Happy New Year! We’re thankful that 2020 is finally over, but there’s still a lot of work to do in 2021. Are you ready?
Thinking ahead about the new year before us, some of our Hands and Feet Project team have chosen words to describe their intentions for 2021. What word would you choose for 2021? Here’s the post from the Hands and Feet Project Facebook page that you should be able to see even if you don’t have a Facebook account.
Thankful for those that bought gifts through Amazon
This year the Hands and Feet Project tried something new to help with Christmas for our kids. We used the Wish List on Amazon. We were blown away with the response from all of you! Every single item we had on our wish list was taken care of by our wonderful supporters and friends of the Hand and Feet Project! If you helped with that, Mesi, anpil! Thank you very much! This was especially helpful because our team was not able to come, and usually they bring some of Christmas with them.
Christmas Team Canceled
When you have 80 plus kids of all different ages, gift giving can be quite overwhelming. In years past we have had a team of people come to Haiti just before Christmas to help get the campus all decorated and wrap all those gifts! Well, this year the team had to cancel just a few days before they were to come. COVID “rules” in some of the states they were coming from made it quite challenging to navigate coming and going so it was best to cancel the trip. Well Denise went into “What?!!” mode!!! She did deep breathing exercises for about an hour and then we made Christmas happen without the team. During this time Patti, our programing director and Tracy, our Daycare pro came in for a few days and helped do some wrapping. Boy, were we grateful. Christmas was a success!
Christmas morning was fun. By 9:00am we had all presents to their prospective kid. About 80 of them! Plus our caregivers. Someone thought it was a good idea to buy these really cool robot solar cars for 18 of our boys. They looked really nice and fun on the website. We received them and found out that they were a bit more complex than expected. The 100 plus pieces in each of these had to be put together! Guess what Randy has been doing! They are really cool though! It has been a great time to connect with the boys. Some of them were even able to pick up the process and built their own cars.
Kids Sang in Church
We are so excited and proud of some of our boys. We have a new spiritual advisor and he is doing a great job with our kids. They formed a group, practiced and have sung once during a Sunday church service and then in a Christmas concert. John, our advisor, has met with not only these boys but all our kids. We are seeing great spiritual growth.
Baptisms: 2 of our kids decided to get baptized recently at the church we attend! This was a new experience for us in Haiti. It was the first time we have experienced this. It’s great to see the kids here taking next steps in their faith journey.
Mission Conference Speakers
Our pastor of our church here in Haiti is a teacher at one of the local seminaries. This year they are hosting their very first Mission Conference, and Randy and I have been asked to speak on the first night. We are very excited to share our experience with them. We are also excited that these students in Haiti are being trained as pastors and with the hope and expectation of fulfilling the great commission.
Thanks!
Thanks for all your prayers and support throughout our time in Haiti, and especially through 2020. It was a challenging year to lead our team remotely, but we have some great staff. We would appreciate your ongoing prayers as we continue to make further changes to our systems, programs, and facilities in order to further improve how we care for the kids. There are a lot of moving parts and it feels a bit overwhelming sometimes. We hope and pray that you all have a great 2021!