The joy of sponsorship!

As you know, sponsorship is our family's passion! We have seen first hand where our sponsorship money goes and have seen the ways, big & small, that it is used to benefit the child (both short term and long term). Every trip to Africa, our goal is to recruit sponsors back home. This trip, we are praising God for 5 more children at New Hope Uganda being sponsored (currently all the kids at First Love Kenya are sponsored)....if you are one of the new sponsors, THANK YOU and May God richly bless you for stepping out in obedience to the scriptural mandate to take care of the orphans! 

Our current group of kids that we sponsor at First Love Kenya. Zablon, our oldest, came home just in time from boarding school that we got to spend the last 3 days with him! As you can see the rest of the children "look up to him!" ;)

At 6'2.5", he towers over Joey:

So blessed to call this amazing bunch of kids "ours"! Of course, they all belong to God, but He gave us the amazing privaledge of loving on them here on earth!

The girls:

This was our first trip meeting Sammy (we took him on after our older boys graduated from college):

As you can see, his smile lights up the room!!

One of the greatest joys is for us to watch team members meet their sponsored child for the first time! That moment when the child becomes more than just a photo on your refrigerator, but a living, breathing, giggling human being full of personality and spunk! 

(My cousin, Diane, with her adorable little Emily)

(Berta, a new sister in Christ from our team meeting her sponsored son, Mina)

(Angie, Tom Clinton's daughter, who we got to serve with on our 1st & 3rd trips, with her sponsored daughter Felista).

I'm such a sucker for dimples!! 

Each time we come to Africa, my brother sends along caps for us to pass out (which is a HUGE hit). Because of his height, Zablon loves basketball, so he naturally chose one with a basketball on it! Little did he know this was my high school alma mater! Cracks me up to see him in it!

It is such a gift, hanging out with our sposnored kids, getting to know their personality, watching them grow from trip to trip, loving on them as much as possible, reveling in the conversations (with the older ones), joking & teasing, laughing & crying, soaking up every moment!

Precious snuggles indeed!!

We LITERALLY get to be Christ's hands & feet to these children, who have no parents to physically wrap their arms around. All the fundraising, planning & hard work was worth it just to take this one nap on the lawn with our youngest daughter, Hellen! 

Sweetest thing ever......! After we left the First Love children's home, Hellen walked to the office to ask the director why her sponsor was crying so hard when we said goodbye. "Didn't she like the kiss I gave her? I hugged her really big so she would feel better." (Of course both things had made me cry all the harder). "Why wasn't she happy hugging all the kids at First Love? Why was she so sad?" The director said her questions brought tears to HIS eyes as he tried to explain to her that it was because I loved the kids so much and was so happy for the time we got to spend with them that I was crying because we didn't want to say goodbye and wished we could stay with the kids longer.  He told her that by now (driving to the airport) I had stopped crying and was only thinking of the happy memories from our time at First Love. But she was so worried about me that he called our driver on his cell phone and put me on the phone with her so that she could hear my voice and be reassured that I was okay. I HAD stopped crying at that point but it was all I could do to hold it together, keep my voice from shaking, and not burst into tears all over again at hearing her sweet little voice saying "I love you"!!!

Such an honor that 2 of our oldest First Love sons are trying to start a school in Kibera Slum named after us! 

As a child sponsor, you have no idea how far reaching your legacy will be! 

Please email us if you are interested in changing a child's life, giving them hope and a future! We would love to help you get in touch with New Hope Uganda or First Love Kenya!

God Girl Magazine

After our first trip to Africa, in 2011, Alea announced that God was telling her to sponsor her own little girl in Africa. You can imagine how skeptical we were as her parents, to let our 10 year old take on such a serious long-term financial commitment. We don't give our kids allowance, and even if we did it certainly wouldn't be as high as the $30 needed each month to sponsor a child. We knew her plan of making earrings & scarves to sell, having lemonade stands & garage sales, babysitting, etc. would not raise enough money to last the whole year. And what about the next year and the next? We tried to convince her to just pick one of the girls we already sponsored and we would let her be HER girl. But she could not be swayed from her convictions. "Mom & Dad, if God wants me to sponsor a girl He'll provide the money." How does a parent argue with the unwavering faith of a 10 year old child? 

 

***Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3***

So we contacted First Love to see if there were any 10 yr old girls who needed sponsoring and thus began Alea's sponsorship of Dorothy, one of the girls we had met. It has been 4 years, and God has indeed provided the finances for Alea to sponsor her! There were some very slim months that the struggle to raise the money was real and there were sacrifices involved on Alea's part. For example, she packed cold lunch every day her 5th grade year of school so that she could get the $100 out of her hot lunch account. She didn't get any birthday presents for her 11th, 12th & 13th birthdays because she asked only for money for Dorothy. Friends from church were extra generous in what they paid her for babysitting. She made $54 on one lemonade stand by putting out a photo of Dorothy. Month by month she managed to scrape by for 3 years until finally God gave her an idea that would "seal the deal" in raising money for Dorothy....a Chrisitan magazine for girls. Once again, she stepped out in faith and obeyed God's calling on her your life, despite the doubts of her parents in pulling this off. 5 magazines & approx 300 subscribers later, Alea got to hand deliver the summer 2015 issue of God Girl Magazine to Dorothy:

God has been faithful in providing the computer, the printers, the website, the stories and the subscribers. How exciting for an orphan girl in Kenya to see herself in a magazine and to know there is a magazine published in her honor and for her benefit!

The magazine eagerly gets passed among the girls at the children's home:

Even the high school girls told her they love the magazine and what a good job she does, and even the boys were passing it around at dinner! 

Alea shared the story of the magazine with the girls one afternoon. Even though every magazine has made it to First Love the last year, it was neat for them to hear form Alea thirst hand how she started it and the process. We explained that, even though Dorothy is the one the funds from the magazine go to, it is really a magazine that represents & advocates for all of them! 

Posing with 3 out of the 5 issues:

Dorothy giving Alea a thank you speech:

Two God Girls united across the ocean! 

A boy and his garden!

These sweet little boys at First Love started their own little garden plots and care for them diligently.  

One of them is our sposnored son, Sammy:

(They put the stakes up to protect the plants from the cows).

Check out their elaborate drip watering system:

(The head gardener who manages the 2 greenhouses gave the boys scraps of tubing to use on thei little gardens).

These gardens were something they did on their own initiative. There is one older boy who is the role model for the younger ones and gets to help milk the cows. Even as he is an apprentice himself, he encourages, helps the younger ones and "oversees" their work. It's 100% volunteer and only a handful of boys show interest in farming. We were so touched by their innate desire to tend a little plot of land, protect it, nurture it and have the joy of watching it grow!

Toms

In case anyone out there doubted, Toms really DOES give shoes to people in 3rd world countries! 

We saw them EVERYWHERE! 

Baby Toms are the cutest!!!

So you can feel good about your purchase the next time you buy a pair of Toms! :)