Some request for 2015

I'd like to put some requests out there for 2015 and see who God speaks too.

These are requests for volunteers seeking to use their experience in the mission field for a short period of time.  Contact us for more information  http://agreaterhopeorphanage.org./

Builder Mission:

We are looking to construct a team house. This would be a two story cement and brick building.

I'm putting out there if anyone has experience in the beginning phases of such a build and is interested in helping us get started properly.  We are looking for your help.

Please understand that you'd be working in Cambodia where almost anything flies so we have to reduce some of our American regulations to accomplish anything here.

There are also might be some room for laying out future school  ideas.

CPA or Accountant Mission:

We really need help making our accounting and record keeping more efficient.  We are almost looking at starting over from scratch and we could really use your help in the start up and layout.

We are using quick books at the monument and we are fine with this. 

We have the NGO, School, Orphanage, Bookstore, lunch and snack shops as well as other little projects.

It may sound like a lot, it's not really but making sure it all comes together better has  been the hard part for us.

Office / Secretary:

Office Guru specializing in perhaps a school office work we could really use some help in making our office more efficient.  We are really at the moment just making our own way and we'd like to get more ideas and answers upfront so we can avoid little mistakes along the way.  Simple things like you should have a form for that or file things this way would be a big help.

Teachers:

If your a teacher and are interested in helping train and work with our teachers to run their class rooms better and more efficient we would love that help as well.

We'd really like to sharpen what we do and you could be that person God is going use to do it.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers on the idea about making a trip, sharing your time and talent with other Christians around the world.

Trip info:

To get you started with some trip info; often a ticket to Cambodia cost an average of $1,200. US dollars.  A months stay in the village might cost you $500.  A visa for the month will cost you $20.

Extra travel in Cambodia will cost you more but I would say you can easily do a month or less for $2,000 or less, really depends on what you do and where you go.   It is highly likely you'll have money left over at the end of your stay,  that is if you chose to leave as many guest really don't want to go home once their here.   

March - June is very hot here but very cheap.  

September - January is twice the price when traveling (hotels and such).

Thank you all for your interest.

Blessings,

Kit Carson

  

    

Rotha

I neglected to post a photo of Rotha.

Rotha is a handsome and smart little man who is 9 years old and in 3rd grade with our son Joe.

Rotha has been coming to our school for some time and he is also Engly and Rosa's little brother.  They have been asking for us to take him for a while but we didn't have space until recently.

Thank you for the Prayers

Thank you all for your prayers during a trying time for us.  The emails we received were comforting and supportive.  Thank you to all the parents out there that could stand beside us with understanding.

I think for the moment things have died down and prayerfully we'll have that time of peace we all asked for.

When a child has a challenge here it's not always such a big deal, but every so often a child doesn't wish to accept the punishment for their action, which here is often just cleaning dishes.  The child looks for the easiest way to avoid punishment and they say they want to leave.
When we have one child who leaves it seems to create a ripple effect for months after.  Recently we've had a number of kids get into their normal trouble but now their response is I want to leave. Part of me wants to just open the door and say see ya, but then I think about whats out that door and it might as well be the door on an airplane.  For we know if the child leaves here they quality of live goes from a 8 or 9 down to a 1 or 2.  It's not to say life here is that grand but rather to say quality of life from where they came is just that poor.

Compounding all the "I want to run a way" with the couple emergencies and number of illnesses we've had all at one time was difficult and difficult really only on the heart.  It's a real struggle of emotions watch a child say I want to destroy all they've accomplished so easily.

Anyways I'll leave it at that and say again things seem as they are back to normal.


I do want to announce that we were able to take a child this November.

His name is Dara and he is 5 years old.

Dara was rescued from an abusive stepfather.  His mother cares for him but fears the father and was unable to protect Dara.  The first time we heard about Dara, we heard a child was being treated very badly and the social affair asked us to come with them to check out the reports.  Hak my assistant said the province police, the district police and every one important showed up to see.  The boy Dara's head was bleeding from being beaten with a spoon also for eating rice he took from the kitchen.  The step father often doesn't allow Dara to eat because Dara has a father from another marriage.  The funny thing is the police and the people scolded the father but they took no action other than to ask the neighbors to keep an eye on him (Dara)   

When our staff went out with officials the second time to pick Dara up, Dara was standing up to his waist in mud, punishment for eating rice from the kitchen again.

Dara is attending school for the first time and this month with celibate Christmas for the first time he is a handsome and very bright child with a small streak of naughtiness a 5 year old might be expected to offer. 

We are also working on helping the mother leave the father but he has threatened the second baby's life if she tries to leave him so she's very scared at the moment.

This Month we are expected to accept two more children being abused by a grandmother we'll let you know when we have them.

I just want you to know that Dara, the two that we intend to take will need sponsors and we are short on sponsors already.  

So as always if you're interested in sponsoring a child with us please pray about it first and second consider your ability so sponsor the child for a lengthy period of time as a personal relationship is created between you and the child it's best if your support is secure as possible.  

After you've prayed and given the thought some consideration you can email us at the link below.

info@agreaterhopeorphanage.org.

    

Thank you all for you love, kindness, prayers and support,

Kit and Ream

The waves are beating

A short note for prayer.  

We've recently had the opportunity to do an interview for our church magazine.  Since then it seems we've be in a hurricane of problems.
To tell you the truth we've never had such a rough time before. The children at the house are really running us through the ringer.
The thing is we recognize for the most part it is just teenager stuff, largely disobedience and their unwillingness to deal with the consequences of their actions.  There's been lots of drama lately.

We realize already that the article is going to give glory to God about the work that is going on and hopefully do great things for the projects.  We realize we are probably weathering this storm because of it.  Knowing this gives us strength to get through it.
Of 8 years this has been the roughest to where Ream and I are both feeling the strain of it at the same time, where as many times before it was either Ream or I and we were able to prop each other up.

We are asking you to help us in prayer for a time of peace.  Even a week would be helpful.
The article is likely to come out early next year and we fully expect this all to continue until or even after then and it not going to be easy in taking much more.

I do know Ream and I will get through it, but we'd like to not loose any of the kids we have in getting there and we have 4 on the ropes at the moment.

Adah was in the hospital on the 25th she's got foot and mouth from somewhere.
Nop was in the hospital on the 27th for collapsing outside with difficulty breathing.
We'll have to let one of our college kids go this week for unrepentant sin.
We have 2 boys and 2 girls throwing tantrums over different issues.  The end result is they want to leave.

Please also pray for the good kids at the house that this will all be something they learn from and not repeat.  We are receiving loving little notes from some of our kids encouraging us and I am ever so thankful for that.

Thank you all

Finally a Post!

Well it's been much longer than I intended before I had gotten the next post out, but things have been busy.

It's only been two months, but we've had some great things happening, and we've had some challenges as well. There's so much to talk about that I have a hard time even knowing where to start.

I guess I'd like to start by always giving glory to God, right; He's the sole reason we are here or that we've enjoyed such success with the ministries we look after.

Second, I'd really like to thank every guest that came to visit this year. It was a very busy and somewhat difficult year, and visiting guests really blessed us. A gift here and dinner there… It was nice to have calm in midst of the hecticness of these past couple months. It's refreshing for me to share the work with guests and see them enjoy what’s been done. Hearing a little, "Good job" from time to time is really helpful to keep going.

Thank you to all the people who have been funding our projects this year. Our home church Calvary Chapel is always on the top of that list.  http://www.ccfallbrook.com/    Also, a special thanks to Temple Christian School in Australia who have meant so much to us the last four years.  

http://templecc.sa.edu.au/   

Thank you to Tree of Life Church for their amazing faith in giving to people they've never met.

There are so many individuals to name. You know if you came this year we appreciate and love you.

Okay all that mushy stuff out of the way. :)

So my favorite thing to talk about lately is the school, and we left off with preparations for the new school year October 2014/15. It was a wonderfully smooth opening this year. The classrooms were ready, the teachers were ready, and the students were ready. It was so much easier than last year thankfully.

We didn't do much in the way of building this year, other than a new office, so we could turn the old office into a class for grade 10.

Last year we had 350 students this year we're around 440 and counting. We added grade 10 and we added another 1st grade class. Last year we staffed 19, this year we have 24 and 2 volunteers. Last year we had 5 students in college training to be teachers, this year we have 8 teachers in college.

Some good steady growth.

I am also told we had to turn about 130 children away this year because the classes are full or they couldn't read or write yet, and this year we don't have the staff to help kids catch up as we've done in the past.

We are out of space at our current campus and there is no more room for new classes. We are working on land and building ideas for a piece of land. There are stresses and challenges that will come with these decisions. Construction has always been a challenge between my wife and I and it seems we do it every year. Finances are a part of that stress. We also stress ourselves out as we really, really, with all our hearts want to do things right and well. We fear messing up or wishing we would have done it a different way after the fact.

So the new office, we tried to tuck it out of the way since it's out in front of my father in-law’s church. Dad (father in-law) really likes it a lot, and actually brings people to come see it, showing them what a nice building you can get for $6,000. We can always tell when dad's proud.

Building up the community: We've got four shops around the school now open selling meals to the school children. It's a simple thing, but I like seeing people’s lives changed, even in an indirect way.

Thank you so much to our new friend Salyna who spent a month or so doing as much as she could. Salyna is a Cambodian that has grown up in America and now is making an effort to help her people back in Cambodia. She had a good impact on the people she met and I think had a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure it's not the last we've seen of her.

Salyna teaching CPR to our staff

My sister giving us a day for a teacher conference with her friend Becca. It was Kim's first time teaching teachers.

One of my personal favorite moments this summer was when our team from Temple Christian School did worship on Wednesday evening. It was so good, so solid and we really didn't want the time to end.

This was Sunday afternoon outreach that I also truly enjoyed because I got to see my boys, Sam and Joe, enjoy the service and they had a ball to say the least

Here in the main sanctuary and back in two other classes we had 130 children at school give their life to Christ. Many of the children have been coming for a while and there were a number of kids who are brand new to the school.

The kids coming to Christ went to a study on baptism over the next couple of weeks. At the end of that study Ream had the students prepare to share why they had made this choice and what it meant to them. A number of their testimonies were quite powerful.

Our girls from 10th grade sharing.

As we knew our pastor from California was coming soon, we kept the fact we were building a pool quiet, he knew we would be baptizing the kids when he arrived but he had no idea it would be at the house.

Unfortunately, the water wasn't crystal clear by the special day but no big deal.

So the pool; two years ago we'd been given some funds for a play area for the kids. It took a long time to accomplish something but some motivation from some new volunteers Josh and Katyln got us moving. I said we had the funds he said we should do a pool which I had already given thought to; so that was it. A pool it was.

So we started roughly April 1st the absolutely hottest month to do it.

We dug, and dug, and dug, and dug and dug.

April

May

 June

 July

August

Sothy - easily the most valuable tool in my box.  If you don't have a Sothy I suggest getting one ;)

September

October 

Okay back to September.

Through the salvations and preparation for baptism, we also knew CC magazine was interested in doing an article. So part of our planning was to have this event captured. We made every effort to have it sparkling and filtered for the moment, but it wasn't its time. It isn't unusual for Khmer people to swim in muddy water. It's actually been more strange for them to swim in water you can see through.

I believe it was Friday morning. We had the classes come over from the school to the orphanage one at a time. At least a quarter of each class was baptized and I know there will be more next time as some kids were just scared.

This was a cool moment because Borin (3rd from the right) lives with us but his sister does not, she has only been coming to the school for a month and she has already accepted Christ. So I asked Borin to help with her baptism. I thought it was special.

Another special moment of the day was my father in-law who helped baptize the kids got to bless nearly a dozen of his grand kids, nieces and nephews.

  

Even the photographer who had waited 15 years for the right moment knew this was it. He jumped in saying to me, "Will you do me too?"

Always a wonderful moment when there is one more.

The team from the left.

Pastor Barry & Tong

Tate & Pastor Khan

Young and Pastor Kit (me)

I thought it was cool because the three boys were really the backbone of the project. Since the public school started two months after ours, they worked nearly every day to help me get it finished. With three pastors and my three high school boys to help, it worked out perfect. 

Also we saved the pool for the moment that the first activity in the pool was in a way dedicated to the Lord; an act of worship, commitment and confirmation. It meant a lot to me anyway to have things work out this way.

Oh yeah,
We’re still working on the barbecue area. The seating is finished but we've got a pizza/bread oven, grill and (for when Pastor Travis visits) a pig pit going to be put in so we can have some outdoor meals.

Total cost for a do-it-yourself pool in Cambodia $5,519. Maybe close to $6k when we're finished with the kitchen area.

I wanted to put a curly loop slide from the 3rd floor but turns out the pool is too short for that. Just kidding.

We had birthday barbecue with hamburgers and hotdogs, chips and watermelon. It was a lot of fun, but next time I'll have to cook the American food, because the Khmer cook, God bless her, got it wrong ;)

We finished the 31st well for South Shore Christian Fellowship

We finished the 31st well for South Shore Christian Fellowship
http://www.100wellsproject.org

http://www.calvarymagazine.org/images/stories/PDFs/Issue_56/Living_Water_for_Body_and_Soul.pdf

Our team from Australia helped two local families dig their fish ponds.

We stocked a thousand catfish this year after cleaning out the pond and eating them.

If you don't know, these are some big catfish

We had a third tank added to the roof, though you can only see two.

We also seemed to have solved some of our well issues. The hard water was clogging the vents so we had a guy come use some back pressure to open things up. What a wonderful blessing our well has been. Nearly every local guest that comes by the property notes that we are blessed with our source of water.

If you missed the other announcements about our boys, here’s the good news again. Our four high school boys passed their national test when more than 90% of the country failed their tests this year as the country made strong efforts to stop cheating and corruption. The evening chat was about their next step and planning for their future, not going nuts once they step out the front door.

Last month we received our renewal for our NGO - Non Profit so we're good for another three years. Yeah!!!

Yesterday we completed and turned in our renewal for the orphanage license. We are hopeful to receive the confirmations for this and put it behind us for another three years. The large more important issues are complete for this year.

Now we can work on sharpening the school and tightening little details.

We are and do encourage you to communicate with your church about the projects here and the needs.

Thank you all.
Blessings,
Kit and Ream

Update, an in progress countdown to school starting Monday

First off I am getting word from 3 high school that students want to come but they are getting bullied, threatened and scammed by the schools telling the kids lies that we're not a real school, some principals are refusing to sign the kids out.  2 of the schools have asked the families for money one school wants $10 for a stamp while another wants $50.  None of which is official or legal.
So were working on a threat and then a follow up to the province office.  Some one's going to get into trouble.  One of these schools happens to be an AOG Christian/government partnered school.  Which has failed so miserably that all the real Christian teachers are leaving their jobs, some of them who work for us now.  Something tells me the ministry didn't read the bible about being unequally yoked with a partner.

If you could help us pray for all these blocks to be broken and that student will find the freedom over their education and future.  We also really, really need the income from full classes.  These barricades being broken helps everyone.

When we started the school we had no idea what a powerful tool of change it would become.  We had no clue how we would be used to force others the right thing and to help families take a stand.

Currently we have 415 students enrolled, we have room for about 40 in the junior high which is were we need the most funds and are having the most trouble with the other school.


We are currently adding a new office with two rooms.
Our attendance will get much more accurate.  Our service will become much more convenient and the child safety is going to get much better.  Staff tardiness is also going to be reduce.

Front office 

Back office (my office)

No not the detention center, though it sounds like a good idea.

It 3 more bathrooms

 Redecorating rooms

Kara O'Neil making a good effort to help. 

 Kindergarten

Kindergarten with new teacher SreyNuch who is wonderfully talented Christian lady.

After a good reprimand for last years effort, 1st grade is way ahead this year.

1st grade A

1st grade B 

Salyna back to help out extra English class finish up

2nd grade still in progress but to be fair his room was storage for the summer.

3rd grade  

4th grade - Khorn was one of our best staff at the orphanage.  We sent her to college 2 years ago. This Monday will be her first day teaching.  Her class is perfect; we really, really pray thing go well for her.  I'm sure she's a bit nervous.

5th grade was storage as well.

6th grade though it's finished it's become a downstairs office.

All my older gentlemen are proofing the staffs lesson plans.

Very grateful for their experience and wisdom.

Our now modest Library haven giving the dinosaur over the the Kindergarten class the library is now rotatable shelves in the sanctuary.  

 When things get expensive and your budget is less than nil you make it yourself.

The wonderfully complicated worker Mao that I doted over last year has been very busy this summer.  Making white boards and stands, teacher desks and an extra 100 student desks.

 He's really proven himself so very valuable to us.

Moving playground equipment since the office took some space. 

Teachers cleaning 

 

 Food court has an addition we are making an attempt to start serving lunches this year.

If you've prayed over our well problem at all.  We were faced with digging another well as our old faithful on was blocked with roots and clogged with calcium.  We many conversations and idea about fixing it rather than spending money on a new one the guys reversed the flow with some high pressure and seems to have unclogged things for now and our high flow rate is back.   Not to bad and I am not sure we even had to pay the guy.  

Thanks for the prayers.