September 2021

It is crazy to even think about the fact that it is September. I may have said this last month but I feel like I run a marathon every day and get nowhere. This keeps me pretty confused about days and time. There is so much going on with earthquake relief. RMI continues to work hard trying to get as much help to as many people as possible. It has been fun having different visitors in and out throughout this time as people come down to help. I love getting to see friends new and old that haven’t been in the country in a while. With lack of missionaries here I have been handling a lot of the hospitality here. The ladies that do the cooking and cleaning make this easy for me. We are so blessed to have such capable people working with us!

With it being summertime it is furlough time for many missionaries. This means less people here to help out with Agape. Agape Flights has been so awesome sending several flights a week with both earthquake relief items and our normal mail. I always enjoy helping out here in whatever way I can.

This time is normally our busy season in HFKz anyways so we have been overloaded. But we always say we are thankful to have a lot of work to do…that means more sponsored children. We have been creating our yearly reports in order to have the best information possible for our sponsors. Each child gets a copy of their photo every year so we have to separate and organize those. We also have letters to separate and organize for the students to use when writing their thank you notes to sponsors. You can see above that I have also been working on translating letters from sponsors. We started delivering gifts again towards the end of this month as well. Back in July I also added the responsibility of our HFKz facebook page to my list. Go check it out and give us a like! As you can see, these things keep me busy!

With as busy as this month has been, I have needed to force myself to make time for myself. That isn’t always easy to do. Thankfully, I was able to get away for a day with two great friends of mine. I have also been trying to have one day on the weekends that I just stay home. It sounds silly but I truly have to remind myself that rest is required in order to help others. Please pray that I will remember to take care of myself.

My house has had some issues for a while. Before I left, I started having some work done on it. A lot of what I started were things that just really needed to be done. My kitchen cabinets were falling apart, two out of three bathrooms in my house had no doors, there was a tree which roots were coming out of the shower drain in the bathroom furthest from it, messing up the toilet in a different bathroom, and pushing up my floor in my dining room, living room, and one of the other bedrooms. There were holes starting to come up in my floor which was letting in mice. Thankfully, CLC housing has helped to cover the expenses of these renovations. This work started before I left but due to the earthquake some things have been delayed. A friend of mine reminded me that I also need a safe place so even if things are structurally okay I should still make my house nice and comforting to me. So I have also done some painting and I am working on redecorating as well. Check out some of the pictures below.

School is supposed to start in early October. Due to the late start our schedule will be a little off. After school begins we will be on the road several days a week for several months visiting the schools. On these visits we take pictures of the kids, help them to write their letters, meet with parents, teachers, school, directors, and pastors, give out any gifts that we have, and sometimes shoot videos. When we return to the office we will edit pictures and videos and also translate letters and the videos as well. Please pray for our health and safety! This year will be an interesting year with all of the trauma that these children have faced recently. So many of them completely lost their homes, schools, and churches. Please pray for these kids!! We also ask that you consider sponsoring a kid or two….or seven. Head over to rmibridge.org/hope-for-kidz to do that!