It's a New Year

We have almost completed our first week of 2012.
I hope and pray that your 2011 was one in which you saw the hand of the Lord at work and that 2012 will be a year of new joy and beauty amid the expected and unexpected challenges to come.

I look back at the last 12 months and am a little surprised that it has been a whole year since I first wrote about going to Haiti to work at the Mission of Hope Orphanage. I wrote this in one of my first letters last year:

This opportunity is a gift to me. It is an answer to prayers, spoken and specific, but also undetermined and open-ended prayers of my heart - sometimes unidentifiable aches at best - from these past years. I believe that this vision has been growing in me since I started doing short-term mission trips over four years ago.

My six months at Mission of Hope were eye-opening and challenging and beautiful and exhausting – like all the good things in life – and I gratefully believe my prayers have been answered.

So what now? I’m excited to share that the seed that was planted in me has grown into a vision of a bit of a bigger work. I was invited to create a proposal for this vision of therapeutic work at Mission of Hope and the result is that they have invited me to return to continue with the next steps. I am planning and praying to be there the first week of February – just a month from now!

I went to Mission of Hope last year with a desire to take whatever came my way without expectations tempered by my own ideas and culture. After about 8 weeks I realized I was doing pretty well with that – except in the area of the Art Therapy. That was the seed. Well, probably more like the bee in my bonnet.
Anyhow, at that point I wasn’t sure how the next four months would play out or if I would have any impact there at all. Understanding our impact is difficult enough to do in retrospect. In real time it is pretty unrealistic to think we can grasp much of it at all. Looking back now I see a few examples of positive impact with the children in the orphanage - examples that can’t be overlooked.

I will share very briefly about one girl, 10 years old, who has a great deal of difficulty connecting with adults. Since coming to the orphanage at Mission of Hope, she has been closed, often cold, and definitely not trusting. She seems to get along well with peers but will often be found playing alone or involved in some type of play that is not uplifting to the other children. I spent many hours with her making art or playing or cleaning my office or just walking around. After some months passed and my Creole began to make sense it was evident that she had started to bond with me. She then began to test boundaries, showing me some pretty ugly stuff some days, always watching for my reaction. There were days when her tantrums (remember she’s 10) brought me to tears. But we carried on, working out how to be in relationship: child and adult. For her this was a significant process that resulted in a real and SAFE attachment to an adult.

Now, and I pray for this desperately, if she has learned that she has a capacity for attachment to adults in a safe and healthy way, well, this has the potential of changing all of her current and future relationships: with herself, with God and with others - including her own children one day.

I learned through this and other experiences that God can sustain me to do this work to make some kind of impact. And I pray that this impact has potential for God’s freedom to come more and more fully to the children and youth at Mission of Hope.

What are the next steps? First of all I need to have a team of prayer supporters. This is so important. I can’t be doing this work without an army of praying people walking with me. Please consider praying with me for this work.

The vision I proposed, and that Mission of Hope is endorsing, is a program that may take about two years to complete. The commitment, however, that I am making is for one year. We will assess along the way how things are going and I may be looking at an additional six months to a year in 2013. The end goal of the project is to find, train and support Haitians who are gifted to do emotional work with the children at Mission of Hope.

For the year I am required to raise $1500.00 per month, totalling $18000.00 for the year. Out of this I will pay room and board to the mission and then will have some money for personal expenses (travel, insurance, medical, liability insurance, professional supervision, etc). This is the largest amount of money I’ve ever needed to raise and I am really depending on the Lord to manage the funds. Please pray and consider if you will partner with me in this area. I have about a third of the year’s required funds raised already, praise God, but still require about $12000.00. Some supporters have made one time donations and others have committed to monthly amounts.

I did a little bit of math and if 50 supporters committed to an average of $20.00/month the money would be there! Please consider being one of my team financially.

I look forward to hearing from you and would love to hear what God is doing in your life - how he's leading you and answering your desire to please him, even if it there are no words for it as of yet!

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. ~ Philippians 1:6

Blessings and Love,

Kara-Lynn
 
Prayer Items:
-          Prayer Partners
-          Financial Partners
-          Time management and planning during these next weeks
-          Provision of a private personal space at Mission of Hope (space is sometimes an issue there. I do have an office space designated in the orphanage area, but for my own mental health and longevity a private personal space is important – I’m relying on God to provide this)
-          God’s preparation of the future emotional care-givers for the orphanage – as yet unknown Haitians with gifts of counselling and compassion and wisdom

Financial support:

 I have arranged to receive charitable donations through:
Parkwood Gardens Community Church
501 Whitelaw Road
Guelph, Ontario
N1K 1E7

Cheques can be made out to Parkwood Gardens Church with a note that the donation is for the Art Therapy program at MoH/Kara-Lynn Ferguson.

If you are interested in automatic monthly contributions please let me know. We can set that up through the church.