We praise God that we were able to end our year 2023 with a beautiful missions trip to Tanzania. It was very special to see the children, tend to their current needs, help them get ready for their next school year and of course enjoy some special activities with them. Our trip started with a visit to Moshi, a town at the foot of Kilimanjaro mountain, to visit one of our college students studying clinical officer (equivalent to medical assistant). We also met up with the rest of our college students in Arusha – we are so proud of how hard they are working for their future. After this, our group of 5 volunteers (Carmen, Paloma, Lola, Elisabete and Antonio), filled up our driver Omari´s jeep and headed to Karatu, to Shalom Children´s Home.
It was a beautiful reunion with the children, many of which we know and have been supporting for 5 years now and they are growing up so much!! With it being their long end-of-term Christmas Holidays, we were able to see all the children, including the ones in boarding schools. Our next week with all the volunteers and another week with just Carmen and Paloma were filled with many errands and activities:
SWIMMING
When are we going swimming? – This is always one of the first questions we get from the children, it has become one of their highlights during our visits, so of course a whole weekend was dedicated to driving groups of children back and forth to the swimming pool for some swimming experience and lessons. Swimming is an important skill we want the children to have and they otherwise have no opportunity to learn it.
SHOES & BACKPACKS
Thanks to our Sponsors and especially our volunteer Antonio and his partnering school “El Catón” (in Madrid), school shoes, sport shoes and backpacks for more than 50 children were collected and sent to Shalom! This is one of our greater and very costly challenges every year, so it was a huge blessing! The children are so happy with their new clothes, shoes and backpacks which they received as a Christmas gift!!
BUYING FOOD & SUPPLIES
With all the children home for holidays and prices rising, it is always a hard for the children´s home to provide food for all the children. After a succesfull fundraising from our spanish team, we experienced african grocery shopping and were able to fill up Shalom´s food storage with all their basic ingredients (mostly rice, maize, beans and flour), buy a bull for meat and get hygienic supplies for the next school year.
CRAFTS & CHRISTMAS LETTERS
As always the kids from our sponsorship program got to receive Christmas letters from their Sponsors from all around the world and create and write their own Christmas cards back. As you can see they got very creative!
CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES & CELEBRATION
In the last years we have introduced some of our Christmas traditions to the children: Baking christmas cookies and making Christmas houses. They really enjoy this yummy quality time and we had a special Christmas celebration and meal in Shalom.
LOVE & FUN
Our main goal in anything we do is to show the children love, bring them joy and make sure we maintain a good relationship with them as they grow up. We are so thankful for all the Shalom leaders who work so hard to provide for all these children and for their help during our mission trips.
We love our Shalom family and want to give a special thanks to Mama Warra, Hope and Juliana, Witness and our driver Omari.
