My Summer and How You Can Help a Program

I haven’t posted much about my personal life lately. I’ve been attempting to be more private for various reasons.
My church has a summer program every year, which I was able to a part of for six weeks this past summer teaching vocal lessons, Bible lessons to 9-13 year old children, and photography. Basically, my church is the only church in its small town and is between a liquor store and a strip club in the middle of a low-income housing area filled with heroin use and sexual exploitation. Homelessness is definitely all around. There is a lot of spiritual warfare there that I have been a witness to. The summer program is to help give outlets for children through teaching them the arts and the gospel. We want to be able to help them have something to do in the summer so they don’t end up falling into many of the problems in the neighborhood. I had such joy in watching these kids smile and learn and ask question after question about God. They showed a great interest in learning. A lot seem to have hopelessness, but in their eyes I saw great desire for hope. I saw great faith being developed. I see that they will be able to have futures that are bright. Every week we had a different amount of kids and got a lot of kids that returned each week too. It was a lot of hard work and wore me out, but it was so great to build relationships with these kids.

We have such a tiny church (with about only 30 or so members) but our heart for the community around us is so large.
We have a fundraiser right now where if you buy a Yankee Candle, 40% of your purchase will go to the Summer Program so that we can have funds for supplies needed to do it next summer. We have a lot to do in preparation!
To buy a Yankee Candle, go to this link. On the left hand side there is a box that says “Group #” – please put in this number 990068895. In the second box it will ask for a Seller ID. Put in Victoria82. Then click the orange “Start shopping” button. Go on and look through and do your purchasing and the final order will let you know how much was donated to the program. Thank you so much for anything you can do to help.
Here are some photos from this past summer.