on the road again…

In March, we were finally able to travel to South Africa for the first time since the pandemic lockdowns began. There have been hardships, and One Life Directors and staff have taken on difficult challenges with extreme lockdowns and lack of quality medical care and full hospitals—all while continuing to advocate for the needs of our sponsored children. For many people around the world, it is difficult to socially distance. Shacks and townships are packed with families and people, and it is a struggle to get clean water and sanitize. Throughout all of this, several of our staff members contracted COVID and experienced various medical conditions.

Still, God has shown His faithfulness and care. He has been with each one of us along the way, and we are grateful for His provision in One Life and in our sponsors’ and staff’s lives. We have been able to bless the children and their families during a pandemic, and we have seen growth in our sites and partners as they go deep with their neighbors and neighboring communities. Their faith and fight during this spiritual warfare is truly inspiring.

In South Africa, we have seen the staff fill a void in the children’s education. This is already a difficult process in the best of times, and with the ever-changing schedules due to COVID, the staff has pressed in and on to help these children move forward in their schooling. The children have been able to continue their reading, math, phonics, and fine and gross motor skills despite the lack of government education taking place. One of our leaders, Josien, has been providing aptitude tests for all of the high school kids in preparation for their continuing education tracks. This has been beneficial in helping the students understand their options that fit well with their passions and interests.

Donors have also stepped in to help with various needs we have, including providing laptops for our care centers in South Africa. The high school children were previously doing their projects on staff phones, and they are so excited to have these laptops as a resource.

Your prayers have been a comfort during this time, and God has heard them. It’s difficult to express how grateful we are to both our sponsors and the Lord. We praise Him for you and for His faithfulness. Please continue to lift One Life up in prayer. A team is going to South Africa this week where they will get to see our One Life children and programs in person. Please pray for smooth travels and that each person will draw nearer to the Lord through this trip.

Many of our sponsors have traveled with us in the past and have found it such a wonderful experience getting to meet their sponsored child and see their community up close. If you are interested in taking a trip with us, please feel free to contact us. We love when people journey alongside us!

A new thing...

Originally posted in August 2019

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. - Isaiah 43:19

As One Life answers the call to care for the most vulnerable in our communities, we find ourselves doing more than just orphan care. One of our Southeast Asian Directors —or Pastor E*, as we will call him in this article, not only oversees eleven sites for our sponsorship program but also spearheads our church planting efforts, manages significant micro business projects and is heavily involved in prison ministry. A couple times each month, Pastor E visits a local maximum-security prison and ministers to the inmates. Since early 2018 over 800 men and women have come to know Jesus. Pastor E has established discipleship groups within the prison walls and encourages the believers to share the gospel every day. He’s currently working with the prison commander to allow baptisms —a very complicated request in a Buddhist country!

Every month Pastor E meets new women who have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for drug running, possession, violence and robbery. Many of these women have children. The children who are left behind most often fall prey to drug addiction or become victims of human trafficking. Pastor E and his wife Nan* are working to find ways to support the children of these prisoners and where possible, One Life is adding them to our sponsorship program where they will get an education, have a safe place to live and will learn about the gentle, unrelenting love of a Father.

We currently have four children who recently entered our program, where parents are serving lengthy sentences. These children come from desperate villages on one of the bordering countries where life is dangerous as kids get caught in the crossfire of border drug wars, human trafficking, poverty and neglect. The children have been living with their aged grandmothers who are unable to care for or feed them. One Life will provide the care they need to not only survive but also thrive, despite their circumstances. As we care for these children, we will also be spiritually caring for their parents in the prison through Pastor E’s ministry.

There is hope that these families will be reunited as we launch out on a new venture —a half-way house for released women prisoners. This new ministry center will provide accommodation, skills training, discipleship and counseling for mothers, once they’re released from prison. It is our hope to eventually equip these moms to not only provide a sustainable source of income for their families but also empower them to take responsibility and care for their children as they journey towards all God has called them to be as mothers and daughters of Christ.

*All names have been changed and locations generalized to protect our partners from religious persecution.

Global COVID-19 Update

Originally written and sent out April 2020

Now, more than ever, we appreciate your support for our vulnerable children in South Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. With borders closing across the globe, many are wondering what is happening with their sponsored child. We have witnessed the virus multiply throughout our own country in a matter of days. Unfortunately, our partnering countries are not far behind us in the progression. Our One Life communities are highly vulnerable and the children and families you support need hope and faith in Christ. South Africa, India and Southeast Asia have all instituted a lockdown, aware that their countries might collapse under the pressure of this global pandemic. Our partners on the ground are doing what they can to deliver supplies to our families and care centers, to educate our communities on how to stay safe, and they are maintaining contact should the need for medical care arise. Sanitation in the villages and townships is almost nonexistent. Most of these areas have little to no access to basic hygiene products or water, let alone healthcare facilities that can care for large masses of the population at once. With many of our children and their caregivers being HIV+ or having other underlying health issues such as TB, they are in the high-risk category should they become infected with COVID-19. Everyone lives in close quarters with one another. With up to eight immune deficient people sharing mattresses, the virus could potentially spread like wildfire. Many of the caregivers of our One Life children are elderly grandparents and extended family. Now, more than ever, the kids, their families and communities, need your prayers. All across the world our children and leaders are joining in prayer for the sick and for families in mourning. We are also asking for prayer for our staff, leaders, and pastors in each country as they do all they can to protect their people and bring a sense of peace and hope that only comes from our Father.

While you are home with your family, this is a great opportunity to sit down together and write to your child. Maybe your kids would like to write or draw your sponsored child some pictures. They could use words of encouragement during this time. The children also want to know that you and your family are okay. All they see in the news is that the United States is in great danger. Even in a crisis, your sponsored child thinks about and prays for you and your family. Feel free to attach a family photo so they can see and remember you as they pray. Let us take this time to show these beautiful children of God that they are not lost or forgotten. Thank you for all you do and God bless! —Kim Shroyer, Staff

Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ~2 Corinthians 1:9

Likhona

Originally written and sent out August 2019

The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him. Psalm 37:23

Likhona lives in a very small 2-room house with his mom and four siblings. His father passed away with Tuberculosis and his mother is unable to find work. She is raising her family on subsidized child grants which amount to less than $200 per month. Three years ago, 13-year-old Liikhona was playing in a tree near his home in the township of Wells Estate. He lost his grip and fell to the ground breaking his right leg below the hip. He was taken to a government hospital where the doctors did surgery, putting in pins to connect and repair the break.

Government hospitals in South Africa are grossly under-staffed and under-resourced. Families have to bring in bedding and often have to provide meals, medical supplies and pain medications. Likhona lay alone in hospital for almost three months while his leg healed, his mother only being able to visit occasionally because she couldn’t afford the bus fare to the hospital.

Likhona received inadequate care while in the hospital. The surgery altered the length of his leg and when he was dismissed from the hospital, his right leg was almost 8 inches shorter than the left. Likhona can no longer run with his friends or play any sports. He struggles to walk and has significant problems climbing the steps onto the school bus. Shortly after the surgery, One Life Education Director, Alison Colin, got custom fitted shoes for him with a raised heel to accommodate the length disparity between his two legs. He has been walking with a heavy limp for the past 3 years and severe curvature of the spine has resulted, causing chronic pain. Last month Alison took Likhona to a doctor. Through a series of x-rays and tests, the doctor determined the bones never fused, the pins have come loose and abscesses have formed. Trying to get Likhona in to see a Specialist has been a major undertaking and we have finally been able to get an appointment for the end of November with a doctor on the other side of the country. He is the only orthopedic specialist in South Africa that may be able to help Likhona. Without surgery to repair the previous inadequate work that was done, Likhona will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

We request prayer for the following...

• for the Specialist to have the skills and technology needed to fix Likhona’s leg
• for relief from the pain
• for availability of local medical resources like physical therapy
• for complete healing

Likhona is now sixteen years old. He’s a great student and a diligent, respectful, well-mannered teenager. He writes poetry and loves to attend his church, and he cares for a small garden behind his house that provides food for his family. Recently, Likhona was awarded a Certificate of Achievement for his progress in English.

One Life exists to journey alongside the most vulnerable children. Without sponsorship, Likhona would have fallen through the cracks in his community. One Life stands in the gap for these children and their families, as we advocate on their behalf when there is nobody else willing to fight for them.

Strangers in a Foreign Land

Originally written and sent out in July 2019

One Life operates a small Care Center in a refugee camp in northern Thailand. The camp is made up of people from the Akha hill tribes who, six centuries go, migrated south from Tibet. They made their way through China and into Myanmar (formerly Burma.) Decades long civil war in Burma forced them further south across the border into Thailand, as they literally ran for their lives to escape Burmese soldiers who were burning villages, raping girls and taking the boys as child soldiers. The Akha are one of the smallest, poorest and least developed hill tribe groups in Southeast Asia and it is estimated that there are 40,000 Akha refugees living in Thailand. They live in dusty make-shift villages with family units consisting mostly of grandmothers, mothers and children. There is little certainty about anything—most of them struggling to survive from one day to the next.

A couple years ago, Ameow—born and raised in the Akha refugee camp and a former One Life child—graduated out of our sponsorship program after she got a job as a private nurse in Bangkok. Sponsorship made it possible for her to complete high school and nurse aide training, a notable accomplishment for a child from a community that has no recognized identification papers, cannot own land or be officially employed in Thailand. Through a long and arduous process, One Life worked hard to get the ID documents Ameow needed to complete school and qualify for employment and Ameow paved the way for other Akha kids on our program.

We currently have two 14-year old Akha girls attending nurses aide training. Malee and Sudita have spent their whole life in an under-resourced refugee camp. Before they were sponsored, they literally had no hope of breaking the cycle of hopelessness because with no identification papers proving their existence, they would never get a job. Our partners have worked tirelessly to secure ID documents for Malee and Sudita. Our efforts will ensure work opportunities for their future and will help them provide for their mothers and grandmothers who are day laborers in the rice fields. While these mothers wake up every day hoping for enough work to put dinner on the table, their daughters are forging a new path for a future that holds hope and a promise of more to come because One Life not only provides for basic needs but it is committed to sharing Jesus with all our children and their families.

Don’t ever think your monthly $38 sponsorship isn’t significant...It is transforming lives and infusing hope into communities who are treading water just to survive.

Despite Global Challenges, One Life Presses On...

Originally written and sent out in November 2020

Many of you are probably wondering why you have not yet received letters from, or pictures of, your sponsored child this year. 

Covid has been incredibly disruptive to our normal program schedule. With the global lockdown, we have been unable to travel to any of our sites since March—something we usually do at least twice a year. These trips allow us to check in on and spend time with all our children, take fresh photos, and collect and deliver letters. This year, we’ve had to get creative...depending on the mail system which is problematic in a couple of our countires due to poor infrastructure and at eight of our Southeast Asia sites, using the mail is not an option because it’s too dangerous for our partners to establish a connection with us in this way. As a result, many of our One Life sites have had to depend on the internet to send scanned copies of your letters, using poor service with weak wifi signals. It has significantly increased the workload for our partners during a season that has already brought much stress and pressure to their ministries. In spite of the challenges, we are hopeful that all our sponsors will receive a letter from their child by year end.

There is however, some good news. South Africa just announced this week that they are open for all international travel. This is our first One Life country to do so. India and Thailand are still in lockdown or require a 14-day quarantine for all visitors. We are hopeful that by March of 2021 we will be able to head back out to all our sites and catch up with our kids and partners. 

On the ground, our programs have continued in strength with adjustments to schedules and processes. We have provided supplemental food to at risk families and accommodated all the Covid safety requirements in each country. In South Africa, the children are wrapping up a difficult school year and will soon be out for their summer holidays. The children in Thailand had the advantage of being able to return to school in June as their COVID counts have remained low. In India, the kids are still not back at school. The government shut down the education system and has yet to open it back up. Children at our largest One Life site were sent back to their villages to live with relatives or neighbors. We continue to monitor the situation with these children as we work hard to integrate them back into their communities. 

Please continue to pray for us. This season has been disruptive and complicated. We are grateful to you for the continued support of your sponsored child and our One Life program. Your faithfulness has been an encouragement to us, our partners and your children.