Exciting New Thing #1: Manna 4 Lempira Child Sponsorship Program

Today I am ridiculously excited to be officially announcing a program which has been running for several months now, mostly under-the-radar. With the amazing volunteer help of the hard-working team of Jonathan and Kim Hall, we have begun a sponsorship program for individual children in our feeding center ministry!

BUT - before I go into any more details - my crazy husband wants me to give you this information in a blurb, right up front: You can feed up to 61 children for only $15 per month!!!!! (If it was possible to add flashing lights, I'm sure he'd have had me put those in, too. We now return to your regularly scheduled blog post.)

As the program started up, we offered sponsorships for children in only one of our feeding center locations, but because Kim and Jonathan have already recruited enough sponsors for almost all of the children in the Mercedes village center, we are in the process of starting the program in a second location, as well!

The name of the sponsorship program is Manna 4 Lempira, and you can visit the Manna 4 Lempira Facebook page, for more information, and to see the photos, names and details of children available for sponsorship!


These are the specific details:

• Each sponsored child receives two nutrition-packed meals each week. 
• The children will receive de-worming medicine twice each year.
• Once each year, just before the start of the Honduran school year, each sponsored child receives a pair of shoes and a school uniform, so that they can attend the public school.
• At that same time, each child also receives a school backpack, filled with the school supplies required by the public schools. 
• The children and the sponsors will have the opportunity, with the help of translators, to correspond with one another, and the sponsors will occasionally have the opportunity to send special gifts to their sponsored children. 
• Their participation in the program will bring these children into relationships with the pastor and members of the congregation of a local church. They will receive regular Bible lessons, and a tie-in with caring Christians in their community. This kind of local support can be vital for families living in poverty!

Here is where the numbers get really interesting, though: The cost for all of these benefits is only $15 per month. We can do all of this so inexpensively because everyone involved is a volunteer, serving these children for the sake of Christ. There are no salaries, and minimal overhead costs.

As they say on TV . . . "But wait! There's more!"

Because of our volunteer staff and extremely low overhead, we are able to stretch that $15 donation sooooo far, that in addition to paying for all of these benefits for your sponsored child, your monthly donation will also pay to feed as many as 60* other children in our feeding centers which do not currently have sponsorship programs.

Is it time for you to sponsor a needy child? If you feel the importance of making every dollar count, the way we do, then perhaps Manna 4 Lempira is the child sponsorship program for you! To get started, visit the Information Page of the Manna 4 Lempira blog! In no time, you could be helping a child in Honduras with their nutritional, educational, and spiritual needs!

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*Note: Be advised that the exact number of additional children fed will fluctuate, as our costs for food and shipping change over time.

Addendum: If you're interested in how this project came into existence, Kim Hall wrote a great post on that subject, here.

Finally, if you've read all the way to the bottom of this blog post . . . my crazy husband also told me to put this here at the end: He has promised me that, if I get ten comments on this blog post (here on the blog, not on FB), he will wash the dishes for a week AND take me out to dinner! Please help make this happen . . . please?