Cows and Sponsor Gifts

Praise the LORD! We reached our goal for Cows for Christmas!!!!!! A HUGE THANK YOU to all of you that gave towards this. It is the gift that keeps on giving that's for sure! (it gives more cows and a lot of milk!) We are still receiving donations for this though. Our ultimate goal is to have five cows for each house built at Mattaw Children's Village. We also need to build a barn and purchase a bit of land for them. And now... drum roll please.... I present to you our three pregnant mamas....

Banda

Khayeka

Nasike

Aren't they beauties?! The children and staff rejoiced when we brought them to the property. Our land is flowing with milk! We will purchase more when we return to Kenya but to get things started, Bud went and bought these three. There is a Kenyan that Bud had go and get trained at the dairy farm these cows came from. He is now overseeing the cows and milking them everyday.

If you are a sponsor and send gifts for your child, we are trying our best to figure out a way to get them to the child the quickest and cheapest way possible. If you have sent gifts or letters to the Texas address then there is a big pile of stuff waiting for us to take back to the children in February. It is very pricey to mail from here to Kenya. At the moment we just wait until a team or volunteer is coming to Mattaw and send whatever has come in with them. We also give the option of you sending gifts and letters directly to our Kenyan address. This is the quickest way for the child to receive their gift and/or letter. Last week we had a few gifts that I gave to some of our children.

A big thanks from Pauline to Candy for her gift!

She loved it!

And to Alissa, a big thanks from Daisy! She was so happy to see one of her sponsors is someone close to her age and that she plays soccer.

They both ran off with big smiles on their face to show the house moms what they received!

And speaking of sponsors. I wanted to mention a girl that is one of Georgie's sponsors. We have so many stories of sponsors that I want to share but for now I'll share this one. It's just so amazing to see how God uses people and touches lives through our sponsorship program. One of the most touching stories is when a child is giving to help another child across the world. One of them is Ally. Ally came on a team this past year. She is now 13 years old and has such a HUGE and loving heart for orphans in Africa. We are so thankful to have her be a part of Mattaw Children's Village. The children at Mattaw counted it such a blessing to have her visit them! They are still asking how Ally is! In order for Ally to sponsor Georgie, she came up with the idea of learning to make paper beads that you find in Africa. She just launched her shop on Etsy and I've got to tell you, the items are SO beautiful! Here is a short bio on Ally's profile page on her shop on Etsy:

I am 13 years old & want to do what I can to help orphans. My family & I went on a mission trip to Kenya last summer. My eyes were opened to the tremendous need of so many. I now sponsor a 2 year old boy that I fell in love with in Kenya.
I do this by making paper beads like the African women make & sell my paper beads creations. Once I meet my monthly sponsorship amount, I want to give other money earned to orphan care. I can't help everyone in need...I wish I could. But I can change the world for one.

And now you can go browse her shop that is called Twirling Trees by clicking HERE or copy and past this website: http://www.Etsy.com/shop/TwirlingTrees