Casa Hogar La Familia

Embrace the Dream Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 5558
Greenville, SC 29606

On March 3, I returned from an eight-day trip to Casa Hogar La Familia. I traveled to La Familia with a mission team from the Federated Church in Kingfisher, OK. We had a terrific trip, and I don’t believe I have ever found everything at the home with the children and staff to be so absolutely outstanding.

Our team worked hard this trip. We arrived in Teka on Tuesday night, February 25, and our first day at the children’s home was on Wednesday morning following a terrific breakfast at Sandy’s in Quecholac.

When we arrived at La Familia, we were blown away by the installation of beautiful terra cotta colored pavers on the entire area where we park the La Familia vehicles. From the front gate to the back wall and from the basketball court wall to the exterior wall was 100% covered with the pavers. The clotheslines are now made of iron posts and cemented in place.

La Familia now has 31 children, which brings the home to near full capacity if not at full capacity. Currently, we only have three volunteers, Chuy, Damaly and Karen, so we could certainly use another volunteer if anyone has a Spanish-speaking young adult in their church who might be interested in serving in this capacity.

Among the activities we enjoyed with the children were continuous games of four-square, soccer, and volleyball outside and inside, we played a lot of board games. We also hosted all of the children at the waterpark and enjoyed a picnic made up of rotisserie chicken, beans, tortillas and a homemade beverage.

The Federated team worked along side Chuy and several of the boys from the home to repair and put all of the toilets in working order, replace all of the shower curtains in the boy’s and girl’s bathrooms, and finally to install LED lighting in the kitchen, dormitories and dining room. We are using fewer lights, so we should save some money on our electricity bill while substantially increasing the brightness of the home.

My personal objective for the visit was to take individual photographs of each child and staff person along with a photograph of each family present in the home. We accomplished this objective thanks to a lot of help from the Federated team. Be sure to look at the photographs on the www.embracethedream.com website.

Many of you will remember Josue and Rodolfo, both of whom have been a part of La Familia for most of their lives. Both boys are outstanding students and have firm plans to further their education by entering a university this fall. Both boys hope to qualify for visas to allow them to attend college in either the US or Germany.

The most popular child at La Familia is without a doubt “Luca,” the new little boy belonging to Damaly and Chuy. Be sure to take a look at the photograph of this “muy guapo” young man.

Our thanks go out to James Schreiber of Sacramento, CA, for organizing the photographs and for doing such a terrific job each month of publishing the La Familia newsletter. We could never pull this off with James’ assistance.

I have some terrific news from three ladies who grew up at La Familia.

1. Damaly gave birth to a little boy this month. She and Chuy named him Luca. Damaly and Chuy are working as volunteers at La Familia.

2. Alicia (sister of Isabel, Jazmin, Juan Carlos and Mafer (Fernanda) also had a little girl this month. They named her Ainhera (pronounced Ah e ner ah). Alicia and her husband live on a farm near La Familia. Alicia attends church on most Sundays at La Familia.

3. And today, I received a message from Isabel that she is 3-1/2-months pregnant with a little girl. Isabel is attending the university in Colima. She and her husband, Gabriel, are both working as volunteers at Casa Matrix, a casa hogar in Colima.

I will be visiting La Familia in February with a team from Kingfisher, OK. I will be sure to come home with a lot of photographs of the many new additions to the casa.

Bill Lee
President
Embrace the Dream Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 5558
Greenville, SC 29606

I am happy to report that all is going extremely well at Casa Hogar La Familia. The children are busy decorating the casa for Christmas. We were blessed this year to receive two very nice donations to help the directors pay for the cost of decorations, gifts and special food for the Christmas Season.

Silvia communicated with me today and told me that with the change of the seasons some of the children have been sick, but nothing serious. With the exception of a few bad colds, all of the children and the staff are doing great.

Tomorrow, all of the children have been invited to travel to Ciudad Serdan to visit Alltech, the company there that has been so very generous with La Familia. Silvia says the children are extremely excited and happy to be going back to Serdan for the day.

More good news: Silvia’s Uncle Sergio has once again made a gift to the casa. On December 19, Uncle Sergio is paying for all of the children to visit Six Flags in Mexico City.

The directors thank all of those who have once again in 2019 supported the Casa Hogar with your donations, your visits with mission teams and most of all for your prayers. Everyone at the casa feels extremely blessed to have so many people in the United States who find the time and money to share with Casa Hogar La Familia.

On behalf of Embrace the Dream Foundation and the directors and staff at La Familia, we wish you all a joyous and blessed Christmas Season.

Bill Lee
Embrace the Dream Foundation, Inc.

I received a telephone call from Pastor Nahum Gutierrez, our contact in Colima who oversees the students who are attending both the university there as well as one young man who is attending high school in Colima.

Jazmin Urbina — Jazmin is in her last year of nursing school. As a part of her on the job training, she has been assigned to work at a large hospital in Tlaxcala, the capitol of the State of Tlaxcala, only about an hour’s drive from the City of Puebla. She will be flying from Colima to Tlaxcala.

Maria Isabel — Isabel was the first girl I met when I made my first trip to La Familia in the year 2000. She has overcome a lot of adversity since then and is now a student studying accounting at the university in Colima. She is married to Gabriel and she is the mother of Josué.

Gabriel de Cortez — Gabriel is also a student at the university in Colima and is also studying accounting. Everyone keep their fingers crossed, because if Gabriel keeps up his current pace, he will graduate in December of 2019. Gabriel and Isabel are full-time volunteers at a Casa Hogar by the name of Casa Leonel in Colima.

Juan Carlos — Nahum has been an excellent mentor to Juan Carlos who had lost an interest in finishing high school in Quecholac. Juan Carlos moved to Colima for a change of scenery and to be near his sisters, Isabel and Jazmin. Juan Carlos is scheduled to graduate from high school in November.

Daniel — Daniel is the youngest son of Juan Francisco and Silvia. He began his university education in Colima this fall and has decided to major in International Business.

Our thanks to all of the donors who support the work Embrace the Dream is doing in Mexico. Thanks to each of you for your donations to this Christ-centered orphanage ministry because your donations to Embrace the Dream allow us to pay for 100% if the tuition, food and housing costs of any child who can gain admission to either the university or a technical school and maintain a C Average.

Embrace the Dream Foundation, Inc., PO Box 5558, Greenville, SC 29606
Federal Tax ID# 26-0680710
www.EmbraceTheDream.com

Beginning on Tuesday, July 30, my brother in Christ, Robbie Hamilton and I flew to Houston to meet an nine-person mission team from Federated Church in Kingfisher, OK and travel with them to Casa Hogar La Familia to spend a week working with the staff and the children at this home for orphaned and abandoned children.

Our trip went like clockwork.  We flew to Mexico City, then took a two-hour bus trip to the CAPU bus station in the City of Puebla and there we changed buses and took a one-hour bus trip to our destination city of Tecamachalco, which is about a 30-minute drive to La Familia.

Our first evening was spent with the two directors, Juan Francisco and Silvia.  They met us at the Tecamachalco bus station and joined us for dinner at a delightful relatively new restaurant located just a few blocks from our hotel.  

The mission team from Federated Church was made up of both adults and  young people.  The adults were made up of a business owner and his wife, a veterinarian and his wife, and an operations manager at a local business. Two of our young people were students at Oklahoma State University and two were high school students. With Robbie and me, we made up an eleven-person mission team.

The next day when we arrived at La Familia, all of the children came out to meet us since they were all out of school for their summer vacation. We were blown away by the amount of new work that had been done at the children’s home since our last visit in February of this year.

The perimeter wall had been extended to completely surround our two-acre piece of property.

Solar panels for the roof had been delivered, but not yet installed.

A mission team from Lighthouse Fellowship United Methodist Church in Fort Worth had worked at La Familia a few weeks before we arrived and had removed the wood posts that supported the old clothes lines and replaced them with steel posts, making them much sturdier than they had been in the past.

Two cows (a milk cow and her calf) had been donated to the home and they were already receiving fresh milk, making butter, yogurt and cheese.

A small, but attractive new office had been built to give the directors a private place to process new children when they arrive.

We were all very impressed with the number of positive changes that had taken place at La Familia since we last visited. The big news was that eight new children had made La Familia their home since our last visit. It always amazes me how rapidly new children integrate into the home. The children of La Familia are extremely welcoming. (See photograph)

Our team’s project for the week was to first construct and second to install foam partitions to help soften the sounds the praise band generates at Sunday morning worship services as well as at the Thursday evening worship service. Without the insulated partitions, the music was uncomfortably loud for the members of the congregation who sat up front.

After taking careful measurements, we drove into Puebla where we shopped at a Home Depot store to purchase the tools we needed to complete our project. We purchased the wood for the wall panels and several other products locally and also bought paint locally to cover the walls on both in the second-floor space and the wood surrounding the insulated panels we had previously constructed.

We had not have time to complete the painting portion of our project before having to leave for dinner, so on the drive to La Familia the next morning we were a bit frustrated because still had a lot of painting to do before we could move on to constructing the sound partitions, but when we arrived at the job site we were delighted to see that members of the La Familia staff along with some of the older boys had finished of the painting after we had left.

The next day went extremely smooth. We got all 12 panels installed, four on each side wall and two on both the front and back walls. Using an App that measured decibels, we were pleased that the panels did the job intended. (See Photo of panels installed on one of the walls.)

On our third day at La Familia, two more new children were brought to the home by DIF, a Mexican government agency that removes children from potentially dangerous or unhealthy home situations, bringing the total number of children to 35. (See Photo of these two children after being bathed and dressed in clean clothes.)

On our fourth day, the women of the church located on the second floor of La Familia prepared lunch for the team.