Operation Education 2015

The school year is over half way finished and I have returned from Nicaragua with new school pictures of kids that need sponsors. If you are new to my mail list let me explain what Operation Education is and how it works.

For the past 5 years I have been blessed to help over 100 kids each year attend school through wonderful sponsors who invest in the lives of my community kids.

The cost is $35 a year which covers a full uniform (pants/skirt, shirt & socks), a new pair of shoes, cool backpack and school supplies.

One out of every 3 kids in Nicaragua do not attend school simply because they can't afford these same items. The parents in my community only make around $40 a month so to send a child to school for $35 would be impossible especially if they have more than one child.

Throughout the school year you will have an opportunity to communicate with your sponsored child via letters to them. I visit them in March, August and December. Each trip I go I will give you the opportunity to bless the kids by sending them a package, or money for food. This is optional, however, it does help me a great deal when people send money for food. I always buy each family a bag of food regardless if the sponsor of that child sent money so the money that sponsors give me help offset that cost. It takes around $1000 to $1200 every trip.  God is so good to me and has helped me raise this money every trip. I stand in awe at the blessings He sends me each trip.

The next school year will start around Valentine's Day and end the first week of December but we need to start now in order to buy the uniforms at a good price. By November prices double in Nicaragua so I need to purchase everything by mid-October.

If you are new and want to sponsor a child please go to this page on my website and select your child. Click the Sponsor Child button under the child's picture you want to sponsor and you will be taken to the "Checkout" page where you can pay online or you can click the Sponsor Child button again to add another child to your chart. If you do not want to pay online you can email me the name of the child and I will take them off the website and you can send me a check.

For those of you who are sponsoring your child/children again this year there is a big Red box that you need to select to  RE-SPONSOR. Once you click on it and are taken to the Checkout page you can change the quantity if you are paying for more than one child.

This is a new website process so if there are any problems you run into just let me know.

Remember if you want to pay by check you can still do that just email me the name of the child. For those paying to re-sponsor just email me and let me know you are sending a check, no need for the names, those I have already. I can't post the re-sponsor pictures because I don't want someone else selecting those kids but I will email pictures to everyone.

Every year I trust God to find sponsors to my kids and this year is not different. Please feel free to share with others this need. Let's watch God do a great thing and get these kids all sponsored.

Deadline is October 15th to sponsor a child and to pay if you are re-sponsoring your existing child/children.

God Bless each of you.

Angie

Here's the link again: http://www.thepowerofoneministry.org/?page_id=149

July & August Newsletter

Is it really August? How did I miss the July newsletter? There has been so much going on that I didn't even realize that I have not updated you since Pastor Arturo's prayer request so this will be a two month update.

In July I spent most of the month getting ready to go to Nicaragua. Making plans and preparing our team to go. I had another two part mission trip. August 1st - 8th I worked with my bosses ministry with a team of 32. We ministered to 1,000's of people that week and had an amazing time as usual. On the 8th when the team left myself and 5 others left for Somotillo for another 5 days. Here's the highlights of that trip.

Upon arriving to Somotillo we found that our hotel's pump was broken and they had been fixing it for two days with no luck. Somotillo is a small town and there is only one "Hotel", the rest are places that have rooms. It was also a holiday and lots of party's and fireworks were going on so finding a place and finding one without noise going on all night was quite a task.

The first night the place we found was right in the middle of the party's and fireworks. Around 2am I thought we were being fired upon. Needless to say the next morning we moved to another place. The new place unfortunately was 25 minutes away up a mountain but it was very nice other than the mountain cold water we had for the shower. Overall we managed and the Lord provided.

Our ministry time was awesome, regardless of the lack of sleep and the cold cold water.

Friday night we showed the Transformers 4 movie and gave out over 250 bowls of ice cream. 12 Gallons!!! The kids and families loved it. The movie was a little long for them but all of them enjoyed it and were just excited to hang out with all of us.

Saturday we started the registration process for the new school year. We took each child's picture, got there updated sizes and blessed them with a new age appropriate toy/gift. We gave out new shirts to all the girls and bracelets, hair bands and fingernail polish to the teenagers.

Sunday was the fun day. We played games with the kids and the adults and gave out prizes. We even had a little contest of musical chairs among us. It was a lot of fun and the kids laughed and laughed..

After playing with the kids we were able to bless the entire community with various things. The women received jewelry or fingernail polish, the men received hats and cologne and at the end every family received 20 lbs of rice and 10 lbs of beans along with a liter of oil.

Sunday night was beyond special to me. We had a great church service. Steve Natelborg, one of my sponsors, gave the Word to the community and afterwards we prayed over many to receive their healing. It was an awesome night. When church was over the entire community song a traditional song for my birthday that's coming up in September. This song talks about many blessings for someone and in the song they put leaves on my head and cover my head with Talc powder. I aged 50 years in 10 minutes that night. Video to come. :)

Monday we traveled to visit my friend Darling. She was very happy to see us. I took her a large container of items that she loved. We blessed her socks off with household items, flashlights that don't use batteries and many other items. We also blessed the family with new shoes. Darling shared with us things that I can't get out of my mind. One of the items I took her was shampoo. She said they had not had any in over 6 months. Her little girl was very excited to know she would get to wash her long hair. How blessed we are here in the US right?

The one thing that she said that repeats itself over and over again in my head was when we blessed her with a bag of food. She said that they had not eat in several days and that she didn't think she could make it through another night hearing her kids cry from being so hungry. She kept calling us her angels. God is always on time. I am so glad we were able to bless their family. She was so desperate.

Please be in prayer for this part of the country. Currently Nicaragua is in a drought season. This is the first one they have seen in many many years. My community is in a critical situation. Several of the families had not eaten in a few days. Crops are all burnt up from the hot sun. One family lost a bull and one family lost 3 acres of corn.  Several others lost almost as much. Many of the families are what they call "Machete Men".  Those are the guys who work in the fields cutting weeds down with a machete, however, because there has been little rain the lands are not luscious and green with lots to cut but yellow and dry and require no maintenance forcing many out of work. This drought has also caused prices to rise. Typically I pay .30 cents for a pound of beans and this time the cost was $1.10 per pound.

Please pray for the families of this area. Many don't have support from outside sources and with no government help people have no very little options.

I hope to have lots of pictures posted soon and the Operation Education kids pictures also. If you want to re-sponsor your kid(s) from this year please reply to this email by August 30th. If I have not heard from you I will assume you are not interested and I will post your child's pictures online for sponsorship. This year I have a new way I will be posting the pictures. Look for more details soon.

As always thanks again for your continued support and prayers. The community of Ceibita and I are grateful.

Keep your eyes open for more updates soon.

Angie

Prayer Request from Pastor Arturo

I am regularly talking to Pastor Arturo by phone or by Facebook and this is his message to me today. "Ore por toda la comunidad no llueve no hay cosecha, las familias la estan pasando muy mal las cosechas se secaron por falta de lluvia."

This says, "Pray for the whole community, it  does not rain and there is no harvest, families are having a hard time the crops were dried by lack of rain."

Rainy season started in May and it has rained very little in Somotillo. It is raining all over Nicaragua but not there. Most people don't have vegetable gardens but almost every one of them have a corn field. They harvest the corn in the fall and it feeds them during the worse part of raining season which is October - December because there is no work, it also provides them an income for those who have large fields.

Without this harvest they can literally starve. They struggle day to day to have enough food so losing their corn crop would be like us not having water.  If there is no water we can't drink, make meals, wash clothes, etc. , if there is no corn they can't eat because there is absolutely no work during those months to buy food.

This is a serious situation. Pastor Arturo said it has been YEARS since they have had a drought and they of course are very unprepared for it.

I encouraged Pastor Arturo to remind the community they have authority over the weather per 20 and John 14:12 and to trust God to bring the rain.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support to my extended family.

God Bless,

Angie

June 2014 Newsletter

This past month has been very busy for me at home and at work and again time is flying by. We were blessed to have our son Logan graduate from high school last month. He graduated a year early and I can truly say that I was not ready for him to grow up so fast. He will attend UNCC (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) and study Marketing. I am excited to say that he will be heading to Nicaragua with my team and I in August.

Speaking of Nicaragua it has been a little quite lately. Pastor Arturo has been feeling better and still working in the community each week. It's rainy season there now and that always brings head colds, upper respiratory problems and other issues that comes from the lack of proper housing and the wet and dampness from all the rain.

I have a full team going with me in August. Three of my sponsors will have an opportunity to visit with their sponsored kids. It brings me great joy to connect the two together and give others an opportunity to get to know my family there and show them God's love. There will be 6 of us all together and I am looking forward to see what God has planned for us during that week. I will be leading a team of 36 with Ambassadors from the 1st to the 8th and then on the morning of the 8th the rest of us will travel to Somotillo to visit my community and get the kids registered for the next school year.

Every August I take pictures of all the kids, update their age, clothes sizes and grade for the next school year. Several of you have asked why in August. It's because I have to get all the kids sponsored and money collected so that I can order the uniforms in late October. Prices almost double by November and December. I want to keep the cost down for everyone so in order to do that I must plan months ahead.

Once I return in August I will start working on getting the images ready to upload to my website. This year I am happy to say with the new website I will have a better way from you to select a child.  More info to come.

If you would like to send a card/letter to your child I will need them in my hands no later than July 25th.  If you want to send them a financial blessing for food you can do that also.

The Lord has blessed me this year with people who are investing financial into the ministry. With this blessing I have been able to do the following:

1. Purchased medicine and food for a very sick woman and her two kids. She had a kidney infection so bad that she was delirious. I am happy to say she is doing fine now. 2. Purchased several needed items for the family that cooks for our team. New pots, pans, ceiling fans and other needed items. 3. Purchased items for a very poor family who has no income. Will ship a plastic tub full of needed items for their home, clothes for their kids, shoes, and cooking items. 4. Case of 24 bibles. 5. Sent money to Pastor Arturo to pay for registration of his motorcycle. 6. Helped with college tuition for a study who lives in the community. 7. Purchased baseball items for the kids baseball team in Ceibita.

Thank you so much for sowing into this ministry. Every dollar helps change the life of another. Something as simple as an antibiotic that only cost .50 cents kept a lady named Maria from going into kidney failure. The doctors told us that she was delirious from all the infection in her body and that if she had gone another day or two she could have damaged her kidneys for life. Praise God I had the funds to send her and purchase all the other items I needed.

Prayer Needs:

Please pray for the men of the community as Pastor Arturo is still ministering to them. For healing in the community and protection from the rain. Pray that hearts will be open to receive God's love when we arrive in August Wisdom for me as I plan the trip Prayers for my family as the enemy loves trying to beat us up. Praise God we know we are victorious but sometimes our flesh doesn't. Prayers for my health as doctors still don't know what is going on with me Pray for finances for my trip. Money for ministry needs, money for expenses for me and Logan. I have had two yards sales to help with our expenses and neither did as good as we needed them.

God is so faithful. He is doing great things in Ceibita and there are lots more to do there and I am honored that He is using people like you to help accomplish all that He has planned.

Thanks again for all your prayers and your blessings in this ministry.

Angie

May 2014 Newsletter

Can you believe it is May already. I sure can't.  Time is flying by. I just got home from Nicaragua on Thursday which was an awesome trip. I didn't go to my community this time since I was just there in March.

We had a team of 46 wonderful people with us this time. Every trip is filled with the best of the best.

This month will be very busy for me and I will need some prayer support. Here are some specific things.

1. Pastor Arturo the pastor I work with fell and hurt his back. He is having a hard time right now and has not been able to visit the community. Please agree with me for perfect healing in his body and for all symptoms to disappear NOW..

2. We are preparing for the graduation of our son Logan on the 23rd. With working two jobs for me and Terry being extremely busy its hard to fit extra things in right now. We are remodeling some rooms in our house and are concerned we will have time to get it all done before the 23rd. Pray for things to go very smooth. If you are a handyman and would like to volunteer some time we could use you.

3. Pray for my community. Pastor Arturo is my pastor I work with and he is loved by all in the community, however, he is not the pastor of the community. The Pastor is Oscar and he is moving to Costa Rica to work. This means that the church will be  assigned a new pastor. This may cause a problem because the people do not know him. We have seen great growth in this community and I do not want this to set them back. One will ask why doesn't Pastor Arturo lead the church. That's a valid question and the answer is he does not want that responsibility. He loves going there and ministering one on one, house by house. He is actually the reason people go to church to begin with. Pray that the right person will be chosen to lead them and that person will get involved and make a good connection with the men.

4. Pray for the men of the community. In March I had 65 men attend a meeting with me and I don't want that to change. Pray they will continue meeting with Pastor Arturo and growing in the Word and having the desire to have a relationship with the Lord. This is key to changing the community. If the men change, the women and kids will change.

5. On a personal note I would like to ask for prayer for my family. We are experiencing a great deal of stress and frustration dealing with Francis. She has been here for 2 1/2 years and there are so many struggles in her life. I can't go into details but I can tell you it is severe and overwhelming to us. The stress can be overwhelming some times but we keep pressing on and know what God is in control. She needs a lot of healing in her heart and her mind. Her life here is much better for her than the orphanage but in her mind its not. She suffers from several disorders and those keep her from realizing how much better off she is. Pray healing will come forth for all of us. It's been really hard the last couple of months.

6. Yard Sale time.. I need your stuff.. I am not getting much from people and I don't have enough to have the sale yet. I need to raise money for my Logan to go with me in August and for other ministry needs. I would like to bless Pastor Arturo with some extra money this month since he has been out of work due to his back. If you have things you want to get rid of I need them as soon as you can get them to me. Once I have enough I will have the sale. Pray for an abundance of good things. Clothes just don't sale. I need big ticket items.

I was blessed last Sunday to speak to the children's ministry at Castanea Presbyterian Church. It was a great meting and I look forward to partnering with their church to do more for the Kingdom. It was a blessing to share my ministry with them.

I don't have much coming up for June or July but would love the opportunity to share at your class or church so let me know if you have a need for a guest speaker.

Thanks as always for your support and your prayers. I could not do this without you.

God Bless,

Angie