Welcome to Project Hope Speaks – a space for our church community to share the needs, passion and opportunities to participate in God’s call to care for orphans.

Why read blogs

I love people.   I love to read.   I love good stories and new ideas.   I love to learn and be challenged.   I love community.   Blogs combine all of these elements in ways that has potential to shape what we think and care about as we go about daily life.   They connect us to a broader community of people that are thinking about things we care about and stimulate substantive conversations with others along the same lines.   They introduce us to ideas and opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise hear about.  They expand our view of what God is doing in the world.  For all of these reasons and more, I’m thrilled to introduce to you- Project Hope Speaks- a blog for Project Hope, Grace’s orphan care ministry.   This combines all the things I love about blogs with a few more things that I love- I love Grace EV Free.  I love adoption & orphan care.   I love pointing out how God is at work around us.

Why Project Hope is blogging

Project Hope has existed at Grace for 3 years now and we have seen God do amazing things in our midst.   Those of us who serve on the Project Hope leadership team  get a unique perspective on the many ways that God is moving in families at Grace and around the world to “rehearse redemption’s story” through adoption and orphan care.  We want to share that view with you in order that you will be reminded of your adoption into God’s family, encouraged to reflect God’s rescuing/welcoming love by caring for orphans and look forward to the day when the brokenness of our fallen world will be made right.  The opportunity is wide, with 145 million orphans worldwide (UNICEF 2008), some of them as close as next door.   We want to be a community that lives out the true religion that we are called to in caring for orphans and those in need because our Heavenly Father does.

What is our aim

Hebrews 10:24-25 says – “Let us consider how we may stir up one another to love & good works, not neglecting meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

Let us consider- Our hope is that this blog will assist us as a community to contemplate the needs of orphans- next door and around the world.  We need to be reminded of these things because while they are God given priorities, they all too often escape our attention.

Let us stir up one another- We hope that this blog will be a place where we will encourage and challenge one another to greater love and radical obedience as we share stories of how God is at work and opportunities for people to join in that work.

Let us encourage one another- We hope that this blog will encourage you in your relationship with the Lord and along the way of whatever he has called you to in caring for orphans.

As you see the Day drawing near – We do all these things recognizing that we are participating in the difficult, but glorious work that God is doing now and that we look forward to a day when Christ will come again and make all things new in this broken world in which we live.  “God’s work of adoption will one day result in the comprehensive restoration of all creation so that it becomes the happy home of all of His children. One awe-inspiring day creation will be restored to a home of unceasing communion and fellowship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In that day we will enter into the overflowing and never ending peace and joy and gladness of our Father….Because of God’s creation-renewing focus of adoption, everything we do for the sake of orphans becomes a foretaste of the day when there will no longer be any vulnerable or orphaned children…” (Dan Cruver).

So we invite you to join us in applying ourselves to remembering our adoption in Christ, reflecting God’s rescuing/welcoming love in caring for orphans now, and looking forward to that glorious day.

By Anna Hamner