Christmas celebration!

At the House of Dreams we had a great Christmas party.  The kids loved their gifts, and spent all afternoon playing!  Thank you Rock Church and the Nickel Family for putting lots of smiles on our Dreamers faces this Christmas!

All the Dreamers gifts under their tree

Jose opening his plane

Juan Daniel with his gifts

Isaura opening her arts and crafts gift

Timothy helping the Dreamers set up their hotwheels sets

The girls playing with the board games

Click on the thumbnail of each picture to get a better look.

-Marisol

 

Annual Wrapping Party 2012

The big Christmas celebration at the House of Dreams takes place on Christmas Eve… today! Yesterday afternoon I hosted our Annual Wrapping Party at our home. Paper and tape fly. We munch on cookies. Drink coffee, tea, and kool-aid. At first it’s a mess of sorting and labeling. Then everyone falls into the groove of getting the gifts wrapped for the Dreamers. Such fun!

My kids look forward to our orphanage Christmas traditions with great anticipation every year. It fills my heart to know that they will look back on their childhood and remember giving of their time and talents to the kids at the House of Dreams.

Merry Christmas to all!

- Angie

Beat the Christmas Rush

We decided to pop into the post office Saturday afternoon since we were downtown running errands. Imagine my surprise when a couple dozen package notification slips slid out of the box into my hands. We love packages!

The little lady at the counter cracked jokes while she littered the surface with stuffed envelopes.

“So you are Mr. Washington’s daughters?” she said with a twinkle in her eye to my oldest daughter, her friend, and me. After I denied it with a shared chuckle she said, “But you look so young!”

After the paperwork and signatures we loaded one of their mail bags with most of the packages. I went to pull the car around while the girls waited looking like Santa’s elves at the curb.

They unloaded the bag into the back of the truck and headed back up the stairs into the post office to grab the rest of the packages.

These are the first of the Christmas packages for the Dreamers at The House of Dreams. We usually have a few different groups send gifts at this time of the year. If you are interested in helping out with Christmas this year please let me know. 

There are some guidelines for sending us packages so that we can avoid long lines and elevated costs at the customs counter. A plastic shoebox can hold the right weight and some very fun things for the kids. We have 15 Dreamers. You might like to organize a church group or friends from school. Or you might like to make this a family project.

It is recommended that you plan for about 10 weeks arrival time during this heightened package season. It would be great if you send the Christmas gifts this week or at the latest by the end of October. Thanks!

- Angie

A 6-year-old Card Champion

Hey! Have you met Roberto yet? If not, here are a few simple facts to get to know him better:

How old are you?: 6

What grade will you be entering in February?: 2nd grade

What do you want to do when you grow up?: Drive fast cars

What’s your favorite movie?: The Lion King

What was your favorite Christmas gift this year?: My Transformer Robot and “UNO”.

His last response struck me as odd. When you think of children opening Christmas gifts, you imagine that their favorite toy would be the most expensive one, or even the coolest looking one. Not for Roberto. It was obvious to me and everyone else, that his favorite gift was this deck of “UNO” cards. Yeah, a gift that possibly didn’t cost more than $5.00.

“UNO” lead to other card games. Now, one of his favorites is the “Memory Game’”, where you lay the deck of cards out, face down, and find pairs. Whoever has the most pairs at the end of the game wins. Can you tell by this picture who wins a lot? Yep, he is the card champion.

Roberto counting his cards even though it was obvious he won, again.

His competitor refusing to show her face because she lost (It's Carolina, don't tell her I told you).

A deck of cards makes for hours of fun and great for teaching life skills like how to win, how to lose, and how not to cheat . Such simple things make these children  happy.

What small (or big) thing can you do today to make one of our Dreamers smile? Visit our projects or sponsor pages to see what interests you.

Thank you for following the lives of our Dreamers on our blog!

-Melinda

 

The Opening of The Gifts Part Two

If you missed the video of the boys opening their gifts click here: The Opening of the Gifts

Here is the video of the girls:

Again, we would like to thank Pastors Rocky & Jodi Bezet and The Rock Church, you may never know how truly merry you’ve made this Christmas for the House of Dreams!

Like the video? Interested in doing something to help the House of Dreams? Look into helping out with one of our Action Projects!

- Angie

Installation Day

Remember the washer / dryer campaign that Beams of Grace did for the House of Dreams? I am so happy to tell you that we had a very joyous installation day! Our director is so happy that the care givers will be freed up to spend more time with the kids and less time on laundry. Thank you to all who helped with this Action Project!

Shirley and Isaura

Enjoy the pictures! (Click to enlarge.)

Cristina, our director

Yamil

Fernando

Washing awaits

The washer and the dryer

Anne and Angie

Empty clotheslines!

One of the closets with boys clothes

Shirley showing some of the girls clothes

The closet in the big girls room

Shirley and Isaura

 

You Give and our Dreamers Happily Receive!

It is hard to say what will be going on the moment you enter the House of Dreams Orphanage.  One thing I’m sure of  is that at least one of the children will always greet you at the door shouting your name in excitement. This was not the case one day last week.

As Romon and I turned onto the street of the House of Dreams we noticed the children outside with some visitors. They seemed a bit preoccupied to give us their normal greeting. I thought, “Maybe some family members have come to visit one of the children”. We learned that they were a couple who have helped in the process of previous adoptions.  They have remembered our little Dreamers and decided to bless them with a few new things.

House of Dreams director looking through the new clothes ready to distribute them to the anxious children.

Buddies, Roberto and Jose Luis, posing for the camera in their new sweaters

They received dress pants, button down shirts, sweaters, jeans, and a few food items.

The children were so excited. They could barely keep their hands off of their new items.  The House of Dreams is grateful to have people think of these children and bless them in any way they can.

Thank you for helping give our children extra food and new clothes to enjoy!

If you too would like to give to our Dreamers in some way, let us know!

Melinda

Tea

Last night’s tea went very well. Thank you all for your prayers! This is the first effort and the ladies are motivated to organize the next event. That is an answer to prayer right there.

Stats for the bottom-line people:

• 14 ladies came
• $347 U.S. were raised

Not bad for a country considered to be “poor”. I absolutely love the idea of Bolivians helping Bolivians!

In all the excitement of: sipping, and munching, and giving my little speech three times for the different levels of punctuality represented, and chatting, and greeting, and farewelling… I forgot to take pictures. Oops. When only part of my team was left I remembered. So I quick took one shot of an unfinished plate of a yummy tea. Maybe I will remember pictures when we get together as a team to celebrate. For all the people who gave $20 or more we promised to make them a little “recuerdo”. It is a typical Bolivian gesture of a handmade item commemorating involvement in a significant event. So, when we get together to glue and cut and whatnot I will try to get a few shots of the team.

You can continue to pray for good ideas, strong follow through and favor for all the ladies who want to help meet the needs of our little Dreamers by finding creative ways to involve donors.

- Angie

3,360 diapers were donated to the House of Dreams !!!

Working together to do the tough job.

Kids having fun carrying in the diapers.

One of the ways that help us raise more funds for the orphanage project here in Bolivia is through finding donations from local companies.   So you can imagine how excited we were when a local diaper company dropped off 3,360 diapers for the kids.   Here are some pictures.

You can pray that other companies in the city would help with regular donations.

- DaRonn

Church of Christ

The House of Dreams Orphanage can not attribute its success to one sole organization. It takes a mass of individuals, groups, volunteers, sponsors, staff, churches and missionaries working together to care for these children.

One church that has been helping us out is the Church of Christ Cochabamba. Their youth group has come to spend the afternoon with the kids and we are planning for them to come again. They have a small group of college and career aged people that are going to be helping out a couple times a month as well.

To kick off their involvement with the House of Dreams the leaders organized a party complete with favors and presents for everyone. The undertaking began at the one-year birthday celebration for a few of the children of the missionaries. We lovingly call our missionary kids M.K.s. This team is replete with M.K.s. For their babies’ birthday party they asked the guests to bring gifts that would be donated to the House of Dreams.

After the birthday party we planned a time for the M.K.s to give the gifts to the kids at the House of Dreams. It was a good time. My kids even came for the fun. Enjoy the pictures. Thanks so much Church of Christ Cochabamba!

Butch "Tio Fernando" helping a child with his gift

Party!

"Tio Jeff" with Isaura

Jubilee gives Estefani a gift as her proud papa looks on

Micheala reaches over to give Adriana a gift

Roberto gets a gift from Nathan

Bernancio got the most desired gift of the day: a box of Zucaritas cereal

~ Angie