Pictures and Projects

Hey All!

We hope this finds you all well and blessed. We just wanted to take quick minute to share with you a couple of pictures, and some ideas we had for some special "Christmas projects" in case you'd be interested. We'd love to hear from you to know how your year has gone and what are some things we can pray for you for the next year!

And if you'd like to come for a visit, we'll hook you up with some Christmas goodies... maybe some chocolate peanut butter balls. Yummm! 

Or if you prefer to not gain 15 pounds this Christmas season :D, maybe you can have some of the fresh greens we are trying to grow in our kids' garden. (You're welcome to them, that means less veggies that I have to eat, Ha Ha!)

I really enjoyed taking the kids that made Honor Roll out for a special meal. 

Hannah, Melanie, John, Onana, Joshua and Jonathan. Good kids here, we are blessed to see them growing in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and men. 

A pretty big prayer request: Cameroon is in a downward spiral of violence. Civil war is all but inevitable, and things seem to be heating up at an almost exponential rate. The last 2 months have seen a significant escalation in the crisis here. Fighting has been going on not even 100 miles away. Please pray for peace and resolution. God only knows the future, but without some Divine Intervention, things look grim. We need the Prince of Peace to heal this land's growing schisms. 

Well, Christmas time is here, and as usual, we like to share a few projects and ideas for those who would like to know of ways they can be involved with the work here. This year, we could especially use the extra help with these projects, as we have run into some unexpected financial hurdles in the last few weeks. 

1- Christmas gifts for our students. We'd like to buy a few small gifts for our school students. Some of them will not receive anything at this time of year. $5 a child would let us buy nice simple gifts for our students. There are 27 kids. If you'd like to help out with this, we would love to send you a picture of the kids with their gifts. School closes next week by Wednesday, so please let us know ASAP if you'd be interested in helping with this. 

2- Bonuses for our staff. We'd like to help our staff out with some end-of-year/Christmas bonuses. There are a lot of additional expenses facing families at this time of year... a little extra cash to help spread holiday cheer would be a big blessing. We have 7 full/part time school and gym staff... you could be a huge blessing to our hard-working staff for as little as $50. We'd like to give these out at our staff Christmas party next Saturday (the 23rd). We've done these above two things every year, but with our current financial situation, won't be able to move forward with them without some help. 

3- Staff Training Seminar: We have a great opportunity to help equip and train our Cameroonian teaching staff. There will be a special ACE (the educational system we use in our school) training session, the 2nd week of January, in Limbe, about 35 minutes away from us. Trainers and instructors will be coming from Nigeria for a week-long program. We'd really really like to send our staff for this program. The cost is $200 per person and we have 5 staff members we'd like to send. We don't know when such an opportunity will again present itself, so would really like to take advantage of it, but will need some special help to make it possible. 

4- Some Rent Help: As I mentioned, we have gotten hit with a number of unexpected financial expenses. We aren't in debt (yet), but things are fairly tight. If you'd like to help us out personally, we could use a little help paying rents this month... we have rents due for the gym, the schoolhouse, and our own house. We usually budget for these and save up... but as I said, due to some unforeseen circumstances, it is going to be very tight trying to meet all of these obligations. 

We know God will take care of all our needs, as He always has, but also know the generosity of our beloved family and friends in Christ, and the joy that comes with being able to give, and this is why we share these things with you all. We do wish you all a very merry Christmas and a blessed and happy New Year! God bless you guys! 

Love, 

The Hostetters