Monday, June 14, 2010

Roblealto Sponsorship Promo.wmv

Groups are back!

We had a great time last week hosting a group of college students from Virginia. These were social work students who were in Costa Rica for 3 weeks to take a social work class and Spanish class and then came for a week of service to our temporary foster care, the Bible Home. Most of the students were not believers, but what they saw here was a true witness of God´s love and work. We had good conversations with them and, even more, they fell in love with our children and saw the children´s faith and love just radiate out of them. We appreciated the students good attitude and patience in painting in 2 of the houses. One of the house mothers shared what a difference having freshly painted rooms has on the children´s motivation. We are so grateful to have groups coming throughout the summer. It was a department goal to have 15 groups this year and I am happy to report that we will have reached that goal by the end of the summer. Praise God!

Another goal for our department was to increase the number of sponsors for our children. Right now only about 60% of our children are sponsored so the goal was to get 300 new sponsors. Our biggest source of new sponsors this year has been our volunteers who have come and seen the impact of Roblealto on the kids and want to continue their partnership. In some cases, 50% of the groups have become new sponsors! But we want to continue to seek out new sponsors because of the difference it makes on the children. I translated a letter from a child to her sponsor the other week and she said, ¨It makes me happy that I have a friend in another country that thinks of me.¨ Obviously the monetary support makes a difference on our programs, but the deeper impact is that a child will feel loved and cared for by someone in another country! This is such a blessing on our children. Will you consider becoming a sponsor? Check out the video above and/or take a look at our website for more info and to sign up! The cost is just $30 a month. Click here for website.

Thanks for considering sponsorship and for your continued prayers and support of our year here! Much love!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

In some ways May was quiet (we didn't have any groups at Roblealto) and in other ways, it was busy! With just 2 months left, Emily posted a list of places in CR we want to see before we leave. One was Guanacaste, which is the northwest part of Costa Rica with a lot of beaches and where a lot of Americans travel. It was VERY hot, but we enjoyed the beach and the time we spent time with our good friends Mike and Kathy who invited us on their wedding anniversary trip. :) We also just had our final visitors - two of Emily's college roommates. We enjoyed taking them to the Caribbean side, which we had yet to visit. It was really hot there too and we decided we are thankful to be living in the cooler central valley. But it was great catching up with Liz and Liz and showing off this beautiful country. They enjoyed the animals, the Spanish, the ocean, the coffee, and the relaxation as they are both exhausted teachers.

This coming week, we will be working with a group of students with a Spanish Academy who are doing some painting at our temporary shelter, the Bible Home. We are happy to be done with our marketing project: researching new church contacts for Roblealto. We have 840 new contacts for them to advertise to and we'll be sending out a mailing to invite the churches to come on a mission trip before we go. It's exciting to think about all the new churches that could get to know Roblealto's mission! Emily continues to enjoy helping with translating letters and reports when she can.

The job search continues and we appreciate your prayers. We're grateful for a couple of interviews Mark has had and for a couple of preaching dates he's set up for when we return. We'll see where God leads! Much love!