"So Just leave the coffee out of this." How many times have you heard or been told , for the price of just a cup of coffee a day, or Give up your Starbucks or Timmies on the way to work !.. Why is it that to experience the reward of doing a small act of kindness for someone we should then give something up? I say Please help us with a small act of kindness, and then celebrate .. go get yourself a Late !
At the farm, we are in a village were there is not a single restaurant. Wanting the kids to experience life, especially after being institutionalized their hole lives, we built a cafe. The Cafe is a place to go when you are down, it is a place to go when you are celebrating, it is a place to go when you have questions or just need to talk , and it is a place to go for a reward for a job well done ... Over a good cup of coffee we have watched as lives have been touched and hearts have been changed ... So I am not going to ask anyone ever again to just give up their morning coffee, but will ask that you join us with a small "act of kindness" then go treat yourself to a cup-a. We will celebrate with you !
So where am I going with this you might ask ?
Well we have a few needs that are starting to get ahead of us . There is a young boy we know that has problems with bad knock-knees . This can be corrected with massage and corrective shoes .. $120 CDN.... No need to give up coffee for this one right ?
Here is another $120 need One of the families we work with , Mr butcher helps when we have kids in the prisons, as well he looks after our fields . Mrs Butcher receives some help from us to go to a pharmacist collage. Well Mrs butcher has some eye problems and the treatment is $120
This next need is a fun one , It is a bit more, and doing it alone might require a cut back on the coffee, so instead maybe if a few of you got together , no coffee would be harmed..
Our Kyrgyz girl Baktagul got married a couple weeks ago in Turkey. the wedding celebration will be Sept 1. Julie and I had tried to plan a stop in Turkey on our way back for this , but the Turkish air fares were over $2000 more expensive for us to fly through Turkey. Then we came up with an idea .. Aigoola was first connected with Baktagul in the orphanage almost 15 years ago and has been an important roll in her life all this time , right up to and including Baktugul living on the farm and spending time with Aigoola before going back to Turkey in the spring. For $500 we can fly Aigoola to Turkey for the wedding celebration. Both Baktagul and Aigoola are thrilled with this .. It will be so important for Baktagul to have someone there representing her Kyrgyz family, and will be a true adventure and a great holiday for Aigoola at the same time ..
The next one up I have mentioned in passing, but the time is coming where we need to act. Many of you will have known Melody if you have been to Kyrgyzstan. She has helped translate for us since she was eight years old . She is smart, gifted, and has a soft gentle spirit , an absolute gem. For the last few years she has been having a terrible time at school and there does not seem to be anything that can be done about it. She is being treated awful and picked on and bullied buy a mean spirited spiteful old teacher simply because of her faith. We have prayed for strength, for Melody, a softening of the teachers heart, and baring all else a distance between Melody and the teacher , how ever that might be .
Prayers were answered when Melody was excepted and received a visa and a scholarship to a fantastic like minded private school in Cincinnati Ohio. I can not begin to express how thrilled we are for her .. this is normally over $20 000 a year tuition plus living expenses, plus flights , plus visa .. The total that we will need to pay for this is just $4000 . Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy has seen something special in Melody and is willing to make a great investment into her future .. would you consider being a part of that .. In fact , if you are lead to cover this one , I will buy YOU a coffee.
Melody is just one of over a dozen kids we would like to sponsor for tuition next fall .. with a little over
$15 000 needed to meet these needs, we could sure use your help.