Dear Friends, I am a bit shocked to see I have not posted since July 21st. This Has been a month filled with focusing our attention to the running of the home, re-furbishing the guest-house and at the same time organizing ourselves for the up and coming trip the the US for our second born son’s wedding.
One of the things we have been trying to take control of is our internet service provider bills. It has been a rough three months since they increased our monthly unlimited service by 65%. We have since been trying out various options to paying the $145 monthly flat rate… Two months ago, we switched to a partial timed service and ended up spending close to $200. Last month with the same package, we ended up spending over $300. So we have now switched to a pre-paid system where we by credit and use it until it runs out and the re-load the account… This has put us back into the driver’s seat again… It looks like our monthly internet bill will total about $45. Hurray… But also it means that we will not be spending much time on the internet. We are now using an email program which we will use to download and upload email twice a day… We will be posting as much as we can, but we’ll see how it goes…
Another thing we have been working hard at is bringing down our monthly costs as an orphanage. Our monthly expenses have outgrown our income and we are trying to reverse it. The problem is three fold…
1. We have sponsors for only about half of our kids. We did quite well while in the US last time in getting sponsors for each of our kids at that time. We had hoped our website would yield more fruit in getting sponsors, but so far we have had no success in signing up people online through paypal. We are gearing up to do more of those while in the US in Sept/Oct.
2. The $50 per month per child does not cover the costs we are spending on our kids. The real cost per month is more like $200 per child. The cost of electricity, cooking gas, education and medical services is just too expensive. Some of our kids are hiv positive and although Anti-retro-viral drugs are now free, the testing and increased doctor visits they still require are not free. These add up:
3. Also, the expenses of of paying the twenty full-time staff people who not only minister to the kids, but maintain and protect the five acre campus of Kings Kids Village are not covered in the sponsorships…
As a result, we rely on the other donations we receive from various well-wishers to make up the difference. If you wish to help up financially through child sponsorships or with a general, monthly, or periodic donation, there are several ways to do so. You can contact our US 501C3 Encourager’s Unlimited through the information provided on our website and blog or click on the Paypal Icon that best fits your donation.
God bless you as you partner with us in helping these kids to give them the brightest future we can offer them.
Jon and Molly