More Christmas in the City pictures

Cleara with her new coat

Makiya with her new clothes from Old Navy

Reggie and Jumar on the bus

L-R: Reggie, Jumar, Justin, Derris

Above everyone is Kavar

Pictures from By The Hand

Here are some pictures from work. Most of these are from our Christmas in the City event.

Checking out the window displays downtown

Catching snowflakes

Catching snowflakes again

New clothes from Old Navy

Hanging out at McDonalds

Some of my boys at McDonalds

My boys with one of our new volunteers, Sarah

Makiya and Sherine, my girls

Jumar in his new coat, donated by members of Willow Creek Community Church

A long overdue update

Dear Friends and Family,

I have not been very good lately about updating the blog, but I am finally getting around to it! We are back in the swing of things at By The Hand after Christmas break. The first couple weeks have been busy and rather crazy, but the staff and kids are getting back into the routine. The next few months follow a much more normal schedule for our programming (until we approach the spring benefit on April 8th--then it gets crazy again).

Thanks to your prayer and financial support, my team (the Green Team) raised the most money out of all the By The Hand teams in the Fall Fundraising Drive! Thanks so much! We are excited and I'm very proud of the students for working hard to donate out of their own pockets. They also earned money by doing their homework and completing writing assignments while at the program. Our team gets a gift card to go out as a team and do something fun (like go see a movie).

During programming time the last couple weeks, we've been working a lot on reading and writing skills, as well as preparing for the ISAT tests. My culture elective is finishing up talking about Mexico. In Bible study and chapel, we are going through the Old Testament. Last week, we talked about the Fall and Adam and Eve sinning. This week, we're talking about Noah's ark. Please pray for chapel and Bible study especially, as we really want to pour into our students the Word of God.

On a different note, my "Q" student has not been in the program for the last couple months because we really were not sure what to do with him. However, after meeting with his counselor making some changes, and coming up with some new ideas on how to help him, we've asked him to return tomorrow. PLEASE pray for this, because we really want him back, but at the same time, he is a difficult student and I'm honestly a bit nervous about having him in the classroom. Also pray that God gives my director, his counselor, and me wisdom as far as whether or not we continue to work with him in the program, or we try to find somewhere else for him to go that may be a better fit for him.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support!

Love,

Sarah

P.S. On a totally different note, you may know that Colson and I are engaged. You can view our wedding website HERE.

We're getting married!

This post is LONG overdue, but Colson and I got engaged on December 12, 2009! We're really excited! Eventually (hopefully) I'll post some pictures of the engagement day. For now, you can visit our wedding website for more information:

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/SarahAndersen&ColsonHauser