A Thousand Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words than this photo needs no story.
Suffice to say that sometimes just getting out to the places where Wild Hope is involved is a story in itself! (That's the Russell family plowing water with their car.)

Christmas Angels!

The Team here at Wild Hope is very excited about angels!

Allow us to tell you why...

These 6" angels, (plus a slightly larger version and some Christmas stars) are made by a group of financially struggling Maasai ladies that are friends of ours. Over the years we have helped them market some of their traditional bead work and provide a little income for themselves. But during this last year we've encouraged them to a new level!

Julia Veenstra, an American artist living in East Africa, is a friend of Wild Hope. Julia has a passion for the work of local artisans and for creativity to be released and used. She has a passion for women to be helped and for local women to find ways to support their families.

In September Wild Hope hosted our six Maasai artisans friends and Julia for a weekend of training and fellowship. As mentioned, Wild Hope has been able to facilitate different opportunities for these ladies to sell their work, but this was the first time we planned a seminar for them to improve and market their wares.

With Julia's artist eye and knowledge of western markets to guide them, the ladies designed this Christmas Angel. Isn't' she beautiful? You can click on the photo for a larger view.

We wish we could offer these to you for sale (and hopefully we will one day) but our production levels are not up to exporting yet. However, these pretty little ornaments have been selling like hotcakes in Kenya this season. And guess what! A brand new little gift and coffee shop in Arusha, Tanzania is opening and planning to stock them immediately as well.

We are so pleased to have just sent $1,000 of profit to this small group of artisans. Do you have any idea how much money that is to women who live on about $1 a day? Even divided between the six of them, this is a huge blessing of provision. For those of us who have stayed in Maasai villages and experienced life among them, there is a tremendous sense of joy as we think of how this income will help.

What is it we've heard Bono say?

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Give a woman micro-credit, she, her husband, her children and her extended family will eat for a lifetime."

The Wild Hope Artisans project is in a seed stage. We are praying and working toward training more women and expanding the work. We're looking down the road to Christmas 2007 and wondering how many more this project will be blessing by then.

Praise God with us for the assistance this job-producing micro-enterprise has already brought... And for what it will do in the future!

Sarah's Glasses

Sarah was excited to get her new glasses but when Tammy arrived to take her to the optometrist she was scared to leave the confines of her small mud and wattle home next to the dirty river in Arusha.


Sarah's old glasses were insufficient to give her the sight needed to visit her neighbors or get out to any other location and so, over the years, Sarah’s world had become smaller and smaller.

Finally, Sarah’s glasses with the one missing arm were lost totally.

Despite her nervousness about leaving her familiar quarters, Sarah knew her need was too great to ignore. Tammy had been to visit Sarah several times and Sarah had come to trust her. And so, at last, they set off!

After a challenging and sometimes comical journey of getting fragile little Sarah down the narrow lanes, into Wild Hope’s big white vehicle and through the busy streets of the city, the doctor was able to quickly prescribe the needed lenses. It wasn’t long before Sarah was trying on her new glasses. As she put on the new pair, she looked up at Tammy and exclaimed "Your eyes are blue!"

Tammy drove Sarah to have a celebratory lunch and Sarah began seeing and greeting old friends on Arusha's main street, a place she had not visited for some 10 years though she lives only a mile away!

The widows living in the broken-down quarters of Arusha have so many needs. Thank you for helping us help them!

There We Were and Here We Are

Well, this is us! This is the Russell and the Borden families. But this was a really long time ago :-)

I think this photo was taken in 1991. There are eight kids between our two families now and these three boys are in high school and college today.

I guess dreams take years to shape. Our two families have been loving Africa for a very long time. We have spent many years serving on that beautiful continent. And during those years God was preparing our hearts for the Africa of today.

Africa today is looking at 40 million AIDS orphans by the year 2010. 40 million!

Wild Hope is in Africa to respond to this and to other serious issues of poverty, poor education, lack of resource, and spiritual hunger.

Do we think we are the answer to Africa's troubles?
We're not that presumptuous!

But we know that God is crazy in love with the people of Africa. Their issues are on His mind. So we proudly take our place among the hundreds of organizations, the thousands of individuals who want to give their lives to make a difference.

That's what we're up to.

It's a Wild Hope.
But He's a Wild God.

Launching...

Ok so we're going to start a stories blog to give public record to the cool things we get to be involved in in Africa.
How fun is that?