New HOPE Room

Today was quite an exciting day for us.
For months we have been waiting while construction on the Faith Baptist Church Building was being completed. One of the rooms is specifically for the Orphan Ministry and we have been anxious to get the room finished and cleaned up so that we could begin to use it.

For months we have had group meetings at Fanny's house, staff meetings at her house, Katryn has tutored in her home, bringing supplies to and from in her car, and we have all been eager to have a place of our own.

For the past few weeks we have been looking for chairs to purchase, having tables made, and buying white boards for the classroom. I was able to buy a bookshelf yesterday and then this morning we hired a truck to deliver all the items.

It is quite exciting. We only brought some of the books and supplies for now and will begin to add to them once we know exactly how things will be working out.

We got 4 tables that seat 8 kids each, bought 30 chairs, 2 large white boards for tutoring and a bookshelf. We plan to get a cabinet with a lock in the near future so that we can store supplies there as well.

We also plan to have an "open house" on May 12th and invite the kids to come and see the new room up and running. We have posters and some fun things to hang on the wall and also will be getting some curtains to hang as well.

There are so many opportunities to be working with the kids and having a place now will make it so much easier.

We were given a donation to build a kitchen and that is now underway. We looked at the layout of it today and were able to increase the space we will be using for cooking and it will have a large storage closet/room for keeping food supplies as well as some clothing supplies to have on hand for the children.

Maureen has been cooking from her home and this will make things so much easier to have a functioning working kitchen especially as we are increasing the number of children that we are feeding lunch to.

The Lord has been blessing the ministry especially in tangible financial means and we thank those of you who have been giving to the orphan ministry. It is great to see how the Lord is using your gifts!



Setting the bookshelf up

There is a table set up in the corner where the secondary school kids will soon begin to learn to use the computers. I mentioned to a few of the boys that we had received 2 laptops donated and that we wanted to teach them how to use them. In their typical Zambian way they assured me they were very excited, even though I could not really tell. :-)

Another view from the back of the room.