GongYi Home of Hope

Site menu:

Recent Posts

Archives

Touching the hopeless
Reaching the children
With love and compassion

Site search

Home of Hope Locations

Meta

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!


DSC_0001
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:)
DSC_0051DSC_0009
Left is Dana (Hu YangShe) and Tyler carrying up a bag together. Right is Eli and Jaxin showing how strong they are by carrying up their own bag of rice.

DSC_0039DSC_0023

Left Sammy (Xing EnDian) trying to show how strong he is, while Dana on the right is a little too small to carry a bag by herself.

DSC_0058


DSC_0116 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!

DSC_0117DSC_0103

All the kids ran and hugged and kissed Michelle and as you can see Emma (on the right), they all gave her one rose each:)


Let it Snow Let it Snow

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.
DSC_0188
Eli was finally able to build a snow man…a real snow man!!

DSC_0176
Jaxin helped his younger Chinese brothers (left to right Aaron, Joey and Danny) make a few snowmen. I think at one point we looked outside and saw about 10 different snowmen.

DSC_0190
Once they used up the snow making the snowmen, they would break several of them down to make snow forts to prepare for the snowball ambush they planned for Michelle and I.

DSC_0167
Crystal (Song Ao Zhen) making a snowball!

DSC_0166
Anna (Wang Yan) enjoying the snow in her new winter coat.


Help Give Us Heat!

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.


Lantern Festival

DSC_0274
DSC_0275
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.
DSC_0260
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.
photo
When we got back home, we also lit a few lanterns, one for each room.

DSC_0283
DSC_0305


DSC_0265 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