October 4th
Closing the year strong
Football (soccer) is by far the biggest sport in Bolivia. Sadly, we are remarkably not good at it, even worse considering Brazil and Argentina are our neighbors. Nonetheless we are getting ready for the Qatar World Cup! It starts November 20th. I mean, getting ready to watch it from our TVs…
A regular match of Football is 90min long and is broken into two 45min halves. Interestingly, 75% of goals are scored in the first and last 5 minutes of each half with most of them happening in the last 5 minutes of the second half. Depending on where you get your stats and the games you consider, up to 50% of the matches are won because of goals scored in the last 5 minutes of the second half.
Seems like 2022 will be like this for Amparo. We are going into the ‘last minutes of 2022’ and we want to win the match as well as do it in a memorable way!
Finally, after a long period of time due to Covid, in the first week of November we will receive more than a dozen Amparo family members here in Santa Cruz!
Together we will celebrate 5 years since the legal establishment of Amparo in Bolivia, the opening of our Girls Home and….
OUR FIRST HOME GRADUATE! As most of you know Ruth turned 18 in April and is finishing high school with honors, this December.
We are super happy to announce Ruth will be graduating from our Girl’s Home at the end of this year. She was part of our Prevention Program for 2 years before being the first girl to move into our Girl’s Home. She has lived 24/7 for the last five years with us! She got baptized in March of this year and now she will graduate with honors!
I know many, too many, times in her life Ruth felt like she was losing the ‘match’ of life. I have witnessed how Ruth was dealt with what seemed impossible cards to play a successful game in life. BUT then Jesus stepped in and thanks to the Lord, Ruth has overcome tremendous hardships in her life. She found shelter (Amparo in Spanish) in God and today is a living testimony that everything is possible in Christ and that God is in the business of healing hearts and restoring lives where it seemed impossible.
It would take a book or movie to share with you some of Ruth’s early life difficulties and experiences. She has been abused and abandoned more times than she can recall, however she decided to hand her hurts and disappointments to God. She gave Him her heartache and started a process of restoration. Ruth learned that nothing is lost in Jesus, that in every heartache and loss, eternal hope can be found. We are so thankful for her life, she is a great role model for the younger girls and we are super happy and excited for the future she has in God’s hands.
Wondering what’s next for Ruth? She is still in the process of experiencing perfect love replacing the fear in her heart. She is getting rid of fear and embracing the reality that her future can be awesome with God. Ruth has moved out of survival mode and into living abundant life. If you want to know how we are planning to walk with Ruth in the next stage of her life, please stay tuned for our future updates.
Going back to the time we will share with our beloved Amparo US Family, we will have a couple other events such as a Thanksgiving gathering on Friday the 4th, a Community Project on Saturday, the 6th and more that we will be streaming, sharing and posting during the week long celebrations we will have from November 3rd to the 7th .
After the visit we will start preparing for Giving Tuesday on November 29th . Be ready to see and hear many nice stories, videos, pictures and more in the coming month.
What about December? As you know it is one of the most active months for us of the year. We will have several celebrations of ‘Jesus birthday’ both in the Outreach Program and in the Girls Home. It is a great time of the year to share about Jesus and we want to make the most of it.
