It's Time!!

Good Morning! 

Well, it's time. In less than eight weeks our family will be living in Honduras for a bit. 

I'm closing my facebook page for the time, so for all of you re-directed traffic- here is a copy below of the letter that we posted last May.... 

With no facebook- I won't be posting links to the blog- so please sign your email up on the right hand side of this page  if you'd like to receive our updates! Your email is private- even I can't figure out how to see it!  I've promised family that without the ease of a phone call while out of country- that my updates on here will be more frequent! (We're shooting for bi-weekly when we're gone).

If you'd like to be added to a more personal email thread that will include specifics of our trip, dates, needs we might have, prayer requests, etc, please email me -  kate.spadino@gmail.com - and I'll add you to the list!

Thanks!
Kate
_______________________________________


May 3rd

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