HOSEA NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2024

Greetings dear readers!

This time I'd love to tell you about some of our pupils whose lives and desire to learn has been an inspiration also to me.

Hosea has again received a "lost child", this time from a tribe living in the mountains. This girl had previously been given the opportunity to attend our Hosea School for a few weeks and as a result she decided that she wanted to study regularly, so on her own initiative she made her way to our main school in Mamburao. The tribespeople like to keep to their traditional ways and do not favour school attendance, but Pastor Sonio was able to make an agreement with her family that she can live at the school under Hosea's care. Tribes are not officially registered, so we had to apply for an identity card for her, and as the girl's date of birth was not known, her age had to be estimated -- 13 years old. Not only that but she also had to be named, and she fell in love with the name Nicole.

Nicole is from one of the native tribes

Nicole is keen to learn but she has had to start at a very basic level. She is currently in the three-year-old class, from which she has to move on. She has made good progress and has learned to read and write. Nicole helps with cleaning and loves cooking in the kitchen -- all new activities to her. She doesn't want to go back to tribal life because, according to her, she was always hungry there.

Nicole assisting in the kitchen

This isn't the first time we've been doing surprise parenting. In the Philippines there are many abandoned children who end up on the streets because the overburdened social welfare system does not have enough funds or facilities. The only possibility is to look for a relative to help, but often they are not able to take on additional dependents.

We have bought a wheelchair for our student with cerebral palsy as a gift, which made life easier for the boy and his mother, as well as for the teachers. The boy is making progress in his studies and keeps up with the others. His younger sister has been placed in the same class to help her brother, because the boy sometimes has uncontrollable compulsive movements. In this boy, we have seen again that no child is a hopeless case! Other schools in the area did not accept him as a student.

The wheelchair that was gifted

A two-year-old boy was found abandoned in front of the school. In his backpack was a note with his name and the message, “whoever finds him, take him”. The boy was taken to the town hall and a social worker was engaged to help. Based on the boy's name and age, the mother's name was traced, and through that his old grandfather, with whom the boy was temporarily placed. Although there are several of these abandoned children, there is always someone who remembers their fate. Maybe even this little one will one day become a student at our school and receive Christ into his heart!

Amazingly, our overactive students have also calmed down. They learn the Bible by heart and excel in academic results. We take care to bless each of our students, because such blessing has dynamic power for change. We encourage them that they can achieve anything and Deuteronomy 28:13 is the motto of our Hosea school, which the children repeat and learn by heart: “If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom.”

With blessings, Anne