Dear COL Friends,

Please continue to keep Vanessa and Jo in your prayers as they travel on their journey through Kenya.  Currently, Vanessa and Jo are in rural western Kenya (near Lake Victoria) visiting a few of COL’s sponsored clinics.  Keep up to date as we track Vanessa and Jo on their journey with our highly sophisticated tracking system (really its just my old atlas from home and some construction paper).  Also please keep updated, because we will be hearing from our two world travelers soon.  Pictures and stories are on their way.

Blessings from COL

Sarah Parsons

ChangeOneLife Inc./Lead Blogger

Dear COL Friends,

Today we got our first update from Vanessa and Jo about their travels in Kenya.  It looks as though they have arrived safely, and they are preparing for their trip to rural Western Kenya, where they will be delivering the 20 bikes donated by COL to AIDS widows at the Ndiwa and Lawanda clinics.  Special thanks to board member Ruth Ann Welty in her dedicated efforts to make this project happen.  We will be receiving pictures and details about the trip from Vanessa and Jo soon, so please keep reading to stay updated on the latest.  Please continue to send your prayers and thoughts to Vanessa and Jo.  Their next stop:  TumuTumu Hospital.

-Sarah Parsons

ChangeOneLife Inc./ Lead Blogger

Map Link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Province_(Kenya)

Dear COL Friends,

Happy New Year!  Today was the last meeting with COL AIDS Consultant, Vanessa Sharpe, and Josephine Dokes (Jo) before they head off to Africa this month.  The meeting consisted of several agenda items, many of which focused around COL projects and goals.  Vanessa and Jo will be visiting Kikuyu Hospital to check on the implementation of the Mothers’ Milk Project, which funds from COL helped to support.  They will also be checking in with the PCEA Women’s Guild, concerning the Girls’ Health Retreats.  Their itenerary will also include a trip to TumuTumu Hospital to check in with Charity, a patient with spina-bifida, whose health needs were generously paid for by COL funds.  On their trip Vanessa and Jo will also be visiting the rural Western Kenyan clinics, which COL is also supporting.  

Please send Vanessa and Jo your prayers as they embark on this journey.  Please also keep up to date on the blog.  We will be sending you their stories from Africa every week.  Join us, as we live vicariously through Vanessa and Jo on their journey.

God Speed Vanessa and Jo!

Sarah Parsons

ChangeOneLife Inc., Lead Blogger

Dear COL Friends,

We want to wish you a very happy New Year from all of us here at ChangeOneLife Inc.  After doing my weekly scan of YouTube the other day, I found a video that I thought might help bring in the New Year with a smile.  This was a very popular YouTube video that was put on by Starbucks to raise awareness about AIDS in Africa.  For all our friends who are Beatles fans, I think you might find it particularly entertaining. 

Enjoy! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2oZQW4-lSIAfrican AIDS Awareness Video

And Happy New Year to you and your family from all of us here at ChangeOneLife!

Sarah Parsons

ChangeOneLife Inc.

Lead Blogger/Special Events Coordinator

Dear COL Friends,

The new year not only brings excitement for new beginnings, but it also brings excitement for Vanessa Sharpe.  Vanessa Sharpe is COL’s HIV/AIDS consultant (also an MPC member).  She has finished her first term toward a degree at a seminary in Ghana, Africa, and currently we at COL are working  with her on details for a return trip to Kenya in January. 

COL has had hopes to send representatives to Kenya to check on our ministries on the ground (esp. Mothers Milk at Kikuyu Hospital and the two rural clinics).  It is also COL’s hope while in Africa to try and make headway on the girls health retreats that we are discussing with the PCEA Women’s Guild. 

Accompanying Vanessa on the trip will be Rev. Josephine (Jo) Dokes.  Jo has a nursing background (over 20 years) and has had extensive African ministry experience (she just finished 3 months in Tanzania).  She seems like the perfect fit to check on our infant formula program and to help to get the girls retreats off the ground.

Please pray for them and please let us know if you wish to support their trip.  It will probably cost us $2000-2500 each for the flights, room and board, and in-country expenses like travel.

Thank you friends for all your prayers and support.  We are hoping for you many holiday blessings and cheer.

Sarah Parsons

ChangeOneLife Inc., Lead Blogger/Special Projects Coordinator

Dear Friends of ChangeOneLife,
‘Tis the season, and I hope that this year you can see through the clutter to find the true meaning of Christ’s coming. 
Christmas is fundamentally a story: a baby born to a young girl in an animal pen on a cold night in a “third world” country.  No doctor; not even a midwife to hold her hand or help stop the bleeding.  Just a frightened husband and perplexed shepherds.
It’s a familiar story in some ways, but, oh, so strange to our modern lives.  Except, that I’ve seen huts where babies were born this year.  No doctor; most likely a midwife or an “experienced” woman who has heard birth pangs before.
Here is our story: ChangeOneLife has a small and simple footprint.  Mostly Kenya; mostly AIDS projects.  But we continue to grow.  Our mission is outrageous in scope: to help the world’s poor people know the miracle of good health.
But Christmas is outrageous too.  Outrageously commercialized; overly sentimental; ridicuously laden with layers of emotional and cultural baggage. Spend more to help the economy.  Please!
But there is another part to Christmas.  Giving gifts that give life. 

If you want to learn more about ways you can give this holiday season visit our website (www.changeonelife.org).  On our website you can make contributions to help pay for the urgent medical care needed by Charity, a young girl with spina bifida or support our Mother’s Milk Project (infant formula given out at the AIDS clinic at Kikuyu Hospital).
Christmas can be good again. Time with family, good food, and gifts with meaning.  If your budget allows, join us in our ministry of healing and hope in Africa this Christmas.
May you be filled with Spirit of Christmas this year!
Mike Griffin, Pres/CEO
ChangeOneLife, Inc.

Welcome to the new ChangeOneLife blog!

ChangeOneLife wants to create a “new face” so that we can communicate more quickly and directly with you- our supporters and partners.  We want you to know what we are doing through our ministry of healing in Africa.  We want this blog to be interactive, because we also want to know what you think.  We want a place that can be continually updated with news concerning upcoming projects and events, so that you can be more involved. 

Our hope is that this blog will allow you [the blogger, the giver, and the friend] to stay updated with our happenings from week to week.  This will not only allow you the opportunity to become more involved with ChangeOneLife, but it will also allow for you to interact with ChangeOneLife through conversations online.  If you have questions or comments about an upcoming event or one of our AIDS Alive projects, or one of our partners, then you have the ability to create that conversation through posts and comments.  Simply click on the comments section at the bottom of each post and tell us what you think, or what you need to know.

For those friends new to ChangeOneLife, please see our “about” page located on the right hand side of this page to learn more about us and what we are doing to bring “healing and hope” to Africa.

Now, let’s start the conversation!  We look forward to working with you in continuing the efforts to bring the “miracle of good health” to those Africans in need.  Let’s continue our ministry of “healing and hope on the web” in profoundly positive ways through the continuous and faithful efforts of “changing one life” at a time.

Mike Griffin, President/CEO, ChangeOneLife, Inc.

Sarah Parsons, Special Projects Coordinator/Lead Blogger, ChangeOneLife, Inc.