Anticipating our return to Hope 4 Liberia - part one

Hello everyone,

A week from today, Jim and I will be traveling back to Hope 4 Liberia in West Africa.  We have several new supporters, and I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce us again. We are so grateful and thankful for all of your support!

My late husband, Monty, and I were pastors for 26 years, 1989-2015, up until his death from cancer. Throughout my life I have had various jobs and experiences - children's pastor, youth pastor, worship pastor, missional pastor, pastor's wife, director of a food pantry & soup kitchen, school board president, home school mom, teacher's assistant, music teacher, piano teacher, long and short-term substitute teacher, remodel houses, administrator for Jim's real estate appraisal business.  (And my favorite positions - wife, mom, grandma, and Aunty Janelle.) 

Jim taught school and coached for 14 years. During that time, he earned his master's in school leadership (principalship). After 14 years he decided to go into self-employment so he could be more available for his own kids. He started and owns a successful real estate appraisal business. He has been a real estate appraiser for about 21 years. Jim also enjoys remodeling houses together.

It's so interesting how God prepares us for His purposes. Jim got his principal's masters and certification many years ago and then decided to drop out of the educational world here in the US and never used it. But God had prepared him for the future - to be able to be the principal for our school at Hope 4 Liberia. I took three and a half years of elementary education for my bachelor's degree and then stopped to have my kids and later when I returned to college I decided to finish with a degree in Family Studies. I have never been a traditional school teacher here in the US. I homeschooled my kids for a few years when needed and I was a teacher's assistant for a few years at my kids' school, and I was school board president of the charter school my kids attended when we lived in Hawaii. I have had the privilege to be the music teacher at a Christian school and I have been a long-term substitute teacher and a short-term substitute teacher.  I love to teach and have found so much joy in teaching at the H4L school.

We are so thankful and blessed that God called Kelly and her family to start the Hope 4 Liberia Orphanage. We are so thankful and blessed to get to be a small part of what God is doing in and through Hope 4 Liberia. And we are looking forward to being back in Liberia.

Love in Christ,

Janelle Hendren