Well… we had our first full day of working completely on "Christmas on the Streets" stuff… Yesterday we bought our HUGE 8 bags of puffed corned… and the 10000 bags + that it needs to be rebagged into… and… and… and… This afternoon we had close to 20 helpers… in the whole day, our helpers bagged around 4500 bags of puffed corn… and wrapped about 1500 gifts!!!! …so we’ve had a good start!!!
Thank you so much all of you who are helping out this year with "Christmas on the Streets." It has been SUCH a help for us here… and it takes a lot of pressure off me especially…
This Friday we have our "Christmas" for our students and their children… We try and have special gifts for each one of them… Each year this gets a bit bigger too… because of the number of people who are coming to El Jordán… we have about 34 students… about a dozen adolescents… and about 80 kids… We give them each some clothes from our clothes closet (we try and get at least one new or close to new thing for everyone… we always put away our new donations for times like these…)… However…we are low on certain sizes… so with your help we were able to "splurge" and get our two dozen + girls really sweet tops and skirts… They will so nice… We also went out and bought thousands (literally!!!!) of little gifts and booklets for our gift bags for "Christmas on the Streets"…Thanks to you…
We are waiting to buy the candies etc for the gift bags and other things for the meal until closer to Christmas when we find out what is donated locally…
Thank you for making this possible!!!
In the last couple days we have also made up 40+ gifts for the men at a rehab center we send people to… (a bag with a notebook, booklet, pen, toothbrush, soap, shampoo and razor) and also 25 gifts for the ladies I visit in jail… (a Christian calendar, notebook, pen, comb and shampoo…)… So… things are falling together… It is fun to make up these packets for these extra people… who always enjoy getting a gift at Christmas time too…
For the last couple years we have had to skimp a bit on the pork (pork here is like turkey for the Christmas meal there)… Last year we bought close to 650 kilos of pork and we still made up 300 or 400 meals without pork… We
buy our pork from Miguel’s boy’s home… and we have the option of buying
up to 1000 kilos… which would give everyone a nice piece of pork… Again, we can consider this option because of your generosity…
What else… our "orders" for the meal are up to 4472… we’ve left a margin of 30 meals for the unexpected that there always is… We’ve had to turn down quite a few already… but have told them to present their needs earlier next year… so that we have a chance to consider them and visit them to actually see that their group of people fit within our two focus groups – people on the streets and people in extreme poverty. Churches are taking "Christmas on the Streets" to almost 70 places in the city… Isn’t that amazing? I’ve seen it how many years now… and I’m still amazed how everything works together… and how many people join together to make this happen…
Anyhow… I just wanted to send a little update to let you know how things are going here… Thanks too for praying for the situation here in Bolivia… Politically there are still a lot of things brewing… I haven’t been to the market for a while… but on the news yesterday they were saying that prices of staple foods were coming down again… so that’s good for everybody.
Thanks again for everything…
God bless you richly… and have a wonderful Christmas (just in case I don’t have a chance to write again until the activities here are over…)…
Lots of love, Corina