Jesse Trees to Help Orphans

James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune...

I was told by a local friend about a wonderful family who has managed to share their love of Jesse Trees by turning it into a project to help orphans. Here are the words of the Mom who started this project:

I bought my first one [Jesse Tree] about ten years ago when my first son was just a few months old. We have used it every year and it is our family's favorite Christmas tradition by far. We wrap each ornament like a little package and place them under the tree (we also put the number of the day on them so we will know which one to open). Then each day, one of the kids takes turns opening the ornament and reading the devotion.

Two years ago, my oldest two decided they wanted to sponsor children from World Vision. So I asked them what their plans were to pay for the sponsorship of the kids and they both enthusiastically said, "Let's make Jesse Trees to sell!" So that's why we sell these :-) We make 90% of the ornaments during the summer months to have them ready by fall. 100% of our proceeds goes to the kids they sponsor and if we have any proceeds left over, we use it to buy animals, medicine, food, etc. for other families through World Vision. We are also considering adding on Shaohannah's Hope as an additional foundation to sponsor. It is an organization started by Steven Curtis Chapman and helps fund orphans in China. We LOVE doing this!

...We made 50 sets of ornaments to sell this year. We are very close to meeting the kids' requirements for sponsorship right now and I believe we have sold around 35-38 boxes of ornaments. We have two sets that we sell: one set is $35. This set of ornaments comes premade along with a hardbound book for devotions. Our second set is a "kit" with all of the supplies and instructions needed to make 25 ornaments along with the hardbound book. This set sells for $25. We also have 24" trees if people need them. Some people like to buy the tree; others have trees that they will use from home.

If you would like to contact this family to purchase your own Jesse Tree ornaments and help the orphans they have adopted you can do so by emailing doyel@everestkc.net.

Green Challenge: Stay married

I found this article in the Washington Post fascinating:

Their paper, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that if the divorced couples had stayed together in 2005, the United States would have saved 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water in that year alone.
Married households use energy and water more efficiently than divorced ones because they share these resources -- including lighting and heating -- among more people, said Jianguo Liu, one of the paper's co-authors. Moreover, the divorced households they surveyed between 1998 and 2002 used up more space, occupying between 33 and 95 percent more rooms per person than in married households.
"Hopefully this will inform people about the environmental impact of divorce," Liu said in an interview yesterday. "For a long time we've blamed industries for environmental problems. One thing we've ignored is the household."

Staying married...it's very praiseworthy.

Image Vintage Ladybird Books 'Helping at Home',originally uploaded by LarkingAbout.