Send Hope

We're having a great time with our DIY craft kits and jewelry kits that came in the Christmas presents! 💕

On Christmas Eve between all of the festivites, we celebrated two precious birthdays! Yair, is now two years old and we have another 8 year old in the house!! 🥳

New Bibles!!! It has been a goal of ours to get new Bibles for all of the kids. This year for Christmas we had Bibles for all of the little kids, middle kids, and teen boys. Collecting enough Bibles for the teen girls has been difficult, I had seven Bibles stored and waiting. Typically, we have about 16 teen girls but most of them are with family for the holidays. It was the perfect occasion to give out the Bibles (one not pictured). We have folks coming down in January and it would be a dream come true to have the additional Bibles purchased to distribute to our other girls.

If you are interested in helping us with this dream, the Bibles are on our Amazon wishlist here: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3TKTTNQTH81YY?ref_=wl_share

On Christmas Day, Lauren and three of our residents went to give out gifts to twelve children that are in the pediatric wing.

Thank you again everyone who was so generous with gift giving last year. The surplus of gifts that we received allowed us to spread the joy to children (and parents) in need of a little hope.

Christmas Day! Pancakes, eggs and chorizo, and coffee for breakfast, then church. In the afternoon we opened gifts 🥰

Thank you everyone that spends the time to purchase gifts, it was a great success yesterday with lots of big smiles and some very happy hearts.

We are already collecting gifts for next Christmas so that we have time to package and ship them 🙂

Another exciting day! This Christmas Eve we decorated (and ate) our cookies, had Christmas tree photo shoots, ate nacatamales, and now we’re snuggled in watching Christmas movies for our Christmas Eve slumber party. Stockings with movie snacks have been handed out, popcorn coming soon!

Merry Christmas from Honduras!

In addition to tamale making we did Christmas crafts, cut out Christmas cookies (decorating today), wrapped gifts, ate peanut butter blossoms, and stuffed stockings!

For the majority of these children these are all firsts, it's been a blast introducing them to some of our favorite activities and watching their excitement 💕

It was a fun day getting ready for the festivities of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Tamale making!! Yesterday our employees, Kim and Felicita spent the day making tamales for our residents. Honduran tamales (nacatamales) are about three times the size of typical tamales and are wrapped in banana leaves instead of corn husks. Tonight, we will feast and enjoy the anticipation of Christmas.

Gracias Kim y Felicita por este gran esfuerzo y trabajo de amor!

Video of the tamales in our stories.

After unloading the container on Tuesday, we had a quick birthday celebration for this special 15 year old. We're planning a bigger celebration for her quinceañera but didn't want the day to get away from us without a little something.

Photos from Send Hope's post

The final container of 2022 arrived yesterday! This container had 1,388 boxes of Kids Against Hunger meals, bicycles, playground equipment, clothing, and many other necessities for the House of Hope. Thank you to everyone that helps package meals, boxes, loads the container, or makes a financial contribution that helps us ship in so many supplies. These items make a big impact for the House of Hope and in our community.

And a very big thank you to Dr. Marianne and the group of boys from her neighborhood that helped us unload the container!

The gifts that were donated last year have been shipped and are being unloaded and prepared to give out on Christmas Day! It’s time to restock for next years gifts, here is a wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3TKTTNQTH81YY?ref_=wl_share
Almost all of the kids have asked for a new Bible, we’ve put several on the wishlist.

Santa came a little early this year and brought us two brand new baby girls! They were born on 12/11 and 12/14, both babies are healthy and doing well.

One of the mothers, unfortunately, has been hospitalized for 5 additional days after giving birth with pain and fevers. Tests are being run and a specialist has been called in but we have no answers yet, please pray for her.

Updated: the mother was released from the hospital mid-day. We’re happy to have her home and prayerful that the fever stays away and she heals completely.

Rainy season= cooler nights and comfy pajamas 😍

We're taking advantage of fewer residents over Christmas break to do some much needed maintenance. One our projects is sanding, sealing, and varnishing all of this kid's cabinets.

Also on the list, paint all of the interior walls, ceiling tiles, bunk beds, and metal doors and beams with anti-corrosive paint. We've got lots of work to do but a hardworking group of girls and employees working on it.

Our November birthday girls, 10 and 20 years old!!

This year we had SIX kids graduate from elementary school (6th grade)! All six of these kids are going to do great in middle school.

We might be a little bit anxious about having 9 middle schoolers next year but ultimately, we're so excited! It feels like the class sizes and graduation sizes keep getting larger which brings a lot of joy.

Only two precious girls are pictured, two kids already left for the school break and the other two finished up 5th and 6th grade this year through the homeschool program with our tutor!

At the House of Hope, we see a tremendous amount of children who have been in precarious situations and have often times lost some of their most basic human rights. We stand with these children and do our very best to provide them with shelter, love, education, and the space to be themselves without the threat of abuse or extortion. Sometimes these cases live with us for many years, other times they are placed with us briefly while a safe place within their family is found. Either way, we are blessed with the opportunity to be entrusted with these kids. If you are interested in partnering with us to ensure that the children of Puerto Lempira, Honduras have a safe place to go when they are most in need, send us a message or visit our website (send-hope.org) to make a financial contribution.

With Irias and Tony graduating, we will have six university students next year! All six of our students had the opportunity to attend a leadership training camp that has the potential to turn into a scholarship.

They haven't all been together for years so it was wonderful getting pictures of them all together from the other side of the country.

The camp that they attended is specifically for adolescents transitioning out of children's homes. It was an awesome weekend for them to meet many other young adults and build relationships with new friends. We're proud of all six of these kids, what they've achieved, what they've overcome, and what they're working towards in the future.

Send Hope partners with Habitat for Humanity Honduras. This week we've had the great pleasure of having a Habitat engineer here with us to identify the next group of families that will be receiving houses in Puerto Lempira. At this moment, these families are in a meeting with the engineer to get a better understanding of the program including family contributions and obligations. We are excited to start constructing for these families in the new year 🤩

In the mix of all the prep for graduations, promotions, and birthdays we got ready for Christmas! By some folks standards we might have done it a little early but Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here so there was nothing to stop us.

We currently have ten foster cases that have never been with us for Christmas. This was probably their first experience decorating for the holidays; watching their eyes light up as we pulled out the tree and plugged in the lights was a moment to remember. Our electricity here still isn't 24 hours, each morning when it comes back on (around 7:30) the Christmas lights are the first thing to be plugged in!

At the end of October, leading up to all of the end of school celebrations, we celebrated two birthdays. Rafael and Sendy have the same birthday and both turned seven this year!

On Thursday, we also had the opportunity to celebrate Maria Elena! She was promoted from ninth grade to high school. Beginning in Feb 2023, she will start 10th grade with a year of basic courses and then move on to two years concentrated in accounting and finance.

With Maria Elena's promotion to high school, we will have five students in 10th-12th grade next year. We are elated that just seven short years ago, we had our very first high school graduate; since then, we've had six more graduate and five more coming up 💕

Tony and Irias graduated on Thursday. On Friday, they flew out of Puerto Lempira to take an entrance exam for university. The exam was yesterday, now we wait for scores and enrollment dates. Neither of them are 100% certain what they want to do in the future, we're just excited they're getting out there and experiencing new things and searching for opportunities!

Congratulations to Irias and Tony!

Irias and Tony graduated from high school with a diploma in Accounting and Finance on Thursday.

Both young men are long term residents of the House of Hope. Like most teenage boys, they kept us on our toes, always had us wondering what they were up to, and both have such a special place in our hearts. From changing diapers, to dealing with all of their little boy shenanigans, we aren't quite sure how we got here so fast. Our hearts are bursting with pride for these two and the incredible young men they have become.

We had two young men graduate from high school this year! Stay tuned, graduation has been just one of the exciting things happening at the House of Hope lately.

Send Hope

Remember Send Hope, and the children of the House of Hope and La Mosquitia, today on Giving Tuesday.
Donate athttps://www.send-hope.org/make-an-impact

Send Hope Send Hope supports and assists over 1,500 children in the remote area of La Mosquitia through the House of Hope children’s home and Katrina Engle Nourishment Program.

Trip to the park!

We got the 3rd quarter grades a few weeks ago for our middle and high schoolers. After each quarter, we celebrate good grades by having a pizza party at our house or going out to a restaurant. This time we had homemade pizzas, chocolate chip cookies, Wii games, and a movie!

Today the House of Hope school participated in the Fight Against Breast Cancer parade.

Thank you Martha Lusmia Rivera and Samuel for bringing awareness to our students (and also for the pictures)!

Over the past few years, our relationship with DINAF (Honduran version of Child Protective Services) has grown. We've been taking more short-term cases while solutions are found within their family units. Sometimes, these cases turn into longer term cases when a resolution is difficult to find. In 2022, we have hosted 21 cases from DINAF, nine of which are still with us today. These are four of the young ladies that arrived between June and August of this year. We are grateful that we have been able to provide shelter, security, nutritious meals, and love to them and all of our other "foster" children.

Unfortunately, today, for the first time in a long time, we had to turn away a case of a young girl in need of safe place to stay. Costs have risen, food is more expensive, and funding is lower than ever. We simply cannot afford another mouth to feed. We have been surviving on faith that we will be able to meet the needs of our 32 residents but today, we couldn't commit to another.

We estimate that each of these cases costs the House of Hope $125-$150/month. Our nine extra cases comes to an extra ~$1,300/month. If you are interested in partnering with us to help foster kids in vulnerable situations, please follow the link https://give.cornerstone.cc/Send+Hope

It got a little windy in the night but nothing too crazy. The rains just started and will probably continue for awhile. Until now, we’ve been that little patch of gray land in the white oval that’s stayed dry.

The past 24 hours have brought us little showers and some wind but otherwise it’s been the most sun we’ve seen in a week.

Julia is now a hurricane and will be making landfall in Nicaragua in the next couple of hours. Steven spent the day cleaning out ditches for best drainage, solar battery maintenance, etc. Heavy rains are in the forecast for the next 24+ hours so downed trees and power lines are a possibility. The House of Hope school is one of many shelters in the area should anyone need a place to stay.

Tropical Storm Julia is making it's way towards Nicaragua and is expected to strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall. In Puerto Lempira, Honduras we're under a Tropical Storm Watch. Please pray for Nicaragua and Honduras, it has already been an incredibly wet year for us resulting in flooding and landslides. In other areas of the country, thousands of people are currently camped out in tents along roadways because they've been displaced by overflowing rivers. In our area and outer villages, many homes are built on stilts but fields are too waterlogged to plant crops. Relief efforts for these areas are underway because of the flooding prior to Julia. Julia has the potential to deteriorate the situation further and to delay delivery of aid to these villages.

Thank you for helping Send Hope

We had the coolest opportunity to provide shelter to a young woman for a few days. She was a joy to have around and we were sad to see her go. Due to the circumstances of her case, we aren't at liberty to share details publicly. We do want to share that this was the happiest ever after and most joyous reunion we have been a part of 💕

Last week we celebrated Sady's birthday! Happy Birthday, Sady!