November was a very busy month, behind the scenes; as we finished our shopping for the Christmas Blessing meetings in December. We look forward to all the joy that it will bring the children and are pleased with the response that we got this year. The big activity that we had at our November meetings was to take the annual pictures of the children. They got to pick which backdrop they wanted to use. These new pictures will be sent to the sponsors in the near future. We celebrated our quarterly birthday party a month early; to be able to have only the Christmas outreach be a part of the December meetings. There were 63 children that we honored for their birthdays in the months of October, November and December. We sang to the children, prayed over them and then enjoyed a small piece of cake and refreshment with all present. The children who had sponsors also received a coupon from their sponsor, to use at the clinic store; as a remembrance of their special day.
We are in the process of constructing 14 latrines for some of our families; 4 were gifted for Christmas from their sponsors and the other 10 from additional funding that we had. Having a latrine for the family gives much better health for the entire family to be able to enjoy.
We have 48 children that will be graduating out of the program at the end of the year. We will be notifying the sponsors that will be affected by this. It is a bitter sweet time for everyone. We have become accustomed to having the children come every month and many have had the opportunity to meet their sponsors, as they came to Guatemala with a team. But it is a huge success story of taking a child from a malnourished state to much better health; plus, everything else that we have poured into these families during their time with Embrace. We ask the sponsors who have a child graduating to prayerfully consider taking a new child; to begin the restoration process all over again with another child. Please be aware that you may be contacted and we would appreciate your response asap as to whether you are willing to have us choose another child for you.
We have had 3 registration days in the last month and a half and signed up 35 new children into the program. This currently gives us almost 50 children who are in need of a sponsor. Help us to provide that sponsorship for these children as we go into 2024. And please remember that the cost of sponsorship will be changing in January. We have people who have started using the new prices for their payments in 2023; having too much is not a huge program as we can give it to the child for their birthday or something. Some payments are coming in to cover 2024 and they are NOT reflecting the new pricing. Please make sure that you have set up the proper payments through your bank’s auto pay or through payments that you submit directly. We hope to make this transition as smoothly as possible as to not interrupt the children’s benefits that they receive. We appreciate our sponsors and all that they do to give a better life to their Embrace children!
