Just Like That

It feels like we never know what we are going to wake up to these days. Life has taken many unexpectant and difficult turns this past year. Between life in general, health issues amongst our staff and kids as well as the various difficulties that have hit Haiti over the past months we have found the need to remain extremely flexible and continually in prayer. Our hope and faith in our Heavenly Father has been stretched time and again, and we are testimonies that He always remains faithful and can be trusted.

And, just like that, summer is over and we are staring into the new school year. Linda and our young leaders, who help her out, are in the process of figuring out which ones of our 50+ students needs which uniform, and what books and shoes and supplies. It is quite a feat to get it all organized and everyone ready for the opening of school.

It costs us on average of $300 US per student per school year. This year is likely to be higher, as the school fees are said to have risen alongside the prices of everything else over this past year. In an effort to try and combat these rising costs, we have placed as many students into the less expensive public school system as we are able to. We have been hesitant to do this in the past as the education was not as good in quality. But they have really worked to fix this and their school is as good as the others now. It is a blessing to have a public school in our area, as it allows many more young people to go to school.

Our students are so grateful for the chance to attend school, which is a privilege that not all children in Haiti have. Some of them wanted the chance to express their gratitude, and they have done so with some pictures and letters to you.

Valandina just found out today that she passed her grade 9 government exams and will be going into Grade 10 this year!

Gacheley is still waiting to find out if he passed his final exams of High School.

In the meantime, he is studying to prepare to take the government exams to enter into Medical school. It is extremely difficult to get in, but if he succeeds, his medical education will not cost much as it is subsidized by the government.

He'd love your prayers for him as he prepares.

And we join our voices with theirs to say a big thank you to those of you who gave financially this past year to allow us to pay for their education. Together we are giving them the hope of a future through education. Thank you, as well, to those of you who prayed for our students throughout another tough school year.

We would ask you all to pray about this upcoming school year:

• Pray and ask our Father to, once again, provide the funds needed for this year as He has so graciously done these many years.

• Pray for our students to have wisdom, courage, health and strength to put in the long hours of study, homework and classroom time. They are always busy during the week as they come home with hours of homework to do in the afternoons and evenings.

• Pray for Linda and the leaders as they get the logistics ready for everyone to start school in the next few weeks.

We’d like to remind you that if you’d like to hear more regular updates and prayer requests from us, you can join our House of Hope private Facebook page by following this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/houseofhopehaiti1/ . We post on this page weekly, unless there are more pressing prayer requests to share with you, then we will post more often. We also send these requests out in an email to those who do not have Facebook accounts. If this would interest you, please just let us know and we can add your email to that list as well.