January 2026 from John & Paulina: I hope this letter finds all of you doing well and extremely blessed. Like Dad said we had a tremendous Christmas season this year. There were several families in the communities around us that came and brought piñatas or pizza, and candy bags for the children and we had several parties for them. We also had three churches from the states bring down Christmas gifts. Including the church that sends down grab bags for the 25 Days of Christmas. That is always something fun that the kids enjoy. We have several new kids that have never experienced anything like that before so it was a huge blessing to see them having such a good time. Elias, our son who grew up at the other children's home and is now doing mission work in Jalisco has been here for a couple months and has been helping us with the garden. He is a huge help to us in that respect. He does such a good job. He has always been kind of a loner so he enjoys his alone time working in the garden and with the plants. He has done a terrific job. The church in Oklahoma who is helping us with the newsletter has filed for a mass mailing permit but they have not received it yet. This means we are paying for the postage for each hard copy newsletter that goes out. I went to buy stamps the other day and was astounded at how much stamps cost now and the lady said that the 18th of January the price is going up even more. I think they are doing away with the pennies and are rounding everything up to the nearest 5 cents. Having said that, those of you who received the hard copy newsletter are missing out on seeing pictures each month of several other things that we talk about in the newsletter. We are not allowed to put pictures of the children on social media but since this is a direct mailing in email I believe I am able to send pictures of the children. It would be greatly appreciated if you would be willing to switch from the hard copy to the email version of the newsletter. We have had several people send us their information to be taken off the hard copy list and each one helps. We are working on generating a QR code that we can send with the email version that will send you directly to our web page. Several people have asked how they can donate directly and that would be the easiest way but we haven't figured that out yet. I am definitely technologically challenged and my brother who has done such a excellent job with the newsletter is swamped with work and it's hard for him to find time to work on it as well. Last year I began to investigate better breeds of chickens and ducks for egg and meat production. And I've spent several months incubating eggs that I purchased from various places and we now have a decent flock of good laying hens and kaki campbell brown ducks. I have a small flock set aside for egg production for incubation and soon the geese will start laying eggs. We tried to band all of the geese that were hatched out last year so we would know which ones were the older ones so we can start having some geese for dinner now and then. We have quite the flock of geese now we need to start culling them out. When I was about 17 years old, I purchased a remote control airplane kit and spent hours upon hours, weeks, and every saved penny building that airplane and found an elderly gentleman willing to help me learn to fly. But when I moved to Texas I hung that thing on the ceiling in my room and it has been hanging there for about the last 28 years. Whenever I would go to dad's house to cut the grass or pick up his mail I would spend the night in that room and always wish I had a place to fly that plane. And I remembered how much I enjoyed that hobby. So I recently purchased a small remote control plane that I am able to fly here at the Children's Home, and I am teaching the older boys and girls how to fly. They absolutely love it. One of the boys can now take off and fly on his own, I still help him with the landings but he'll soon get that down and be a solo pilot for RC planes. I may invest in a larger model later on this year to take them out somewhere and and fly. They seem to enjoy it as much as I do. The family that is adopting Ruby has been here several times on their visitation. It is a supervised visitation but they seem to be getting along very well. I know this won't be easy for America as she had planned for a couple years on the adoption for Ruby. We received a donation for her to put towards that adoption, and she did not want to accept it however I told her it was designated for her and gave it to her and told her if she wanted to use it for something special for Ruby that would be fine. I have started buying small journals for all the kids. Two or three at a time and I bought a small photo printer that you can print from an app in your phone. America and Paulina each have that app so they can print out pictures of the kids and start putting them in their journals. My hope is that when the kids leave here they can at least take some memories with them in form of pictures in their scrapbook. I have hundreds of pictures from over the years that I really need to get organized and put on some USB devices to give to the families of the children who were here in the past. Just a couple weeks ago we had the flu come through the children's home. It was flu a and not the covid strain but it's still knocked down several people. Paulina actually missed Christmas as she was so weak and in bed that she didn't even get up for Christmas dinner or the party. I was pretty much under the weather and missed the New Year's party as well. I had planned to go back to the cafeteria around 11:30 to be there for the celebration and time completely got away from me and all of a sudden everyone walked into the house about 12:15 and told me Happy New Year. Everyone is doing much better now. Please keep us in your prayers, years ago my mother told us to start washing all the dishes and cups with bleach every time we wash dishes. It would seem that when one child would get sick it would run rampant through the whole children's home. Mom's protocol of washing with bleach has seriously diminished the number of sick people here at the Children's Home. We kind of quarantined dad's house and didn't let many people go in to visit. Alice does such a wonderful job keeping an eye on him and making sure he is okay everyday. Please keep him in your prayers but he seems to be doing well and no severe adverse effects from the chemotherapy. God bless you all. Thank you so much for your support for this ministry and the children. Hopefully by the end of January or middle of February we will have another family coming to work here with us at the Children's Home. They will be in charge of house number two and take the younger boys with them. Rosie the wife actually grew up in a children's home years ago and understands well the ministry and has a real heart for the children. They have one young boy and he seems to get along great with the other kids here. I believe it'll be a huge blessing to have them here helping. Paco the husband is a great cook so we will probably put him in charge of the pantry and helping out with the food preparation. We are trying to work the finances around to be able to provide them with health insurance. Right now we have Isaac, America and Paulina listed on the health insurance and that would be a huge blessing to have them on there for them as well. God bless you, please keep us in your prayers. John and Paulina