Monkeys for Mozambique

My brother Zach is going to Mozambique this summer to work for Children's Relief International. He is going to be working with their child sponsorship program, much like the program most people are familiar with at World Vision.

Below is a a video that Zachary put together after his trip to Mozambique last year.

Something that touched me after Zachary's trip was discussing the children. My nine month old son has so many toys I can hardly stay on top of keeping them all picked up. These kids play with rocks; dirty, used paper towels; old plastic water bottles; garbage, etc. They play with things that we as Americans would probably cringe at the idea of our children even touching. Another friend who went to Africa recently mentioned that she took a stuffed animal with her to Kenya, and that even the 16 and 17 year old kids wanted to hold and play with it.

I have been aware of hunger and poverty for a long time, but I am definately guilty of living in my sheltered bubble here in the United States and forgetting about the world around me. I should think about helping and ministering to others a lot more than I do. With my brother going into full time missions and my husband and I frequently discussing our plans to adopt internationally (which we are excited is now actually an option, as most countries don't allow this until the youngest spouse is 25 years old! Yay for being 25!), helping those around us, both in our community and abroad, is definately on my mind alot more lately. All of this being said, I have been deeply convicted that I don't do enough to minister to others.

After hearing about my brothers recent trip, and bouncing ideas off of some of the ladies at church, we have decided to work on a service/craft project before they leave for Mozambique this summer. We had the idea to make sock monkeys as a church; we decided it would be a wonderful opportunity to get our church involved in a craft project ministering to children who live acoss the globe from us. We will be getting together on Saturday, April 16, 2011 from 1-4pm at First Family Church in Antioch. Everyone is welcome to come. No sewing experience is required (although if you can sew, that is, of course, an added bonus!). We will need stuffers, sewers, people to draw patterns, cut out patterns, etc. All you need to bring is yourself, a pair of socks, and a snack to share (if you are not able to bring anything, we still need you! we will have extras and plenty of jobs for everyone). Also, if you are able to bring a sewing machine, that would be great. The more sewing machines we have, the faster we will be able to make more monkeys to send with them for their trip. I am hoping we can fill a suitcase! We are also planning to do a raffle with a pretty cool prize for those of you who are crafty! If you have any questions, please contact me at aabeyta23@comcast.net. If you are unable to attend but would still like to be involved, you can find many tutorials about how to make sock monkeys on youtube. Just bring your finished monkey to church and we will see that it makes its way to a child in Mozambique!

I am so excited about this and hope to see you there!

Also, if you would like to donate to either Zach for his trip to Mozambique this summer, you can do so at
www.childrensrelief.org (I can't get this to show up as a link, it is also posted under the "websites we like" side bar on our blog)
Go to the "Get Involved" tab. Click on "Donate." To give to Zach, scroll down under "select a missionary" and choose Zach Farrar.
If you are interested in their child sponsorship program, go to
www.childrensrelief.org/how-you-can-help/child-sponsorship