Hope this newsletter finds you well. We are thankful for your prayers, for new opportunities, and for efforts showing fruit. Two remarkable stories occurred in these last 2 months:
You may recall we are partnering with Liberia Renewal Ministries (LRM), to run a Basic Skills course for 15 high schoolers in Liberia, Africa. (Half are girls.) Our partner is Boye-Nelson Kiamu, who is CEO of LRM; he is also a PhD student at Fuller Seminary. Logistics and operations with Africa are always an adventure, but with a week’s delay we got 3 laptops to Liberia. Each laptop was shared by 5 students.
Olivia — our remarkable 17 year old Hope IT student — taught the basic computer skills course (creating a document and spreadsheet, using a mouse and keyboard, and basic Internet searches) to these students who have NEVER touched a computer before. Olivia had her own challenges, still recovering from a COVID vaccination of the previous day of the start of our course.
Olivia put in the effort. With 14 hours of preparation work, class time was 2 hours on 3 consecutive Saturdays. The courses started at 8am, so it would not be too late in Liberia, which was a 3pm start time. Olivia grew as a good and caring teacher, learning how to patiently repeat new topics until students were able to repeat and understand. There were several golden moments of 16 students…Olivia and Liberian students…concentrating and working together…all learning.
We are proud of Olivia. It was just last year, Olivia first joined a Hope IT course. She entered the foster care system at that time. One year later, look at what Olivia is doing. Above and below we show pictures of Olivia teaching, all the 15 students with the laptops, and Boye-Nelson receiving the laptops from me and Hope IT. We feel blessed by the recent successes, and hope to do more.
Meanwhile, we were preparing to offer our next WordPress on-line course. We were able to reconnect with the Sycamores, a foster group home for boys. (It’s been 2 years since we have had boys from the Sycamore in a Hope IT course). After I visited the home, we had 4 boys signed up for this October course, and 2 boys (ages 16 and 18) attended the course on 4 Saturdays. Sycamores provided laptops for the boys to work remotely on their new web sites.
Our WordPress course mostly covers web development, but many other topics come up, like Cloud computing, art, and tracking metrics. The boys are interested in more courses, so we are developing a more extensive education plan.
Hope IT plans to have an in-person Robotics course in February. This is a new course, and we are getting assistance from Ed Li and Barnabas Robotics, also in Pasadena. We will give you an update in January.
Please pray for Liberia Renewal Ministries, these 15 students in Liberia, students like Olivia and other Hope IT students in the Pasadena area, and the Hope IT team. We all need to see and experience the mercies of our Lord.
Blessings,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead