Ever since we built the current La Familia campus in Palmarito, I have heard many people complain about how much was spent each month for gasoline. In Cuidad Serdan, our old location, the children walked to school. Missioners didn’t need a van to transport them because we could walk back and forth to the hotel from La Familia.

All of the children’s homes we compared gasoline expenses with were in small to large cities where ample and reasonably priced public transportation was readily available.

In Palmarito, however, we have to transport the children to four grade levels, some with classes in the mornings and some with classes in the afternoons. Our children are in kindergarten, elementary school, middle school and high school, which means a lot of driving the 12-passenger and the 15-passenger vans.

A quick trip to the food market cost $3.00 US dollars in fuel, and several of those trips are made daily.

We discussed this situation with Juan Francisco and Silvia and they agreed that the purchase of a small 4-passenger car that gets high gas mileage would be the best solution. Otherwise, we could not continue operating at our current level of expenses.

Next we had to find a donor, and we were very fortunate that a missioner who has made multiple trips to La Familia told me he would like to donate the car. God is so good! So the next time you travel to Casa Hogar La Familia, you will see a new Chevrolet Spark.

Nahun Gutierrez, the head pastor of our sister Grupo Amor church located in the City of Colima, was kind enough to do the leg work for us, handle the paperwork and see to it that all we had to do was ask someone to take a bus ride to Guadalajara and pick up the car and drive it back to Palmarito.

Juan Francisco volunteered to retrieve the new car. (See Photo Below)

We appreciate everyone’s generosity who make Casa Hogar La Familia such a terrific success story.

We especially appreciate our directors, Juan Francisco and Silvia Liliana.

God bless!

Embrace the Dream Foundation, Inc.

Bill Lee
President

The Federated Church from Kingfisher, Okla. sent a mission team to La Familia in early March. This is the third year in a row that this team has traveled to La Familia. A tremendous amount of work was accomplished:

A blind lady in Palmarito who attends the church located on the second floor of the casa hogar had no gates to prevent stray dogs and unwanted visitors from entering her property, so the mission team built the gates and — with the help of Silvia and Chuy — found a contractor to hang them. Below is a photograph of the finished product.

Silvia wanted the bodega they use to store donated vegetables relocated to outside the casa hogar just to the left of the clothes lines, so the Federated Church team along with a contractor and several volunteers got started right away building the new bodega.   Below is a photograph of the beginning of the project:

The mission team’s female contingent put a fresh coat of paint on the columns in the dining room.

The Federated Church brought some of the wild west from Oklahoma to Quecholac as they joined with members of the La Familia gang to give the heavily fortified paint ball facility it’s first gringo customers. While there were a few bruises, they did not take away from the fun these well dressed soldiers enjoyed.

On Sunday afternoon, the children as well as the adults put on their new t-shirts for a group photograph.

No mission trip would be complete (weather permitting) without a day at the Quecholac waterpark. The park has been expanded to include an aviary, four-wheel cart rides and a paint-ball battleground.

We are working diligently to improve communications between Juan Francisco and Silvia, the La Familia directors, and the mission team leaders who visit Casa Hogar La Familia.

The purpose of this letter is to discuss one of the needs the directors have that we can satisfy without too much trouble and expense to any of us if we all work together to coordinate what we take down when we visit the home.

One of our mission team leaders visited La Familia a couple of weeks ago and learned that there were some items that we have an excess supply of at La Familia and other items that are in short supply.
 

First Aid Kits

There is an ample supply of first aid kits — over one hundred — that some mission teams use to set up first aid stations and supply these kits to the local residents who live near the vegetable fields that are located behind the casa Hogar. Please do not take any more first aid kits until we advise otherwise.
 

Personal Items for the Children

We badly need a supply of personal items for the children to use so the purchase of these items doesn’t continue to eat into the home’s grocery budget.

The mission team leader who brought back this information suggests that each team member take a LARGE Ziplock bag and fill it up with the following:

We believe by following this suggestion Silvia can free up money for larger purchases of food and household supplies. Thank you in advance for your help.