 Our team w/the kids in Feb 2012! Thank you so much for your continued generosity and investment into God’s Kingdom through last year, and moving forward into this year! We are so thankful and blessed with our supporters and how consistent they are. We would not be where we are today without this solid base of people committed to Liberia and our work there. God is doing some amazing things through our ministry, stateside and in Liberia!! We are honored and blessed to be along for the ride and thank you for your heart to join us as we help to restore the country of Liberia and show them the love of Jesus!! Over the past six months, we have gone through massive restructuring in our leadership. Stan Weaver, the founder and former President of CHAP International stepped down after 10 years of leading CHAP and forming who CHAP is today. Our new Board of Directors is as follows: -Brian Deamer (active volunteer, has been to Liberia 4 times with our annual missions trip): Acting President of the Board -Brian Kurtz (active volunteer, has been to Liberia 3 times with our annual missions trip): Treasurer -Holly Gilmore (active volunteer, has been to Liberia 4 times): Secretary -Elizabeth Deamer (active volunteer, wife of Brian Deamer): Member -Alisha Heywood (active volunteer, has been to Liberia 1 time): Member/Office Administrator  Founder Stan Weaver (left) With this new leadership, our vision and missions statements of CHAP have been revised. Our missions statement is: “At CHAP International it is our heartbeat to show the love of Christ through empowering the poorest of the poor in Liberia, Africa to embrace Christian principles, provide basic provisions for themselves and their families, and have a positive impact on their neighbors and communities.” Our vision statement is: “We will follow our mission by connecting people of means to people with needs through:
2012-Early 2013 Fundraisers!! This past October, our annual fundraising banquet brought in around 120 people, and we made a grand total of $5,500; a new fundraising record for our banquet! We plan to use all of that money towards future projects we are in the works of formulating this coming year. So stay tuned for that! We had another fundraiser in December, specifically for our orphanage, which was a concert by California native Mike Burke; a musician who has come behind CHAP and has been donating some of the profits he makes toward our mission in Liberia. We ended up making about $500 at this event with only about 20 people attending! Around this same time, we had a new partnership develop with a very amazing organization called Orphan Relief Network. (www.orphanreliefnetwork.com) Orphan Relief Network is based in California, and they sponsor 7 orphanages in Liberia. They came along side us with our newly formulated “Feed a Child” Program with the Liberian Christian Mission Orphanage, and agreed that if we cover feeding the children, they will commit to training and educating the staff to teach the children at the orphanage. In addition to this, they committed to paying the managers of the orphanage a monthly stipend (not much, but it’s better than nothing) with the signing of a contractual agreement, allowing for more accountability and responsibility to some one. We are very excited about how God will use this partnership, and we are excited to learn from ORN!  FEED A CHILD PROGRAM: As mentioned before, we recently launched a new program on February 4th for our children at LCMO. Before, we had a child sponsorship program but were finding the percentage of children leaving the orphanage and being reunited with their family (who was separated from them during the civil war) was very high; about 30% to be exact. Seeing as we have 70 children there, 30% of 70 was enough for us to take a step back and consider doing something differently. That’s when Board Member, Liz Deamer, mentioned coming up with a “Feed a Child” Program. To adequately feed a child in Liberia, it is about $30 a month. We are asking sponsors for only $15 per month, with hopes that they will commit to more. The entire amount of their monthly commitment will go directly toward buying food and basic toiletry items to the 70 children at our orphanage. The “Feed a Child” Program will focus on sponsoring the Liberian Christian Mission Orphanage as a whole, rather than specific children. We love this idea, and are finding that a lot of other people do too! We already have about 20 sponsors, most of which have committed more than the required $15 per month! We are so thankful that this idea is taking off so greatly and are excited to continue to spread the word and pull in more sponsors to contribute to the well-being of these beautiful children.  MISSIONS TRIP 2013! We are especially looking forward to going to Liberia to see these beautiful children again! Our next missions trip is planned for June 8th-17th. We will spend our time there at the orphanage for 4 days, teaching bible lessons, teaching the “mother” (or manager) of the orphanage, and some of the older girls how to garden and sew, as well as teaching some of the older boys the basics of carpentry. Along with this, we will spend time playing soccer with the children and just connecting with them and the staff there. Also, we are hoping to connect with the well-known global missions organization called Youth With A Mission (YWAM) who have a base in Monrovia, Liberia (the capital of Liberia where our in-country office is located.) We are hoping we will be able to get a brief training in evangelism in Liberia, and then be able to go out into small teams and do some street evangelism! We are very excited about possibly connecting with them and ministering to the people who are in the city. Some upcoming fundraisers we are excited about: March 16th- A local Lancaster resident recently contacted us about being a food vendor at his families auction they are having. This auction will take place at his recently passed away grandparents’ estate. Apparently his grandparents were huge fans of anything antique, so after they had passed away, his family found massive amounts of beautiful antique furniture, chests, etc. all over their home! The auction will be an all day event and is open to the public. CHAP International will be a food vendor at this event and will be able to keep all profits made that day! CHAP plans to donate all profits made to the missions team who is traveling to Liberia this coming June. -We are also in the works of planning a Spring Festival, which will benefit CHAP as a whole, and be a very fun, family oriented event. More on this to come! Again, thank you so much for your continued sponsorship and support! We cannot wait to see what God does in 2013 with us! Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we look at partnering with new organizations and individuals who have been randomly contacting us to get involved in what we’re doing. It’s all SO exciting and obviously has been orchestrated by the Lord, but we want to make sure we make the right decisions and use wisdom when getting involved with other organizations and individuals. You are so important to us and we are excited for what our next update will include! God Bless! The CHAP International team
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