Updates on our mission

Ryan, Jordan, and I (Emily) took a mission trip to Imuris, Mexico to Casa de Elizabeth orphanage. This trip was aimed at seeing if opening an orphanage is something that Ryan and I still want to do.

Our stay at the orphanage was 15 days and filled with lots of fun. While we were there Ryan and Jordan helped build a fence for the little children, I helped with serving meals, we put in a brick walkway and crab grass in the fenced in area, and played with the children. We also took the children swimming at a local Ranch the day before they headed off to school.

The orphanage has about 85 children right now ranging from age 3 to 18. The adult supervision is minimum (about 5 adults), but it gets the job done. Most of them didn't have shoes, so Jenell Starkel had her sorority (Lambda's) at Cascade College do a shoe drive to get shoes for the children. We were able to bring 30 pairs of sandals to the children.




Our goals for the upcoming year are finishing the paper work to get our business license, get our non-profit status completed so we can start doing fundraising, research Church of Christ or independent Christian church supported orphanages (how they obtain support, funding, and adoptions), setting up a support network between orphanages currently in place and making it easier for new ones to start, and starting our own.

If you have any helpful information, please let us know so we can add it to our research.

God bless!!

Mexico Mission Trip

Welcome to http://www.diaporlosninos.blogspot.com/, home page of Dia Por Los Niños (Day For The Children) and The Refuge. Preparation and planning is underway for a trip to Mexico this summer to volunteer at an orphanage to gain valuable mission/orphanage experience. Currently there are two, possibly three people planning on going, but we would like about 3 or 4 more people who love God, love working with children, and are seeking mission experience to join us.

Currently, we plan on spending 2-3 weeks working at the Casa de Elizabeth Orphanage in Imuris, Mexico. We plan on going sometime between mid-July and mid-August, so that if there are college students who want to come with us, they will be back in time for school, but dates and length of trip are definitely tentative and workable depending on interested parties' schedules. Imuris is a few hours drive/bus ride from Tucson, Arizona, so plans are either to fly to Tucson, and take the bus the rest of the way, or to find a cheap van to rent or borrow and drive.

We estimate the cost of this trip to be about $750 per person. The orphanage does not have a lot of money, and conditions are not at the same standard as many American orphanages. They don’t have much money, which means food is not incredibly abundant, and children must wash their clothes by hand, and some do not even have shoes. The bottom line is they need our help, but they cannot offer the accommodations that we might be accustomed to. They can use whatever aid we can give them, be it manual labor, working with the children, or simply financial support. We don’t know exactly what it is that we will be doing during our stay there, but we believe that the children we will be helping will be blessed by our efforts and are worth doing whatever we can for. It is worth stepping out of our comfort zones to help anyone in need, and we hope to find others who feel the same.

If you have any questions, please click here for ways to contact us. If you are in any way moved to do this, we ask that you’ll spend some time to seriously pray and think about it, and then possibly get in touch with us. If you are interested but don’t think you can afford the $750, please let us know anyway and we will see what we can work out in the way of sponsorship or funding. May God bless you all, and we pray that we will hear from you soon.

Contact Information

If you have a question for us about our ministry or anything, you can reach us in a number of ways:

PHONE:
Main Phone: (912) 368-2815
Ryan's Cell Phone: (912) 271-0932
Emily's Cell Phone: (912)222-2252
Jordan's Cell Phone: (509) 637-4633

E-MAIL:
irishnd98@yahoo.com

Or you can leave a comment on our site and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
For more information on who we are try here.

The Refuge

My wife and I are in the earliest planning stages of forming a mission team. We are going to be planting a church and running a full-time orphanage in a Spanish speaking country, (God willing of course) in 5-10 years. Our long term Goal is to start an orphanage network that brings aid to children all over the world. Though we have to start somewhere and that somewhere is here. This Blog is sounding board for our thoughts and ideas about this ministry, but more importantly we hope that we will let others see the importance of this ministry and get some people committed to being real prayer warriors, on these children's behalf.

First I want to say that I was once told to dream and pray big about God's people and God will bless your big dreams and prayers more than you can fathom. The Refuge is the product of those dreams and prayers. The Refuge will be the ministry that handles adoptions, finances, staffing, and supplies, for as many orphanages and church's as we can plant. Someday maybe years after I leave this world there may be a Christ centered network of hundreds of orphanages, throughout the world. But right now I'm praying for one to come into existence - Dia Por Ninos (Day for the children.) God protects the innocent through the hands and hearts of his believers. There are countless children in such dire need for God's people that we can't sit and watch anymore. We have to GO! and feed, and hug and bathe. We must do something instead of sitting and watching from inside our safety nets. The first and most important thing needed is prayer. Please pray today for the children in need, in this world, and specifically for the children that The Refuge may reach. Thanks Love you all, Ryan and Emily