Promised Land Project Update :: We bought a Children’s Home!
We’ve been buzzing with excitement the past few weeks about everything that’s been happening at The Sound of Hope. We recently posted an update about how your donations provided the medical care our girls in India needed, and then we shared about the new project we helped start in Swaziland. But we definitely saved the BEST update for last!
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that a Children’s Home has been purchased for The Promised Land Project!!!
If you’ve been following this project since we introduced it in January, then you know the initial plan was to build a Children’s home on the property in Northern Thailand. Unfortunately, there was severe flooding a few months ago that threatened the land. A portion of the land was actually washed away when the river changed course, and that changed our plans dramatically.
The local government has agreed to put in a cement barrier that will hold the river to its original course, and to backfill the land, which would have allowed us to still build there. But after talking to our partners in Thailand, we all agreed it would be best to have the home somewhere else. We were so grateful that no one was hurt in the flood, but we could not in good conscience build a Children’s Home at that location if we knew there was even the slightest risk it could happen again. So our partners went back to the drawing board, and began looking for something a little different.
Within a few weeks, they found the perfect home for the perfect price! With the money raised for this project, our partners were able to buy the house and the land it was on outright!
This home is large enough for 15 children. Banya and Rapee, who will be the caretakers and house-parents, are already moving in and working on some home-improvement projects to better prepare the house for children. They are so excited about the future of The Promised Land Home!
This will be a safe and loving home to Thai children at risk of sex-trafficking and drug-trafficking. This will also be a place of refuge for children from Burma who face the threat of genocide and are at risk of becoming child soldiers. This purchase means that we can begin rescuing precious children from these horrors very soon! This house will be a place of new beginnings, peace, hope, and empowerment!
In addition to all this good news, the house is only about 10 minutes away from The Promised Land! We still believe this land is the perfect place for the agricultural projects that will help make the home self-sustainable and will equip the children with skills for the future (like farming and fishing). Because the house in not on the property, that opens up more land for livestock like pigs and chickens, as well as the fishpond, fruit trees, and crops of rice and soybeans.
We can’t wait to see the house in person, and to share pictures and videos with you! We leave November 10th for Thailand and India and will spend 6 weeks visiting 5 of the Children’s Homes we are partnered with. Sign up for our blog updates in the upper right corner of this page, and you’ll be one of the first to see the home when we reveal it!<