Levi Benkert's Blog, page 6

Bring Love In through the eyes of Dean Jordan

Dean Jordan, a high school student from Austin Texas, visited Ethiopia last summer with the Benkerts. He decided to chronicle his experience with Bring Love In with his video camera. We hope you enjoy seeing and hearing about his time in Ethiopia. Thanks for sharing Dean.

Click Here to view Dean’s Video

These Hands and Feet need you

 

“Who better to help a child overcome feeling alone and hopeless than a widow who is overcoming the same feelings”

 

 

 

These are the hands and feet of the Moms and Aunts who have taken on the task of loving a family of children who need love and acceptance. These women are make Forever Families possible. Bring Love In creates Forever Families in Ethiopia by uniting a widow with 6-8 orphans in a home. The Moms in these families have experienced the loss of a spouse through death or desertion and know what it means to feel alone and hopeless. The trauma they have endured and overcome uniquely equips them to parent Forever Families full of orphaned children. Children who were orphaned by death and desertion and know what it means to feel alone and hopeless. Who better to help a child overcome feeling alone and hopeless than a widow who is overcoming the same feelings. Only God could have given Bring Love In a vision to connect the perfect Moms with these orphaned children to help them become known as sons and daughters. God has blessed us with an amazing group of strong and compassionate women to be Forever Family Moms and Aunts.

We are asking you to partner with these women today by becoming a Forever Family Monthly Donor or by making a One-time Gift to our end of year Gift of Home Campaign to cover Forever Family housing cost for a year. Bring Love In is a community of people all over the world who have united in prayer and financially to change the world for one widow and orphan at a time in Ethiopia. Join our community today to live out the call of James 1:27 to go to the widow and orphan in their time of need.

#praygiveshare

#Giving Tuesday

#GivingTuesday is the day we change the world with our giving! Our goal is to raise $38,160 to pay a year of HOME rent for all 9 Forever Families and the Bring Love In community center. A Forever Family is created by uniting a widow with 6-8 orphans as a family in a HOME. A HOME is where children find safety and security. HOME is where love grows and past hurts begin to heal. HOME is where children once defined as orphans accept their new names as sons and daughters and brothers and sisters.

No gift is too big or too small today as we all come together to give the gift of HOME!

Become a part of the Bring Love In community today by DONATING FOR A HOME and sharing with your friends and family.

#praygiveshare

You are invited to a ladies trip to Ethiopia with Jessie

Hey there, it’s Jessie here, with a super fun opportunity just for us girls that I wanted to see if you might be interested in. 

I am planning a girl’s trip to Ethiopia to visit and serve at Bring Love In. We will get to see first hand how the families work, meet some needs of the ministry and experience some Ethiopian culture. I would love it if you were able to come see for yourself what Bring Love In is all about. 

We will be heading out March 20-27 2017.  The cost is 650.00 per person plus the cost of your flight.  (The best christmas gift ever for your wife

Amarech and her family need you

Meet the Amarech Forever Family. Mom’s name is Amarech, The boys are Dawit 14, Mikias 13, and Said 13. The girls are Mekdes 14, Birtuken 13 and Tamrat 13.

This Forever Family needs your help. They are currently unsponsored. Each Forever Family home with 6-7 children and one house mother costs $1200 a month to support, including rent, schooling, salaries for the mothers, food, electricity, routine medical need. Everything! Each home is sponsored by one or more individuals from around the world who give all or part of that monthly budget for their forever family.

Bring Love In is not just the staff and families in Ethiopia. Bring Love In is the community of people all over the world who God has stirred to #praygiveshare the work He is doing to the change lives one child at a time in Ethiopia. If you have not yet become a monthly sponsor we would ask that you pray about doing so today for this beautiful Forever Family.

Click here to sponsor a Forever Family and enter Amarech Family in the memo line

Unrest in Ethiopia

 

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27 NIV

 

As some of you may have been reading about there has been some unrest in Ethiopia over the last month. Most of the protest and reports of violence have taken place in the north of the country. To date Addis Ababa has not experienced any of the violence and our Forever Families and staff are safe. Other than the start of school being delayed a few weeks everything the day to day operations of Bring Love In are normal.

If the unrest spreads south towards Addis Ababa this uncertainty will only make the problems for women and children in Ethiopia worse. The stresses of a life of poverty are magnified in this climate of uncertainty, Women are regularly widowed by death and being deserted by their husbands. Children are orphaned as parents don’t have access to healthcare. Children are also dropped off at orphanages in hopes they will get food and have access to an education their parents can not provide for them. Thousands of young children live alone on the streets as survive as beggars, laborers or houseworkers. Young girls often find their way into prostitution.

Creating new families by uniting widows who still have mothering to give with children who want to be loved and have a hope for a future is what Bring Love In was founded to do. We also work with more than 150 families to help keep children with a parent with our Keep One Home Program.

We are asking for you to pray for Ethiopia. We are praying that wisdom and diplomacy will win over violence, that unity will win over pride and selfishness. We are praying that this beautiful country will not destroy itself and the peace and Joy of Jesus Christ will fill the hearts of all Ethiopians.

Bring Love In is in Ethiopia because God gave us a vision to see James 1:27 lived out and we are here to stay. We are committed to the forever part of the Forever Families that God has given us. As part of the Bring Love In community we are asking for you to join us in this commitment. We need your prayers. We need your giving. We need you to share what we are doing. #praygiveshare

A Place to call Home

As I walked through the Nashville Airport recently after traveling for 39 hours I looked up to see my wife and 5 of my children waiting for me. My heart beat a little faster and my pace quickened to exit the secure area to be greeted with hugs and kisses. After a meal and a one hour drive  we were home together. Home is a wonderful place. Home is not just a physical place, it’s wherever your family is. Home is safe. Home is love. Home is belonging.

I was reminded that the children who are part of Bring Love In have a Home. Children who were once orphans in a government run orphanage who now have a Forever Family. Keep One Home children who are still with their family have a place to call home. In a culture where relationships are a measure of wealth knowing you have a family and place to come home to create identity and confidence.

Orphans have no place to return to. They have no parents to meet their future spouse. They have no family and home to return to for the holidays. Once they age out of the orphanage system they simply wander through life with no where called home to return to.

I recently spent a week in many of the homes of Forever Families and Keep One Home families. Homes where children are loved and provided for. Homes where kids have a chance to get an education to equip them to overcome poverty. To have access to basic healthcare and grow to be healthy adults and overcome HIV and other chronic illnesses. To know the self-confidence that comes from being part of a family and being loved. For our girls to have a future that doesn’t include prostitution. For our boys to finish school and not become laborers or street boys at 10 years old. Most importantly our kids are exposed to the love of Jesus.

I want to thank you for being a part of the Bring Love In family. Your support and prayers are the reason the moms and children reached by Bring Love In have a place to call Home.

UPDATE on Urgent Need

This need has become a PRAISE! Because of your generosity we have made up the $36,000 shortage we let you know about last week. God has used you to remind us that we are never out of His sight and without His provision. God has called us to care for orphans and widows in Ethiopia in a unique way; to give them a family in their country and culture. We are so thankful that God has called you to be a part of the Bring Love In family as donors. God has called us to be partners in a community of people across the world who are working together to bring love in to the orphans and widows of Ethiopia.

James 1:27 (NASB)

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress …

Update on the urgent need

On Monday we shared with you an urgent need that we have for the ministry in Ethiopia.   I have to be honest that for us to be at that place where we absolutely must find resources quickly to take care of these kids in Ethiopia is something that brings us to our knees crying out to God for help. No way around, it is just hard to have the kind of faith it takes for this, yet we are literally before our eyes watching an incredible miracle unfold.  Of the $36,000 that we needed to raise we have already seen $27,000 come in!   We are thanking God for all of you and your generosity, and praying that the rest comes in so that we can get the finances caught up and take care of all the needs that are on the table right now.

Thank you so much for your generosity!   I wish each of you could get the chance to spend time with the kids who your gifts bless, to look into their eyes and see the hope, and know of the future that God has planned for them.

Please continue to pray with us that the $9,000 more we need to cover the current shortfall comes in, and that monthly donations continue to rise so that we will not find ourselves in the same position again.

Thank you!

Levi and Jessie Benkert

An urgent need

Friends, we are coming to you from Bring Love In with a huge need today. Usually I would write more of an update and let you know about the kids, the ministry, the impact and even a little about our family and how it all ties together.  I am darn proud of what our forever families and our staff and how every single day they all get up and make this happen, however today is different.  We are facing a great big need and I am going to just jump right in and let you know what is going on and how you can help.

Money is tight at Bring Love In, extremely tight right now. With the passing of time many of our long time donors have moved on to other causes, and its becoming harder and harder to get an audience on social media.  Yet the kids that we committed to, the moms who we promised we would stand behind and support as they took the leap and accepted these former orphans into their homes, they are still here, and they need to eat, they need roofs over their heads, and schooling so that we are able to stay the course and raise them up as the future leaders that Ethiopia so desperately needs.

In the next few days we absolutely must raise $36,000. (Update, 17,200 has come in so far as of Monday July 25th!!!)  This is to cover a shortfall and outstanding bills that have been building for a while on top of this months obligations that we cannot cover out of income, these are; school fees, uniforms for next year, yearly rent payments on several of our homes (rents are paid out once a year in Ethiopia), salaries and lastly food.    Each any every one of these things is essential and not an option.

Ongoing every month income is lagging by $7,000 from what our expenses are. Thus the major shortfall that has built up.

Please join us in praying for a miracle to happen, and if you can help out with this need with a gift today or with a monthly commitment click here.   

Thank you!

Levi and Jessie Benkert