Dear Friends and Family,
We hope the New Year greeted you well as you said your goodbyes to 2012. We are grateful for this past year and all that it has brought us: joy, wisdom, new beginnings and exciting developments in our program with the children. We look ahead to 2013 for more of these gifts, seeking to savor the joys and the sorrows that will inevitably accompany them.
Thank you to those of you who were able to come to our open house on January 5th. We enjoyed seeing you and sharing about the past year in Moldova. At the close of our time together we left encouraged by your thoughtful words, generous donations and excitement about the sewing program. We loved seeing you walk out of the house with our purses on your shoulders and bookmarks in your hands. We are really enjoying this new endeavor and are excited to partner with those of you who have reached out and offered to buy us a new sewing machine. We have even begun a discussion with family friends about a potential micro loan that will help us continue this project sustainably and create a source of income to replace some of our fundraising effort. We have a lot to work on and appreciate your continued prayers, encouragement and involvement in this specific project.
In our time at home we raised over 60 dollars for our greeting card program, over 300 dollars in sold merchandise from the sewing program and received four offers from you, our friends, to purchase another sewing machine, among numerous other donations. We mostly savored the past month in the States as a vacation, but we also felt a lot of energy from you as we look to the summer and what that holds for us. Some of you may not yet know that we plan to come back to the States for a couple of months this summer. Our primary goal for that time is to work on long-term fundraising and financial stability for La VIA, our local organization in Moldova. We want to develop some of these business endeavors as well as work to establish more sufficient funding for Moldova. In mission work it is common for donors to support specific individuals, just as you have chosen to support us, John & Rachel. We, however, want to ensure that even if any of the four of our North American staff leaves Word Made Flesh that all of the incoming funds we have currently will not leave as well. This summer we will focus on finding donors who are committed to Moldova and the work being done here among these children regardless of whether or not a certain staff person remains. We are really interested in starting relationships with churches, organizations or businesses that can come alongside us in this. If you have any ideas or questions, would like to host a fundraising event or would just like to know more, please contact John so we can better plan this time.
With deep appreciation,
Rachel & John