a good place to buy them? Or a good place to print them??
BTW- I know I sent the same family photo to Efrata last time but this time I wrote about it on the back. The first photo was laminated.. this one is just printed on card stock paper.

I need suggestions for Nanese. She's much older & may not appreciate the little things that Efrata likes. It needs to be flat and no thicker than 1/4 inch... I need ideas!