Travel Plans to Ethiopia

In November, 2011, my friend Karen Wistrom returned to Ethiopia to continue the connection with her care points.  She also graciously visited Kechene for us and delivered our care packages, letters and pictures.  She and her team gave hugs, bought special food for the children, and took many photos.  Through her efforts, we saw our children growing and happy; happy because they got special gifts from you, and also very happy to have a connection with their sponsors, YOU!  Our connection with each other is critical in keeping us aware of what is happening at their school and in their lives.  It also teaches the children to trust us when we continue to return and help improve their lives, and it helps ALL OF US see where our money is going. 

This year I feel called to personally return to Kechene, with a goal to deliver care packages, your letters, pictures and gifts. I also hope to feed a special meal of goat and injera to the children, and of course take LOTS of pictures to share with you. But, what's really been on my mind and heart lately is wanting to begin planning with the staff of Kechene for them to become self-sufficient.  This, of course, is our ultimate goal, but I would like to  begin now to make it a reality.

My son, Caleb (16), would like to join me this year, which would help him reach beyond himself during this crucial time of his life as he gives of himself to help others. Together, we would travel with Karen on Nov. 11, 2012. 

During my first travel to ET in 2010, I paid for the trip out-of-pocket. This year, however, I am not able to do that.  With a per person cost of $3,000, I am seeking help with funding this trip.  If you feel you can help us reach our goal, Hopechest has a spot for sponsoring Caleb and I that has been set up for easy donations. Please visit it then pass it on to others.  I tend to feel guilty for putting this money into a "trip" instead of sending it directly to Kechene, however, there would be no sponsorship had the first trip not taken place.

Thank you so much for being the hands and feet of Christ through your sponsorship. I pray that we can continue to work for your little ones by bringing YOU to THEM!  Please keep my son and me in your prayers as we work to raise the funds for this goal.

Children's Hopechest has a space for donations on their website that is tax deductible. Go to https://secure3.convio.net/chc/site/Donation2?df_id=1420&1420.donation=form1&JServSessionIdr004=mtaydopur2.app332b

Please use  "ET121102TByers"

as your reference number and in the Notes Field, please write, "Greta and Caleb Byers"

Thanks so much!

Cakes for Kids!

Huge THANKS go out to Amanda Lockmann for her amazing work and talents with the facebook cake auction last Friday! We raised $400!! That money will be sent to Children's Hopechest and put in our account with Children's Hopechest. http://www.hopechest.org/connect/

Also thank you so many of you for bidding and WINNING! Not only did you get an awesome cake, but you are making it possible for us to get closer to our next goal!

Check out some of these amazing cakes!

"Cherokee Gives Back" Collaborates with us!

Last week, I was googling our care point in Ethiopia to see if there would be anything new and fresh to share with the sponsors. When I usually do this, I get some of the old videos that were taken before I became involved with the school. This time, wow, I was amazed! There has been a teacher from Colorado working with the kids for about 2 1/2 months! He came to them via an organization called, "Cherokee Gives Back."http://cherokeegivesback.org/ They send out missionaries and volunteers to help various schools in 3rd world countries and Tom happened to be one of them who got sent to our school, Kechene.

Since I have read part of this blog, I have contacted "Cherokee Gives Back" and we are now collaborating together for the care point. We will be working together for the good of the school from now on, so this was an amazing discovery.

I would like to share some of this young man's blog with you.  I had been praying for more details about their school day at Kechene and what life is like on a daily basis with 130 children present every day. Here is what he had to say...

From Tom, a blogger who volunteers through "Cherokee Gives Back" at Kechene
From his Feb. 12, 2012 entry:
My alarm goes off at 6:59. I dress and pack my bag. I wear the same thing every day – jeans, a t-shirt, a hoodie and tennis shoes. 

Our house is located between a brothel masquerading as a bar and the Palestinian Embassy.

I walk down a hill to the Tor Highluch bus station.

In Addis, cars do not depreciate; they only appreciate. The price of a gallon of gas – $4, the same as a generous meal in one of the city’s nicer restaurants – is not enough to dissuade the fire-breathing dragons of commerce.

I finally arrive to the school between 8:40 and 9.

I am immediately, adoringly swarmed by a gaggle of 4-6 year-olds. After a series of hugs, kisses, and high-fives, I exchange three-step handshakes and greetings with the faculty in a mix of English and Amharic.

The student-faculty ratio at our school is surprisingly small. There are about 25 students in two classes, KG1 and KG2. There is a principal, three full-time teachers, two full-time guards, one cook/cleaning lady, one cool young dude whose role is still unclear to me, one wise old man who just kinda shows up around lunchtime, frequent and arbitrary visitors, and me.

The kids play for a bit as everyone arrives. Around 9, Ficulta, the female teacher/disciplinarian, raises the Ethiopian flag while the kids sing the national anthem.

Then it’s time for class.

Both KG1 and KG2 have English, Math, and Amharic every day along with a sprinkling of art, science, and music. Math became my favorite once I learned the Amharic numbers. It is easier for me to communicate in arithmetic than it is in English, which the kids (especially KG1) know so little. Ficulta does not speak English, so I assist Asrat and Mulugeta in their classes. They are passionate teachers. I learn greatly from watching them conduct class, even though most of it is in Amharic. Asrat’s style is expressive and playful, while Mulugeta is more composed and methodical. Asrat is in university studying education. Mulugeta is in his last semester at the school and will soon be an accountant.

My role in class is an amalgamation of teaching, assisting, sitting at a desk and watching attentively, checking classwork and homework, sharpening pencils, and keeping kids on task.

Recess: There is always a soccer game which Mulugeta, Asrat and I often join. Sometimes I play monkey in the middle with a few kids, sometimes I play on the slide, lift the kids up to do chin-ups, or just hang out in the cacophony. Lately I have been tutoring groups or individuals more, which has made recess shorter and more worthwhile. When the lunch buzzer mercifully rings around 12:20, I am hungry and tired.

Lunch is the most important facet of IEICA. Many of the students don’t eat breakfast, and some won’t get dinner either. Half-days end with lunch, and I get the feeling the tertiary faculty is there for the meal. Around forty former students who now attend the government school will arrive for lunch as well. We hand out the meal in an assembly-line, then eat our own share.

Four days a week we eat a bowl of rice, usually with potatoes and cabbage. It’s always filling. Once every week or two we have injera. Lunch winds down into a halfhearted naptime, followed by another, shorter recess. During this time I will usually end up discussing American, Ethiopian, and world affairs with Asrat and/or an old man named Meksala. I feel this reciprocal period of teaching is just as important as the classes with the students.

Around 1:50 the afternoon classes start, three and a half hours after the morning session ended. After this pair of classes the flag is lowered, the kids kiss goodbye, and I walk back down the hill and catch a bus to Piazza. The weather is the same every day – cloudless, 78 degrees with an occasional breeze. Though the temperature isn’t extreme, the intensity of the sun is ferocious. The equatorial proximity along with the 8,000 foot altitude create a brand of sunshine I have never experienced before, an enrapturing warmth that penetrates every pore of your body. To my amazement, most Habesha spend the entire day clothed in pants and an overcoat of some sort.

Tom's blog continues to discuss more of his day at the Cherokee house, but I found it quite interesting to get a sense of what goes on at the school during a "normal" day. It was especially alarming to me to know about how many adults are maybe there for the food. Sponsorship really has made a difference!

We did it! and here's what's next...

Shoes and Uniform money has been raised! Do you realize that is $5160 in just a few months! Thank you to everyone who donated, "talked it up," or prayed for this money to be raised! Now we will be awaiting the children's big smiles when they do get their shoes and new uniforms.

For most of those kids who are getting their uniforms and shoes for the FIRST time, it will be their first time they will have received new shoes or clothes in their entire lives. It will be a big day. However, because Children's Hopechest is a non-profit organization, they wait to wire the funds when they have large amounts for other care points, at the end of each month. Since we are too close to the end of the month, the funds will not be wired until end of May. We are hoping that the shoes will be ordered before the money arrives to save some time.

We are not sure yet what our next capital project will be, or in other words, what the next major need is, but we DO have a fundraiser I want to tell you about!

CAKES! A friend from our church, Amanda Lockman, has agreed to help us raise the next big chunk of money with the sales from her gorgeous decorated cakes. We will auction off some of her most amazing cakes on May 4 and all proceeds will go to Kechene! You can check out my facebook on that day to see the cakes and to participate in the auction, esp. if you live Dodgeville. If you don't live in Dodgeville, you can bid, win, and donate the cakes to me. haha.

These are just samples of what Amanda makes, not necessarily what she will be auctioning off on May 4. 

Carrot Cake

White cake with raspberry filling

Chocolate cake

Please check out Amanda's facebook page for her information before the auction.
http://www.facebook.com/SweetHopeConfections?ref=ts

Yishake

I have to share a great story about a little boy from our care point at Kechene in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In Nov. 2010, I had the privilege of meeting 56 of our 130 kids at Kechene. I will never forget one of the boys named Yishake. The kids walked i

nto the classroom to meet all us visitors from America. They politely filed into the room with their hands behind them, sat down, and folded their hands in their lap. One little boy hobbled in with a cane.

His foot seemed to be deformed in a way that pointed his

right foot inward, making it unable to fully straighten it out. The cane he used was one that had an arm handle on as well as a place to hold on to. The end of the cane, I noticed, was in rough shape showing signs of much use (perhaps a long walk to school).

The second thing I noticed about Yishake was that he was adored by all the kids.

He had no stigma about him from others, or himself.

He was genuinely happy and JOYFUL! His walk was not easy, or even just a limp, but rather his whole body seemed affected from the bad foot as it bent in difficult ways just for a step forward.

When I returned home from meeting these amazing children, we started to get excited about getting these kids sponsored. I shared a lot with my family and friends, including our pastor and his wife. Without hesitation, Pastor Brian and Cherie said they would sponsor. Cherie stopped over one day and I set out a few pictures of the kids I really wanted sponsored, one being Yishake. Cherie and her eldest son, Nathan, chose him hands down.

Ever since that day, as with all the sponsors, our pastor's family has done their part to being Yishake's family from afar. They have sent him letters, prayed for him, told others about him, and continued the $35 a month that it takes to sponsor him; nutritious meals, dr. appts., spiritual education, textbooks, uniforms, shoes, etc. However, they have always wanted to provide for a surgery to help his foot. I had told them that it would be difficult at that time since it was very difficult to recover from something like that without the assistance of care takers at home, which Yishake did not have. So, they recently asked again how they could help. I talked with our Children's Hopechest contact in the field and asked about purchasing a cane.

The response I got was breathtaking! I was overwhelmed with excitement to share the news from afar about Yishake with his sponsor family. The news from Ethiopia was better than details on buying a new cane. Instead, we heard that he had surgery on his foot and is recovering! The staff from Kechene is visiting him regularly so as to feed him nutritious meals from the care point and give him his lessons. He will return to school soon with the use of BOTH feet and NO CANE!

I was so amazed by the impact of this one family and how their sponsorship of this care point not only feeds and educates to bring hope, but it brought hope to a little boy who would otherwise not have been able to function in Ethiopia fully and provide for himself. He has a future so different now than before sponsorship. He has the hope of a future!

Though this sponsor family is sponsoring Yishake, they and the entire group of Kechene sponsors can take part in this blessing of Yishake's surgery. It is a group effort as all the sponsors' financial support gets pooled together to provide for cases such as this or any other serious cases that may come up. God has provided for this little boy to have a place to go to school that will love on him so much that they got the medical help he needed to get his surgery. All of this was done through all of you!

Thank you Brian, Cherie, Nathan, Josh, Rachael, Lisa, Tally, and Hannah.

And thank you to all of you who sponsor with this family to provide for that environment that can now share God's love in so many ways and give them HOPE!

T-shirts Available through Children's Hopechest

Check out these great t-shirts to honor and advertise our work with Ethiopia!

Those that purchase a t-shirt will be entered to win a Mission trip with Children's Hopechest!

Not interested in going on a mission trip yet?

No problem, if you win, you could send ME! hehe

Anyway, really great way to support Children's Hopechest and by making others aware of your commitment to Kechene Care Point in Ethiopia if you are a sponsor or donor.

Go to: http://blog.beliefnet.com/redletters/2012/03/you-could-win-a-free-mission-trip.html

Track Season shoes...

Well, it's track season again. Baseball and soccer season are also just around the corner and that means NEW SHOES! Of course these are for our elective activities and not their day to day activities.

Fortunately, our son, Caleb and his friends have shoes that are actually just fine for a few more runs...and most likely we'll go get a new pair very soon before the first meet.

However, our kids at Kechene also need new shoes. Though 56 new pair were purchased last year at this time, that was a year ago and they are growing out of them. Caleb and his friends' shoes are one pair of many and we are replacing them after just a few months of running.

The kids at Kechene, ALL need new shoes.

are new students, like the little boy to the left, or students

who already got a new pair in 2011,

they actually all need new shoes.

It has come to my attention that the children are trying to play soccer in their shoes and having a difficult time kicking the ball. I wonder why.

Visit Children's Hopechest to make a donation for the next round of shoes! Can you imagine what you would do if your own children only had this pair for all their activities?

www.go.hopechest.org/kechene-shoes

Even though my son and I think he "needs" new track shoes, I think he and I can agree it can wait a few days. The kids at Kechene can't wait and they clearly NEED shoes. Join me in our quest to put shoes on our kids at Kechene! Thanks!!