Well, we did it!! HOPE Congo had it's first Annual Client Assembly this past Friday. This was the first time all the HOPE Clients have had the opportunity to gather and meet one another. HOPE Congo has received many requests from clients for a gathering like this. It took several months to plan and a lot of work! HOPE has around 4,000 clients currently and all were invited. We did not know how many were actually going to come....which was the stressful part. We had to plan for 4,000, but didn't even know if 500 would come. We rented out a large church that could hold 2,000 and then rented plastic chairs and a large screen for outside in case of overflow. In all we had around 2,000 clients attend on Friday! We were so happy that so many decided to come as coming to the assembly would be time away from their business and a loss of income. Precy, our Spiritual Integration Officer, planned the event and did a great job! The choir from the church led worship and Precy preached. The Regional Director, Rodger Morgan, was here and gave a talk about the vision of HOPE and what the future holds. At the end we gave out awards for different accomplishments like most savings, longest active client, etc. The clients were hilarious. Many of them danced their way to the stage to received their award. Then we gave out sandwiches and juice bottles at the end. They seemed to really enjoy the assembly. All in all it was a good and tiring day! Here are some pictures from the Assembly.
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| The stage and choir at the church. |
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| Nate and Clement, the HOPE accountant. |
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| Precy, the Spiritual Integration Officer |
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A church full of HOPE Clients. (The roof is currently being repaired. It was damaged during the explosions in March.)
Sarah and I (Allie) took a group of young girls from an orphanage to lunch at La Mandarine, a restaurant near our house. They were so excited to go as we have been mainly working with the older girls in the orphanage. They either got pizza or a hamburger and little to go cakes at the end. We brought them back to my apartment and ate our cake and hung out. We asked them all kinds of questions and were just overwhelmed by how previous these little girls are! We hope to do a small bible study with this age as well in the coming months. They are 9-12 years old and are quickly growing up! I remember this was the age I started having a lot of questions about my body, growing up, and boys. It breaks my hear to think they don't have mama's to talk with them about these things, to show them how to do their hair, paint their nails, and do fun girly stuff with them. Sarah and I hope to be surrogate big sisters to them throughout the next year. Please be praying for the continued health and development of these beautiful girls!
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| Dorcas, me, and Grace |
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| Swinging at SIL (my compound) |
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| Sweet little girls. |
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| Hanging out at my place and eating cake. |
This past Saturday was the last Saturday of our 8 week mentor program with the teenage girls at the orphanage. If you haven't read my previous blog, each Saturday we have 8 girls over to our houses to have a bible study, eat snacks, and do a fun activity. We hoped to create friendships with these girls and create an atmosphere where they felt safe to talk about their lives. Over the past 2 months they have certainly opened up to us and are now very comfortable to ask us anything (sometime a little too comfortable haha). They start school today and we decided during the school year we would get together just 1 Saturday a month. They were sad, but understand. We told them we would still get together at different times as well. Sarah ordered the Twilight movies recently and was able to get the French version! We are going to have a Twilight girls night soon! :) Here are some recent pictures from one of our Saturdays.
Working with Sarah at the orphanage has been such a blessing to me. It has definitely kindled the desire of adoption in my heart. I am eternally grateful God decided to adopt me as his own, and I can't wait to do what I have learned from my heavenly father one day. Please pray that God will use me in any way to love these girls and attract them not to myself but to Him. I pray that these girls will find true joy in the Lord because as we missionaries come and go from their lives often, he will never leave them.
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| Sarah and the girls |
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| Yvette, she is our Diva for sure. Yvette is a Rwandan genocide refugee. |
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