Hospitality of the Nations: January 2011

KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog. You may be wondering why this is titled "Keep the dream alive" and I hope you are. Just this month, for the first time since I began working with COTN, I realized that after my paychecks this month I will be in the red - meaning, I will have a negative balance in my account because I do not have enough financial support coming in to cover my part time salary. You can see on the left how much I have monthly and how much I need total. That means I need another $565 per month committed. That's a lot! I know it can be done though.

I am praying, and will continue to do so, that God's will is done. I love being a part of this ministry and wish to continue here. Especially since I sit in the Dominican Republic as I write this. Maybe God is calling me away from COTN, and if so then I trust Him. I don't feel that calling though. I feel called to push through and get the funds raised that are needed.

(please keep reading in post "Keep the dream alive")

***If you are new to my blog, or new to COTN, please look in the righthand side bar for JANUARY 2010 posts "A Tidbit on COTN" and "A Glimpse at the Hospitality Program" to gain some background knowledge.

January 25, 2011

Band Together: A concert for Africa

Join us at the concert as we raise funds for the COTN FL office!

The COTN office in Florida is looking forward to an exciting year in 2011 - sending Venture teams to serve in our countries, gathering donations and shipping them oversees, and much more. Come out and support the office by enjoying a fun concert. Tell everyone.

January 21, 2011

Movin' on up

Thank you to all of the people who have generously given to my ministry at COTN. I am at 58% of my support goal for 2011! Thank you, also, to those who have been praying.

That's not all the good news. Thanks to Kristina Miller, one of these amazing donors, I have been introduced to an organization called Clean the World. They collect unfinished bars of soap from hotels across the country, sterilize and reshape it and donate it to those in third world countries who need it. This then prevents many life threatening illnesses that can be easily avoided with a simple bar of soap. It's a fantastic organization and you should check them out. Well, Clean the World has agreed to donate about 15,000 bars of soap to COTN! We will be sending these bars to the Dominican Republic in our spring shipping container. Hopefully we will then be able to send a container and get more soap to Africa as well. They dropped off the first batch today! .. Most excellent.

In addition to the support raising and soap collecting, I have had a great deal of time to work on new standard operation procedures for Casa Bethesda. Please be in prayer for the development of these new S.O.P.s so we can begin our Hospitality internship program and train our students! I am very excited for the ways that this can encourage and empower our staff and students. High fives all around, thanks for reading my update. Happy 2011