New Year Activities
Unfortunately, our hard drive (with most of our pictures) crashed, causing us to temporary lose some of our pictures. This New Yea,r we had a great time with our children. We had a slumber party with all the kids in our house. All the girls stayed in our living room while all the boys slept in our boys room. We held our annual paper football tournament where Gabe(Wang ChengLong) got 1st place, Jaxin(our eldest son) got 2nd and 3rd place was Eli(our middle son). Once we get those pictures, we will post them!
Nathan Bell, who administrates the Gongyi Home of Hope, contacted us and told us he was contacted by someone who wanted to know if we wanted a donation of rice and how much could we hold. We were quite surprised when a truck load of rice showed up the next week. Tyler (our youngest son) loves rice and was probably the most excited one of all:)
As most of you know, Michelle had to make an emergency trip back to the States the day after Christmas, to help care for her mother who was diagnosed with cancer the day before Thanksgiving. With a lot prayer, her mother has been able to have several chemotherapy treatments that at first, the doctors said was pointless because her cancer was so advanced. After her first treatment, the doctors were very positive with how well it worked. Praise Father! Michelle stayed one month in the States. All the children were very excited to welcome their Mommy back home!
Pingyu is on the same latitude as South Tennessee. So we don’t get snow very often, and when it does snow, usually it’s just a dusting. Our family is from Illinois, so to have such little snow every year is quite disappointing. This year looked like we were not going to have even winter with 70 degree Fahrenheit weather in December and January. February brought in the cold weather and with it, a very nice surprise…about 4-5 inches of snow:) Below are some pictures of some of our children playing in the snow. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed playing in the snow.
We normally try not to saturate our website with listing our needs. From time to time we have been asked what our greatest needs are. With having such a large family; our greatest need(s) change quite often. For instance, for the last 3 months we have had to pay over $1000 more than our usual power bill that is usually around $450 per month. With all the heaters running, our power bill in December was $750, January and February were $875 each month and we expect March’s bill to be just as much. If you are interested in giving towards our power bill, please click HERE and make a memo stating it’s for the power bill.
For the Chinese New Year, the country pretty much shuts down for a month. The Lantern Festival is one last celebration before everyone heads back to school or work. It is very loud but so beautiful. We could literally turn in a 360 degree and see huge, bright and colorful fireworks going off everywhere. Someone donated a few fireworks that you can see Michelle lighting off with a couple of our children.
This year we were able to do something a little different because our children are getting older. While Michelle was home with the younger children; I took the older children who are in 6th grade to the nearby park to celebrate. Jessica (our translator), Janis and Lauren (teachers) came along to help watch the children(pictured below). Usually the government puts on a beautiful display of fireworks for everyone to enjoy. This year they did not do it trying to not be wasteful. There were many other people shooting off fireworks and lighting Lanterns to make the time enjoyable.
It is such a blessing to be able to see everyday the joy, hope and happiness there is in all the children in our Home. We thank you for your continued financial and prayer support. Our hopes are that you can experience some of that joy, hope and happiness from this site. If you want to experience it first hand, please email me: ben@homeofhope.org to find out how.
Blessings
Ben and Michelle
Posted: February 15th, 2014 under Uncategorized.
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