Thank you Togo for clarifying what's available in the budget and for your support! Hopefully we can make this work without compromising our commitments to Compassion or others such as Cameroon One.
Jaap- Thanks for your thoughts as well. I'm excited that CameroonOne is going to have a group of kids sponsored! That's great news and congrats!
Regarding your question about the previous sponsorship, for BLOOM kids, yes, I planned to submit the next proposal for the next 3 months in May, which is why I thought this month might be a good time to see if any hosting scholarships might work out without overlapping with next month's proposal for the continuation of the 13 BLOOM orphan sponsorships.
Of course, again, if there isn't enough in the budget for this at the moment without compromising prior commitments, I can reduce. Just let me know if anyone sees a problem.
Also, Thomas replied on the forum, and I wanted to post my reply to him here, as he asked some great questions.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.new#newThe Polish orphans will be with the Christian host families for 5 weeks this summer. The transformation you see in them from week 1 to week 5, and in their mentorship after they leave via email/skype/facebook after that is so impactful. When my family hosted an orphan during Christmas in 2016-2017, and we talked about Jesus and the Bible just in casual conversation, she would say "I do not believe in these things." We said, "ok, no problem, we do believe and it makes us happy that Jesus loves us. We want to honor him in our home. But if you ever want to talk about it, just let us know." Then a week or two later, Christmas rolled around, and we gave her her first Bible in Polish (thank you ebay). She opened it, CRIED, and said "wow, no one has ever given me scriptures before. I want to learn more." And by the end of the 4 weeks, she went to church with us and smiled the whole time. The program truly plants seeds and gives families a chance to live God's Word by example, which is the most powerful thing one can do.
(Thomas asked for photos). I cannot show the Polish kids' faces publicly, due to Poland's strict governmental rules against posting their pictures online without them being password protected. We do have a site for that, but it is reserved for families who fill out an application with us so we can screen them for eligibility. If you guys want to see photos (with the kids' faces covered for privacy) and hear brief anecdotes about the kids who are eligible for the program, you can follow us on facebook at
www.facebook.com/beloveorphanoutreach . During the program, I often post kids with their host families (Polish kids' faces covered) to share stories about their experiences. I emailed Thomas a couple pictures of Ukrainian kids we have served in the past with their host families though. Ukraine doesn't have rules against it. I can't figure out how to insert an image on here, as it just says
and I don't know what goes in between there to add a pic as these are not hosted online anywhere. You are welcome to reply and post the pics I email you on this feed.
If anyone would like to read more about the hosting program, you can visit
www.bloomworldwide.org/hosting . Thank you and please feel free to ask any other questions!