Lightshine Christmas 2024 Newsletter

  • Continued tuition for our “12”
  • Study skills and tutoring
  • Counseling and therapy
  • New scholarships for the indigent
  • Prayer & practical mentoring
  • Meet Orlenda!

 LIGHTSHINE 2025 programs in MEXICO


Your donations provide a viable alternative to living on the street/joining a gang!!

 In 2024 Lightshine approved 12 older orphans (over age 18) for tuition scholarships.  Our main priority is to continue to support the initial dozen students as they make progress towards their college degrees.  Several are studying to become school teachers; others are pursuing degrees in psychology and counseling; others are majoring in business or law, two are pursuing certification in physical therapy.  All 12 have one thing in common: they resided at an orphanage as teenagers.

Lightshine facilitates tuition payments directly to the various colleges and universities.  No funds are paid to students.  We are in a learning curve, too.  In November 2024 Lightshine hired Orlenda Cervantes, an accredited psychologist, with a specialty in therapy with teens, including children who have been damaged by severe trauma. In 2017 Lightshine sponsored Orlenda to complete a training workshop in Spain.  Orlenda has glasses and is pictured above next to ‘Fernanda’ (red t-shirt, blue jeans, no glasses).  Orlenda visited the students, discussing and planning for tutoring & counseling needs.

We realized that success for our students was more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. Orlenda lives close enough to be available to meet with the students as a group or one-on-one.  She will also assist Lightshine, administratively.  Orlenda also works as a consulting psychologist at an orphanage.  She is passionate about providing scholarships for college for children who have been in institutional care for their entire lifetime.   As 2025 unfolds, we will be exploring how to nurture realistic educational opportunities for these ‘invisible’ and sometimes forgotten children.

2024 was a year of beginnings for a dozen orphans

GRACIAS!! a ustedes y GRACIAS a Dios!! (Thanks to you & thanks to God).

BLESSINGS                                                                                                       LIGHTSHINE

 Paul & Grisela                                                                                                5402 Mount Aix Way

www.mylightshine.com                                                                               Yakima,  WA   98901

                                                                                                Paypal:  https://mylightshine.com/donate/   

PS-  We are also planning to launch training classes for ADULTS who wish to become mentors and guides for children who have lost one or both parents.  We are targeting Spring 2025 for publication of a manual (guide), available in Spanish and English.  Orlenda, Paul, and Grisela are all reading “El Gozo Que Restaurar” (The Joy That Restores), which focuses on how the ‘Joy of the Lord’ is our strength (and source of healing!!)  You may have encountered it in English:  “The Life Manual” (Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You), by Friesen and Wilder.    

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