Dear Friends and Family,
Nope! Our big news is not a baby announcement…
It’s “a-lot-of-babies announcement”.
There is so much to say which makes a starting place
difficult so I will simply have to explain our news by pulling you on board
while the train is still running.
Our family- Joe, I, and our kids are headed down to
live in Honduras for three and a half months!
Our trip is a while out, we do not leave until after
this fall, but it is official and we are going! We are into all the preliminary
work now that’s involved. We will be volunteering with an organization in
Honduras; Orphanage Emmanuel. Orphanage Emmanuel is an orphanage that has been
established in Guiamaca for over twenty years and is now home to over 550
children. There are children there who are infants and all the way through
teens. Orphanage Emmanuel is a place where children who do not have, or cannot
live with their parents, are loved, encouraged and safe. They attend school,
church, and are taught skills to be able to one day live independently as
contributing members of Honduras.
Our whole lives Joe and I have loved working with
children. We believe all children are valuable and precious and deserve love,
care and opportunity. For more than a year now, Joe and I have known that we
needed to start investing in children outside our immediate family. We started
down several avenues and to our amazement and joy this is the one that has
continued to be clear. We contacted this orphanage after finding them online.
We told them a little about our family and they graciously invited Joe and me
to come down for a week and welcomed us into their home.
In March Joe and I traveled down to Guiamaca,
Honduras. We were seeking a place that we could invest our time, energy and
resources as a family to serve children. We met with the leadership; we worked
in the orphanage and through much prayer realized that this would be a fit for
our family. We are so excited and humbled that we would have the opportunity to
go there again.
We desire to use all of our time and resources
wisely, so this is a perfect complement to Joe’s job running the asphalt paving
business. On the opposite side of the year, we will be able to live in
Honduras, and then come home to America and our house for the paving season.
We’ve talked to the schools and Joey will be able to attend the time that we
are back in the states. We’ve made a three and a half month commitment with the
orphanage.
In Honduras Joe will be teaching carpentry skills
and additional trade skills in the older boy’s vocational program. I will most
likely be working with the toddlers. We will live on campus and be assimilating
our children into the mix as much as possible. They will walk along side us as
we work, love, teach, play and invest in children. It will be an adventure for
our family and we’re expecting both challenges and joy.
When we’re there we will have some internet access
so will keep you updated. Hopefully a new and better blog page will be in the
works too…. Until then we have a busy summer. Passports for three, home school
curriculum, learning Spanish, working on getting our kiddos to like beans and
rice, figuring out the best essential oil/shampoo combo to keep lice out of our
hair, learning to limit what we need and what we use so we can live simply and
give joyfully.
We’d like your luck, we’d love your prayers as we
start on a journey that has captured our hearts….
: ) Kate, Joe, Joey, Guy, Elena
