December Sponsor Update

Dear Sponsor,

Though when you receive this letter our November team will have returned to the states, I currently am writing this on the groudns in Haiti. I am sitting here in Le Belle Maison Guesthouse, humbled and grateful as I think about how the Lord has invited us to come along and how you have said, "We'd love to come too!" Thank you for your interest. Thank you for trusting. Thank you for risking compassion. And thank you for praying.

With every trip, with every meeting, with every conversation attempted through the language barrier, with every project completed, child healed, and vision spoken, we are learning and growing. So dear friend, as we learn and giv and go, I would love it if you would continue to walk with us in this great adventure that has brought us together with this little place called Bighouse.

Many wondeful things are evolving and emerging out at the orphanage and the community that it belongs to. Short-term goals are shaping new hope as they get checked off, and long-term goals are rounding the corner faster than we could have imagined.

Some of these blessings are:

1. A couple of small gardens have been planted in the back of Bighouse yielding their very own eggplant, peas, pumpkins, and okra. This is exciting and helps us possibly move furth toward self-sustainment.
2. The building of eight latrines and eight shower facitilies has begun and will be completed soon. This offers much greater sanitation and privacy for the kids. Thank you to our November Team who helped get this project rolling!
3. School is still in process and the teachers recently received some desks and storage space.
4. The Youth's December Team (going down in just a few weeks) will be building playground equipment on site, and a church out of Kansas has already committed to funding and building the dining pavilion next spring.

Also, some of our long-term goals (which include reintegrating as many kids as possible back into homes where they can be properly nurtured, and reaching out further in community development in the area) have already begun!

1. We celebrate the fact that some of the children (economic orphans) have been reunited with their families as the community continues to heal and grow out of the tough deprivation that the three hurricanes caused last year!
2. And, conversatio nhas begun about extending the school as to invite community children into an opportunity of affordable education and potentially making Bighouse a healing and hopeful distribution hub for the community that so desperately needs it.

Just a reminder, the money you give each month goes to all the efforts at the orphanage as a whole. Your gifts are providing medical attention, 3-meals-a-day, and enabling many of the goals mentioned above. Your partnership is, little by little, transforming an entire community! SAbove you'll find a handful of pictures of some new faces for you to learn, connect with, and pray for, and some photos of a few of the projects that are taking place! Our goal as a "sponsorship effort" is to connect you as best we can to our brothers and sisters in Haiti. We hope and pray that this takes you there a little more each time.

Grateful,

Britney Winn
Haiti Liaison
FUMC Shreveport
britneywinn@gmail.com
318.245.0485

Photos taken by Jason Kay, November Team '09