What’s Next? Responding to a Great Need.

The scene is heartbreaking.  Every day we turn away 5 – 10 mothers who are very poor and who would benefit from EHE’s services.  They are poor.  They are hurting.  And for some, they are out of hope.

Just in the last week, here are 3 of their stories:

• An impoverished mom who started university, but was attacked and raped one night, leaving her with a child.  She now has dropped out of university and is begging on the street because she has no one in her life to help her.

• A mother with her two twins who are begging on the street.  However it is not working.  The twins are very sick and malnourished.  Without intervention they may not make it.

• A mother with an 8 month old who is so tiny that she appears to be a newborn.  She is not well and we are concerned about her survival.

And the list goes on and on…

5 – 10 moms per day that we have to turn away, and that is just in our local area here.  At only 5 per day x 5 days per week x 52 weeks per year, we have to turn away at least 1,300 moms and their children per year.   And that sucks – to put it bluntly.

To top it off, the local government officials came to us last week and said, “We love what you are doing.  Please open another center to help more families.  The need is overwhelming.”

So, what can we do?  We’re going to step out and expand again.

This time we are dreaming of adding an additional 44 families to the project and acquiring another house to be used for a center in our area.  The families keep coming, so we want to meet them in that need.

How can you help?

1. Pray.  This means amending our proposal with the federal, regional, sub-city and local governments.  We need favor.

 2.  Get Your Church Involved.  We are going to start a new initiative called Church Partnerships.  We’ll unfold more information about it tomorrow on the blog.  Help your church get involved in orphan prevention and the care of widows.

3. Sponsorships.  We just finished a sponsorship drive which put us over the top.  Amazing.  Please keep spreading the word so that we can fund the expansion when it is time.

4. Administrative Costs.  We are looking for some folks who would like to help EHE through covering administrative costs, thus allowing more of our donations to go directly to project expenses.  We know that some of you out there have a heart for this.  Please tag us if you are at jerry@embracinghopeethiopia.com

Thank you for partnering with us…and helping there to be a few more families that can be helped.  We continue to see Jesus meeting these women and children – and we are grateful for how you partner with us in it.