Jonathan's House in CAR

Each year as a church we support Jonathan’s House in Central African Republic through our mission fund and through the alternative gift fair put on by Sarah’s Circle. We recently received this thank you note for the newsletter:

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your tremendous generosity through Sarah Circle’s Alternative Gift Fair. Every item that was donated will be greatly appreciated in one of the world’s most difficult places to survive. You donated 23 water filters that will provide the only source of clean water for 23 families and will be shared among hundreds of neighbors. Drinking contaminated water is one the main health dangers in CAR, and it’s completely preventable with these water filters. We’ll be sending 33,000 chewable children’s vitamins that will nourish every one of the 425 children in our school lunch program for 78 days. The 2550 donated school lunches are the only nutritious meals that most of our students receive each day, and they are the reason that most of our children attend school. A twelve month supply of PlumpyNut will save the lives of severely malnourished arrivals to the orphanage.

You gave in a big way, and it’s going to make a world of difference to a lot of children. You’ll never meet them, but they are deeply appreciative of your gifts. The world has either forgotten or ignored the plight of the children of the Central African Republic, but you have remembered them. The results that we are seeing are tremendous. Malnourishment is down, graduation and literacy rates are up, child mortality rates are down, and children can enjoy being children. Your gifts will change lives in an area that is desperate to break free from the cycle of poverty that it has experienced for generations.

Very thankful,

Carter Strand

This note hits on the important work of Jonathan’s House, but what really hit me today was going to their website (https://www.jonathanshouse.org/) and seeing some of the videos they have posted. The impact they are having on the lives of children in CAR is amazing. I would encourage you to watch the videos and pray for the work being done at Jonathan’s House. Below is the prayer request Carter gave us recently, but you can also be praying for all of the workers in this ministry and for the children they help.

The Lord has blessed the Jonathan’s House ministry this year. We have not had staff or children sick due to COVID 19. We have a full time missionary from Georgia with us who speaks French and English. We have rescued several children this year who would have died without intervention. The school lunch program continues to feed 425 children per day. My prayer request is that we will be notified when children in CAR are in dark and desperate situations. Unfortunately, children still die there before we are ever notified. That’s unnecessary because we are ready with resources to help.