A.R.M. Mission Trip Recap 2024

We're excited to announce the teaching staff at the A.R.M. Center who are teaching our precious children in 2024!

Good News Friends! God has graciously blessed us with new successful fundraising platform and donor friends to help build our school building this coming year and this is a true blessing. I want to say thank you to all our generous donors for their continuing support to the orphans and willingness to help change many lives. The orphans in the ARM Center, this semester beginning in early 2024. The children have now taken their mid-term exams and they will be taking vacation for approximately one week in this period. We are pleased to inform you that the poultry farm is operating efficiently and being managed on a daily basis by our staff to provide food for our community of orphans and widows. We now have 200 chickens in the poultry farm and we want to say a very special thank YOU and how much we appreciate those of you who participated in this project with us. The dozens of healthy chickens in the lots we finalized last year will be used for feeding our orphans in the program. As you can see in the recent pictures shared by our staff in Gambella below, these impoverished widows are progressing every day and our ministry is improving their lives. This is because of your efforts to support ARM. This is all made possible by YOU, our donor support. We cannot THANK all of you enough! Your prayers over them daily will be greatly appreciated!!! Please pray as I am going to be in Africa for the month bringing the necessary school materials and working with our partner, Heart of Africa. Our board asks you to remember us as we travel and bearing witness to all of those who rely on ARM. Be on the lookout for the next update. Praying blessings on your life dear brothers and sisters. We truly love you. Your brother in Christ, Rev. Michael Gatkek Sudanese Nazarene International Ministry Coordinator US/Canada African Nazarene Coordinator US/Canada CEO/ Founder of African Relief Ministries

It’s my commitment to bring these dear spiritual leaders together for the betterment of the spiritual community and to build strong, long-lasting relationships. Tribal practices must discouraged by the pastors who are ministering to their congregants.

May this Christmas season bring joy and happiness to you and family. I am praying, too that your Christmas will be a blessed time and will feel the presence of the Savior's love!

Giving Tuesday this year falls on November 28th and we're celebrating a global day of generosity! Make an Impact of Generosity to support the ARM Community, giving back as an Act of Kindness today.

Touching Success Story of a Widow's Vocation Testimony This past spring season our ARM Center team captured the essence of our widow's program and we joyfully want to bring to you a business success story. The widow we are featuring and has participated in the last project is Nyachuol Yoal Lual, a 49 year old widow who was left with three daughters, two of whom are currently living with her in the Gambella Refugee Camp Number 3, whose husband died suddenly and tragically of a heart attack in April of 2019. The family are refugees from South Sudan and have lost all their belongings; and they were joyfully able to get the opportunity to fly to Ethiopia as refugees due to the conflict which erupted in South Sudan years previously. (Her family came through Jonglee Akoba). When asked about her current situation, Nyachuol replied, “I've received 3000 birr ($ dollar) from the ARM widow’s micro finance initiative program in 2020, one week after my husband died. I have been given initial business training on how to manage my business produce and money. Then afterward I felt interested to invest in dura (grain) small business. I started making an assessment and start buying 15 sacks of Dura (grain) from other refugees who are in need of money. This is always during food “ration” receiving time. I brought 6 sacks with total expense of 2400 birr ($ dollar) in which 6 x 400 = 2,400 was used as my start up capital. I kept this in my store for almost one week waiting for what is so call punish time where all food in every household is finished. Then I resell one sack with 700 birr, which means 6 x 700 = 4200 birr as my actual top-up profit is 1800 birr." “I am doing this to be able to provide for my family. I heard about this project when I am still considering ways to continue proceeding with this business for It is of course good to learn methods for investing and also found it useful to learn accounting skills and methods to calculate profits,” she concludes. Her gratitude to our ARM staff is through her conclusion, “I also thought it was helpful that ARM staff members came to see us regularly to check on how we were making products and that they supported us in our sales activities. The [micro finance] project helped me develop an eye for selling, and to produce high quality goods myself, enabling me to sell my products for a slightly higher price than other people. This project really helped to improve the lives of many widows in this camps and may God bless ARM administration in Ethiopia!" Photographed below is Nyachuol and her now 3 year old successful Dura business. Our latest set of Widows and their new chickens sent to us Oct. 2023.

We're very thankful and celebrate our young students have graduated from K-12 and first grade last month! As many of read the latest narrative update of the orphaned children from our A.R.M field coordinator, and as we write, these children face many challenges and are now, going back to school this fall. We are grateful to be able to bring to you this great progress because of your support. Currently we are in lack of so many resources that makes their learning easier; one of those pressing and immediate needs this new schoolyear are the school's materials. Another deficiency our school is lacking is a sufficient feeding program that can help them keep nourished and have energy to study during the day. Do any of us truly know what it's like to be really, really hungry? For many children in Gambella, Ethiopia unfortunately this is their everyday norm. If the rain washes out their crops, and the winds tear through the village then it makes it extremely difficult to provide adequate them food resources. Below,

Ms. Nyakoang Gatkuoth Chang is a thriving widow at the A.R.M. Center who helps fellow widowed women invest in selling dried fish to earn a living. This determined 36-year-old widow's husband sadly was killed in the Malakal South Sudan Civil War in December of 2013. In order to survive, she fled the country as a refugee in early 2014 with her 5 small children in route to Ethiopia. A little bit about her children: 3 daughters and 2 sons all now living in a Gambella refugee camp. Her skillfulness and adept attitude are known to benefit her community. Read below to hear from her in own words the experience they suffered and learn a little bit more about her entrepreneurial experience and activities where she helps so many other widowed women!

This year, the mission team of A.R.M. had the privilege to travel to Gambella Ethiopia to provided different services to the vulnerable orphans. We had seven people on our mission team who went to Gambella, Ethiopia who all were extremely talented with very different gifts and knowledge to provide to the orphans and widows during the two weeks in early 2023.