Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: February 2025

Hello dear friends! How are you doing? How is the weather and cold season treating you? We are hoping you all are doing great and enjoying life to the fullest. We are so happy that you loved our letters and find it interesting.

We were interested and laughing on the pictures you send us. It shows how much fun you had and it is very interesting. Kim, all of us love Doro Wet and it is eaten with Enjera. It is one of the special food that is prepared during holidays.

We also appreciate how much you encourage us in volunteering activities which is very important to us and we are looking up to you all.

We are back to school after a semester break. During our break we have read a lot of books from our shelter library. Since we were at school we were not reading different type of book because most of the books we read was related to our school activities and guide book to help us on education but now when we had break we use our time to read different types of books like picture books, story books, history books, national geography books and other type of books. After reading a book we share what the idea is with our sisters and brothers which is very interesting to have different type of view about the book and it also increase our interest to read different type of books.

We also spend our time by playing different type of games. Among the games we play football (soccer) is most of us favorite game. We play soccer on the ground field which is around our shelter. We become in group and one group will have 11 members which is a goal keeper, defenders, mid fielders and attackers. In one round of game two groups will play for 30 minutes and a losing team will be replaced with other group and the game start again. It is very fun, competitive and team oriented game. We all love playing and we can spend half of the day without knowing time is going.  After we finished the game we all take a shower and we will have our lunch. 

The other type of game all of us love to play is hide and find we also called it “Kukulu….Alnegam”. In this game one person will cover his/her eyes and other of us will hide in different spate. The trick in this game is finding a better place to hide and not to be find on first. It is very fun to play because the person who cover his/her eye will count up to 10 slowly so that the other of us will find a hiding place. We have to be fast and smart to find a hiding place before the counting ends. Sometimes we can be find without getting a hiding place which is very fun.

The other activity we play is we organized an idol show type of program. So in the idol show our father, Kal and Mekdelawit will be Judges. So we will prepare whatever we want to present, it can be dancing, singing, drama, poem, role playing and anything we want. We can present individually or in group. Then we take turn and present our talent to our beloved judges and to other competent.  It is very fun and interesting because all of us have different type of presentation. After we present the judges will give us a constructive and fun comments and give us rank. We had a lot of fun when we are presenting and watching others present, it also increase our confident.

We love writhing you this letter and we hope you also find it interesting. Have a great month with your loved once and take care of yourself. We really love you all.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: January 2025

Hello dear friends!

How are you doing? How is everything with you? We are all doing great and we really enjoy your January letter. We hope you had a wonderful New Year celebration with your family and friends.

As you know we celebrate New Year on September and we had also an especial celebration of New Year. Most of the community members went to church and thanked God for giving us a new year to celebrate and to bless the year with love, health, peace and prosperity. Then everyone will celebrate the holiday with the family and friends with holiday foods and drinks like Doro wet, Enjera, Tibs (roosted meat) and drinks. Girls will be in group and sing a special song by visiting several houses. The song is called “Abeba Ayehu…..lemlem”. It is a special song for only New Year. When the girls visit a house the owner will give them money or candy or other small gifts. The boys will prepare several paintings mostly colorful flower paintings which implicate the season which is very sunny and filled with flowers. And the boys will visit houses and give the painting as a good wish and the owner of the house will give money or candy or small gift.

We celebrate Christmas on January 7. Most of the Christian fast for a month before the Christmas day and celebrate the holiday by gathering on church for attending the special prayer and celebration program. After that the holiday will be celebrated with holiday foods like Doro wot.  We also go to church to attend the special ceremony and come back home to have a special lunch. We also have games that we play together and we also dance.

We are at the end of first semester break from school. Our break is for 2 weeks and we had taken exams. We all study very hard to have a good result in our exam and we are looking forward for our ranks. For the semester break we are planning to spend our time on playing, reading books, volunteering and other activities.

We are participating in different type of volunteering activities which is very interesting and that we all are enjoying. We had visit a children hospital that is found in our region. When we visit the hospital we bring used clothing that we collect form the community. This was a very wonderful activity and we all were very proud of ourselves. We are also helping a lot in our shelter. We help the cook, the nanny, the part time cook with their duties and to give them extra time to get rest. That is also very interesting and with a little effort we can bring joy to the people around us.

We learn this activities by seeing our father Tesfa, our grandma, Kal, and our Canadian friends. All of you showed us how beautiful it is to be a volunteer and we are so glad that we are doing a right thing. Thank you for being a real role model for all of us.

We hope you enjoy our letter. We really love you all and wish you a wonderful month with your loved ones. 

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: November 2024

Hello dear friends!

How are you all doing? How is everything in your life going? We hope you are having a wonderful November with your family. We all are doing great.

Patti we really enjoy your letter and you inspired us in a different way. We relate with you letter in so many ways and we are so thankful that you bring this topic in the letter. We want to share the same topic in our letter to. After our father Tesfa read us the letter we all were thinking about the people around us and we all had similar circle and we come up with the people we admire and thankful for their present in our life.

People that we admire in our life is our father Tesfa. He is someone that we all are looking up to and he is our role model. He became a better person and changed his life from street then he became a father for all of us. He is very kind, compassionate, hardworking, innovator, creative, full of new ideas and hope. He never tired of us and he always has something to give for the others who needs his help. He is someone who we all trust. The respect he showed us every day is one of the things we are thankful. He listen to us and take our point of view in to  consideration. He always discussed with us in every activity that is going on in our shelter. We are so thankful for everything he is doing for us. He give us a life and we admire him every day.

The other person we admire is our grandmother Shelley. She is very kind for all of us. She treat us equally and with respect. She works so hard to make our life better and quality. She think about us every day and she even call us in our birthday to wish us a happy birthday.  She always show us how important and valuable we are. She encourage us to read and to increase our imagination, that is way she works hard with all of you to open library in our shelter. Grandma is someone we look up to in her volunteering personality and the love she have for everyone without any criteria.

The other person we admire is Kal, she is very kind, warm and she always has a smile in her face. She knows how to play with us, she come up with a lot of games and fun activities. She always there with us and helping us in everything in our life. She is helping us to practice our English language so that we can able to take grandma when she is around and it is always important to learn a new language.  She also read us books and share with us the idea and the message the books are trying to tell us. She also follow our health and hygiene. She love to dance and play with us. She always give us a huge hug and tell us how much she loved us, we really love her. The other thing we learn from both Kal and our Father Tesfa that the love and respect they have for one another. We all took the as a role model for our future life.

The other person we admire is the nanny, the cook, the part time cook and the psychologist. These people are working so hard to make our life better. They are all kind for us and they showed us respect. They are here to help our father and we are very thankful for their help and for doing their job accordingly.

The other people we admire is our friends at school. We all have different type of friends at school but all of them are very charming, fun, and hardworking and we are making memory every day and we are thankful for them because they don’t judge us.

The other person we admire is our teachers in school. Our teachers are doing a very hard work to make our future bright and they never judge us in our lowest and weakness but rather they are helping us to be better every day and they appreciate out progress.

We are also admire our friends in Canada. You always write us a letter in different idea and you found our letter interestingly. The relationship we build with you is very unique and you are a very important person in our life. We know we are living far far away but we are linked in our heart with your letter.

We are more than happy to share this letter with you our dear friends. We hope you enjoyed the letter. We love you and stay safe.

Love, Tesfa’s children

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: August 2024

Hello dear friends!

How are you doing? How is the month going? We hope you are having a blessed summer and enjoying the sun and the bright day.

The girls are enjoying the nail polish and they are using it frequently. Since it is summer they can have the nail polish whenever they want but when school start it is not allowed in the school. You know every Monday our teachers check our nail, hair and uniform when we enter the class.

In this letter we want to share the new experience we had this month. If you remember grandma we had a plan with our father to have a training on volunteering. Thanks to our father, our psychologist, kal and Mekdelawit that we are able to have the training.

Our father and our psychologist create a group based on our age. The reason they create the group is to give as a detail training based on our understanding. And as you know group discussion and group training give us more time to understand the topic and to ask questions reputedly.

Even though the training topic and the sessions are similar for every group, the examples and the why the session was given for us was very different from group to group. And these different ways was very excellent for all of us because they give as a different way to relate with our life and internalize the points. During our free time children from different group share the examples they were using during the training and we can have a discussion on the points.

The training was on the volunteering. We start from the definition of the word volunteering and volunteer. The historical background of volunteering according to age categories and from all over the world. The aim of volunteering, objective of volunteering, and goal of volunteering. In every topic we were able to share our point of view before the training. The difference type of volunteering and the value of every type.

We were learning a lot from our training because everything was related with our life. We are out of the street because our father who is a volunteer and never hesitate to support and give us everything he have. Our life is improve in everything aspect because of you grand ma who is also a volunteer and your friends are also volunteers. We having everything in our life because of a volunteers, for example we are celebrating our birthday, we have a lot of books, we have food, we have shelter, we have psychologist, we have a mother, we have everything through voluntarism.

One thing we were realizing from the whole training and discussion is that everybody around as doing a lot without expecting anything form us but only to help us to achieve in life and become a better person so that we are able to pay back by doing the same thing for others who need our help. It is not about money or other expensive thing it is just being kind for others and giving time, leasing and sharing. We learn this thing and we promise for our self to be a volunteer.  We all agreed on becoming a volunteer before everything because we are a living example of what volunteering works. It is all about giving back and being a better person. We are a fruits of volunteering and we are proud of that too.

We hope you enjoy our letter. We love you all and have a wonderful month.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: July 2024

Hi dear friends!

How are you doing? How is the month going? We hope everything is going great.

Grandma is home with us. We cannot be happier than this moment. We all was very excited to see her and we were looking at the door the whole day because her flight was at the afternoon. We all were asking our father and Kal if grandma is here yet again and again because we were so excited to hug, kiss and see her. Then the time was ready that grandma and Helmi come to our shelter. Everyone was screaming, jumping and saying welcome home. We prepare a flower for both of them and Betselot and Nahom give the flowers one for grandma and one for Helmi. Then we stand in line and each one of as huge grandma and Helmi. When we huge them we were saying welcome home, we miss you and we are happy to see you. That moment was very exciting and heartwarming for all of as. Since it was a night time grandma and Helmi went to their hotel and we eat our dinner and went to bed. It is a secret but we all were talking about how excited we were to see grandma for about 30 mints in our bed.

The next day grandma and Helmi come to our shelter (home) and the library team had a discussion with grandma on the system of the library. Then we start working on category and organizing the books and the library. You have no idea how much we enjoy organizing and knowing the library system. Specially the library team was learning and working a lot to finish the library work on time so the library will be lunched on the planed day. Grandma bring us different types of books that we never seen in our life. Some of the books even doesn’t have words that it only have pictures that you can have your own imagination and create your own story, that is really amazing and new for all of us because we never seen a book without words. There is also a book that have limited words but a lot of pictures, there are books that can be used in group like game books, ohhh we forget there are animal or national geographic book that the inside of the book is very different that the animals are actually printed on the book, we have no word to tell you our excitement, all of you open our eyes to see different amazing and incredible things through book, we really thank you for everything you did to send us these amazing books. We also get Amharic and English books together that is also very exciting for us. Helmi also bring us a book her daughter Lilian wrote, it was so overwarming for all of us and we can’t thank you enough.  During our library lunch day we all decorated our book mark with different colors and stickers, we learn about the library system, how to take care of books and everything about the library. It was one of the amazing days that all of us will not forget.

We also celebrate July birthday and team Tesfa award day together. The day was celebrated by playing a lot of games, by recognizing all of the winners in all categories and by celebrating June birthday children’s. Then at the end we had Doro Wet with Boiled egg and a soft drink. If you can remember our favorite food and also traditional food is Doro wet and grandma know about it and she organized for us to have a special dinner. We were so happy that day because we all were saying it feels like a holiday. The food was very yami yami and we eat until we become full. Then we dance a lot with grandma and Helmi. We dance and sing and dance all of us together. That was one of the memorable day we had with grandma.

We also celebrate Canada day, it is our tradition to celebrate when grandma come. For Canada day every one of us wear our Canada t-shirt. Our home was decorated with Canada flag, with balloons (red and white). Then we play different type of games with our uncle Tilahun, we also put different tattoos in our face, arm and hand. In the morning we also had a football (soccer) computation between our father team and our uncle team, it was fun and it end zero to zero.  During our celebration we have pizza, watermelon and popcorn. We dance, sing and play together. We had the most fun during that day.

Every day we had a group meeting with grandma and Helmi to get to know each one of as more. The group discussion was very interesting because we all get similar question but the answer was very interesting and it was very relaxing time. At first we were a little worried but once the discussion was started we were participating and it was very interesting. Among the question we had during our discussion are what is the happiest day in these year, the difficult or sad day these year, favorite color and why.  It was such a fun and interesting discussion.

We hope we share so much of the activities we had with grandma with you dear friends. We were so happy, excited and interested throughout the week we had with grandma. Grandma will show you pictures and videos of all of us.  

We wish you to have a wonderful month and stay safe. We really love you all. 

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: June 2024

Hello dear friends!

How are you doing dear friends who we all love to write you every month? How is your month going? We hope every one of you are doing great and having a wonderful time.

We were so amazed about Lisa’s letter. The farms, the type of food they are growing and that you can go to the farm and pick the materials that you want is very amazing and interesting. It is very interesting that the farmers grow different type plants according to the season. We think it will be considered us a trip when you go to farms to pick out vegetable and we can imagine how relaxing and beautiful day that would be.

Yes we are done taking this year final exam and we also received our results. We are now in a break for the next 3 months. We all have a different plan for our summer break and we all are excited for that. Even though we are going to miss our teachers and school friends but we are also excited for the summer break. 

We all have a similar plan that we all share to do during this summer which are participating on volunteering activities, reading and working on ourselves. These areas are the identified gaps that all of us had during the past one year and we are planning to practice and change our behavior on these area. We are all excited for the activities we are going to do during our summer especially participating on volunteering. Our father Tesfa, psychologist Fikire, our sister Mekdelawit and Kal are planning to have a training on volunteering and all related topics. We are looking forward for the training and to learn a lot.

In this letter we want to share an idea on inspiration. As you know people can have different inspiration and it will depend once perspective from other. We believe there are good inspiration and bad inspiration, and it will be someone’s responsibility to pick accordingly.  As a child it will be very difficult to identify which is good or bad, but always it is very important to have an open communication with our parents on the things we are getting inspired by because parents are the one who will guide us which direction is good for us.

For all of us we have a lot of inspiration around us but the most common inspiration we have are first one is our father  Tesfa, he is one in a million and the things he went through and the things he is doing now is the day to day inspiration for us. We are so lucky that we have a living inspiration that we can learn and inspired to be better every day. The second inspiration we have is you guys. We have a best friend that are helping, loving and do everything they could to make our life better every day. Without considering were we come from and our past (even without seeing us personally) you guys love us unconditionally and these give us an inspiration to be kind for one other and to be a very kind children for others.

We are very grateful for all of you for being an inspiration for all of us and we thank you for that.

We hope you enjoy our letter and have a blessed month with your beloved one.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: May 2024

Hi dear friends!

How are you doing? How is everything around you? We hope summer is going great. How is it feel be outside in the sun, with green trees, colorful flowers and bright environment?

We learn from May letter “Second chances”. Thank you for writing your story for us. We learn from Kim’s story that it is okay to fall down sometimes. What matters most is that you get back up and try again with practice, patience and maybe some courage, we can do an amazing things.  We learn from Lisa’s story is what is really matter in life is family and we have to give a priority to our family that we have and respect, pray and have good relationship. Patti’s story give  us a lesson second chances can come after a long time but when we use them for a better, it fill a person with gratitude and happiness. Grandma’s story teach us, it is never too late to pursue your dream and take second chances to become who you are. Never to be afraid to chase your dream.

In this letter we discuss on so many ideas to share with you because we have different ideas to share. Then finally we agree to share with you about the reading, books and library availability and the reading culture in our city Harar. We want to share our experience in these aspect because our grandma and her friends are planning to open a library in our shelter and that is a very excited news for all of. So you will understand how important having a library at our shelter.

To start with in our city there is no public library. We know you will be shocked when you here this fact, because total population of Harar city is around 300,000 and there is no public library that anyone can go and read a book or to borrow a book. The only library we have is at our school. There are libraries at different schools that are used for reading for students. For general population reading is considered as something luxury and the government didn’t consider or plan to have a public library that anyone can go and have a time with a books.

The school libraries have a shelf with books but most of the books are related to education and there are few book that are fiction books. The library opens from Monday up to Friday on break time. We can go on our break time to read books or do our homework. But the problem is the library is small and have no a lot of chars to sit  so if we didn’t get to the library as soon as we are out for break we will not going to find a place to sit and read. The other problem is we are not allowed to bring or borrow books to our home and read it during weekends.

In general Harar population reading culture is not good. There is an opportunity that will help us to develop our imagination, reading ability, language ability, developing a constructive idea, storytelling ability, writing ability and having a general knowledge about different culture around the world. Reading and having a library is considered as a luxury. But reading makes a full developed human and it must be available for children.

That is the reason we are so excited and happy to have a library in our shelter. Imagine having different type of books at your home. We are thankful for everything that is happing for us. It will increase our mental development and imagination. We will have a discipline and a culture of reading. And we were thinking to have an individual plan that each one of us will plan to read a different category books in one year and we will have a recognition program for the children who accomplish their plan.  

We hope you enjoy our latter. We really love you our dear friends and stay safe until next latter.   

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: April 2024

Hello dear beloved friends!

How are you all doing? How was the month of spring? Did you and your family enjoyed it? Our grandmother Shelley told us in her letter that spring is a beginning of life and you enjoyed it very well.

When our father read us Patti’s letter we were so amazed that she was so slow reader and didn’t enjoy reading at first but she didn’t give up she continue reading now she write a book of her own, that is really amazing and we were all saying “wow she is so brave and good example for all of us”. We are all proud of you our Patti.

We want to write you about second chances in our letter. We selected this topic because we all are a living example of second chances in life. When we see our life we clearly see God has given us a second chance from all of the children we know in our previous life. We were somewhere that no one was there to consider us as a human, we didn’t have nothing to eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover our body, to play with, to go to and most of all we didn’t have someone to tell what we are feeling or need. That was the darkest place any one can be. We suffer a lot in our life, most of us didn’t have a family we don’t know where we come from, other of us has a family but our birth mother didn’t want us through a lot of reasons. We cannot express how hard it was to spend a day with fear, anxiety, hunger and sickness. We all don’t have a future in that area and we cried a lot.

But when God see us he bring Tesfa to our life. Tesfa is a miracle in all of our lives. He is sent from God for all of us. When he meet us for the first time he didn’t discriminate us, did you know what he did? He hugged us, he kissed us and he give us a true love and respect. He talked to us like a human and we were so amazed by his kindness because no one consider us like human before. It was the first impression for us that put in our face a smile and joy. Then he bring us to our home/our shelter. Imagine how happy, how amazing that feels. Then we get food, clothing, bed, medication, family love, care and we get to school.

Through Tesfa we get our grandma Shelley, she is the most loving and kind person we ever see or meet. We are so blessed to have her in our life. Through her we meet you all our beloved friends and Hearts for Ethiopia organization to support us and to make our life easy.

We believe in second chances. God has given us a second chance to have a family that care, love and think about us. We are so blessed and lucky.

We promise to God to use our second chance wisely and to work in our school for our future. We hope you enjoyed our letter and please share with us if you have a second chance story that you would love to tell us. Stay safe and as always we love you.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: March 2024

Hello our dear friends!

How are you all doing? How was the month going? We hope you had a great month at work, at home and in all your day to day activities.

We are so happy and excited for the library you are going to establish at our shelter. We cannot express how happy we were when we read the letter. We were jumping and screaming. it is a very great news and we are beyond happy. Thank you so much for opening a library with different type of books that we can use them at our shelter.

We all love to read and to visit library at our school. We all have different taste or choice for books but what make us all same is we love books and we love to tell stories that we read to our friends at school. Depending on our age, what grade we are and understanding we have different taste for books. For example most of our younger sisters and brothers love book which have pictorial description of the message every page of the book and colorful books. We think it is because they can’t understand or read every detailed thing in the book so when they see the pictures they will have a full understanding of the book. Our middle age sisters and brothers chose to read books like story books or books that have different stories in one book. We think it is because they can understand what the message is and also they start to imagine what it is saying in their mind without escaping the reality. We think it is the beauty of reading that it can allow us to image or relate or put ourself in the story.

Our father always says “reading is freedom”. When we ask him what that means, there is no limitation or boundary on how you interpret the message of the book. The more you read the more you become free to know yourself, to express your feeling and to imagine the world that we want it to be.

We assigned two librarians for our new library. These are Yosef and Kidus. We chose them because they are very good on keeping books neat, they spend most of their break time at school library, and they read a lot of books and told us the story so that we become interested to read the books they read. So they are both perfect for this position. When we want to borrow books from the library we will ask them and we will register in the library registration and we will return the book by the due date without any damage. Then through time we will be perfect on library protocol and we will develop a reading habit and improve our culture.

We are looking forward for our 30 minute reading and sharing with each other what we read. We are so happy and excited for everything that is happening for us. We would like to give our thanks for everyone who is participating on the library. We love and respect all of you.

Have a great month our friends and take care of yourself. We love you all.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: February 2024

Hello dear friends!

How are you all doing? How was the month going? We hope everything is going great. How is your family and friends doing?

We were in a semester break for the past 2 weeks. The break was given after we finished a first semester class. Before we take the 2 weeks break we had exams for almost a week. Our teachers prepared exams that include all the units and subjects that we learned so far. We take exam for every subject and practical exam for PE class. Most of our friends at school get anxious and scared when the exam date is approaching. But we give them some of the advised to be calm and to do their best.

Our father Tesfa teaches as how to be clam and ready for exam and all of us are calm during exam because we now everything that come to the exam is what we learned and study and if we can be clam we can do it. He always told us that we can do anything we want if we put our full effort on it and believed in our selves. We are not saying we all are on the same level of calmness but we practice it in our everyday activity. For example Siti (our sister) is a grade 10 student and she was very shay and become anxiousness during exam time. Even if she study hard her results was not that much last year. After discussing about her anxiety with our father he give her advice on how to overcome her anxiety and she practice it every day and now she is our role model. In our first semester rank she ranked 2 nd from her class.

However exams and some activities at school can make us anxious but we are practicing some reliving activities. From those reliving activities we practice breathing exercise, taking with our father or brothers/sisters about the thing that make us anxious. After Kim suggested us new ways of stress reliving activities we are practicing them with our father and the psychologist. Can you suggest us more anxiety reliving activities? We want to practice them and also want to share with our friends at school.

We see many children in our school suffering from anxiety during class presentation or during exam time and we try to help them to relax and to be calm when they feel anxious by sharing the things we practice to be calm. We feel happy when we share the things we know and have we our friends that needed them. We learn these good behavior from our father and from all of you our friends. You have been thought us a lot lessens from the letters you send us. you are building a positive mind on us and we want to tell you how grateful we are and we want to share what we learn from you to our friends at school as we learn sharing from all of you.

Dear friends we hope you enjoy our letter, we all love you and think about you. Stay safe and have a great month.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: November 2023

Hello dear friends!

How are you our friends? How is everything in your life? We all are doing great. It gives us a warm full felling when we received your letter. It became one of the things that we all enjoy together. We learn a lot from every letter.

Celebrating friendship day is a great idea. It will be fun to celebrate. We can have a lot of activities that will strengthen our friendship as well as we will have fun. We can practice a special song about friendship, we can prepare a lot of games that we can play all together, special sweets to eat, poems about friendship, dance competitions and giving gratitude to one another. Oh we are so excited about the day already. When do you think is the perfect date to have friendship day?

You are right Patti, we sometimes got scared of things that are happening in our country or in the world. For us the most scared moments was when we were living on the street and we all have been in most scared and dark place and we passed those days with the help of God, our father Tesfa and now with the help of our Grandmother and you, our friends.

As a child, being scared and not having a matured mindset will cost you a lot. For example if you become scared of something, you don’t think it will pass away and better days are coming, and you will give-up easily. So the things that scares you will control your strength. But when you have a strong relationship with God, a supportive, understanding and loving father like our father Tesfa, a strong, caring and loving grandma and a supportive and creative friends like you we are not defined by the things that make us scared. We all know we are better than the things that scared us.

In addition having open commination about the things that is making us scared and anxious with our family is the most effective solution that we learn this year. We all communicate our feeling with our father and with each other. Whenever our heart feel heavy, we tell our father what is going and we feel better. The other thing we are learning to pass scare moments is by separating the things that we can control and the things that we cannot control. This will help us to focus on things that we can control and solve the problem or prevent the problem from happening. We are not perfect on separating things in our control and not our control but we are getting better every day. For example, studying and having a good mark in our exam, having a loving heart, caring for others, doing our responsibilities in our shelter, great relationship with our friends - these things are in our control and we can change the situation in to positive outcome and environment.

We are learning a lot everyday according to our age and understanding and we all show a good progress. Because of this the things that make us scared is decreasing from time to time and it help us a lot. What are other thing that we are in full control off? Can you share us other approaches that will help us to overcome scare moments?

Christmas is on the way, how is the Christmas vibe? We look forward to hearing about the holiday celebration in next letter.

We really enjoy writhing to you. We love and care about all of you. Stay safe and have a perfect month.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: September 2023

Hi dear friends!

How are you doing? How is everything going with you? This year is running like river, it is September and there are only 3 months left to start a new year. We hope this year is going great for all of you.

We are going to start school within 2 weeks. We all are very excited about school, meeting our teachers and playing with our friends. We all have all the necessary materials to start school and thank God for all of the things we have now.

In this letter we want to share our shelter culture that we do every September before we start school. In this special month, our father Tesfa gather all of us at the shelter and prepare some programs. We all love this program and think about it throughout the year. The program started with an opening speech our father prepare. He thank God for this beautiful day and gathering us all together. He also remind us all the major things the happened in our shelter. Among the things we all remember are the time we spend our time with our grandmother and celebrate Canada Day, this year we all got to celebrate our birthday, almost all of us passed our class with a good rank, the time we celebrate Mango Day and many more blessings. And we all love his speech.

Then we play games like describing the thing that we see without actually saying the name and it is a very fun game. We divided in 2 group and we compete. Then after this game our father ask us to write what our plan is in the coming year of class, what is the most good or positive behavior that we now about our self and what is the thing we want to improve in the coming year. It was very interesting and it make us to observe how this year passed and how we plan to act in the coming year. This thing help us in the previous year the same way. After we write it, we stand individually and read what we write and every one will comment on it. We encourage each other and we share ideas how to solve the problem and we get a very constructive plan for the New Year.

If one child say that he want to be 1st in his/her class in the coming year, we all suggest the best studying plan, book recommendations and additional helpful ideas to make our brother/sister’s plan come true. We also share our experience and finally our father will summarize the discussion. This culture helps us in many aspects, for example if one forgets about the plan we make in this program, one of us will remind them and push to get to our goal.

Then at the end of this program we all eat some sweets, fruits and we dance together. Don’t you love our September culture? We hope you will suggest to us other helpful cultures so that we can make them ours. We really love writhing to you and sharing ideas. We will attach some pictures of the program.

Stay safe and have a great time with your loved once.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: July 2023

Hello dear friends!

How are you our friends? How is everything with you all? Is this summer now in Canada? We all are doing great. We were in a break for the last two-and-a-half months and it is winter in our country now. A lot of rain and cold weather. We had a lot of activities during this break. We practiced reading and writing English, we practiced how to cook, and we read a lot of fictions and shared the ideas with each other.

Hamid, Addisu, Mohammed and Sisay are going to start learning how to drive a car. They are so excited about it, we hope they all pass the exam.

We all love to learn new and different languages, too. In our country there are a lot of languages and it is very different from one other. For example Arefiya can speck both Somali language and Amharic. We also learn a few Somali words from her. Most of us can speak Oromifa language. Why don’t we shear new language in this letter with its meaning so that we can have a chance to know a few new words? Let us start; How are you in Amharic is “Endeminachu” and in Oromifa “Akam.” We know you are having fun when you try to pronounce it but we know you are doing it right. Please send us some new word that you want us to learn in the next letter.

When our grandmother was here with us, we celebrate Canada Day. It was such an incredible day for all of us. We all wear our t-shirts, we have a tattoo in our face and hands. Our shelter was decorated. We had burger, fried potato, with soft drinks. We play a lot of games. It was a wonderful day for all of as. What we learn about Canada day is to be together and to have a great time with each other by complimenting one another. When we think about this day we all remember your kindness and love for us. So Canada day for us is togetherness and supporting day. And we love to celebrate it every year with our grandmother and with you all. Our father Tesfa told us that it took you a lot time and work finding for all of us t-shirts, we really appreciates all of you and want to say thank you for everything.

In our country there is a lot of manner that every age group should have and expected from all of us. Like when someone who is older than us is standing we offer them our chair, we will make them to be first, when they are talking we don’t interrupt them and responding politely. The most valuable lesion we learn from you is saying please and thank you. This are a very positive approaches and excellent manners. Even if a lot of our people don’t use them in a daily bases our father taught us to say please, sorry and thank you frequently. The other thing we learn from you is how to share and support others in need. We learn this manner from our

father, from our grandmother, from you our friends and from Kal. Sharing is very important for us we share our time, our shelter and our love with each other and with others who are in need. We also volunteer in our community by supporting street children. Please send us additional manners you think it is important for us to learn and practice it in our life.

We all love writing and reading letters for you. Stay safe and have a great summer with your family.

We love you.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: April 2023

Hello dear families in Canada! How are you doing? How is everything with you? We all are doing great. We feel so blessed to call you all our families. Thank you for being the best family in the world anyone could ask for.

The April letter you send us was very interesting. There is a lot of similarity how we celebrate birthday parts. The amazing part of the letter is that there is a lot of things to be grateful about ourselves, our family, our health, the presences of other nice people in our life and a million little things that surround and blessed us in a million ways. It is important to notice those blessing and to be grateful. This is the biggest life lessen we learn from this letter.

In this letter we would like to write you about the month of Mango. Yes we have a Month that we called it a Month of Mango, it is because in this month in our city (Harar) Mango will be everywhere and you will see it in every market, in the street, in every shop and even in some household garden. The weather is very comfortable for the fruit to grow and to test like honey.  You can get Mango throughout the year in Harar but this month Mango is very delicious, big and colorful.  Since a lot of farmers grow Mongo for this month, the cost will be very cheap.  All the farmers bring their product to the market and they will sell it with a minimum amount it is because they don’t want to take back the Mango to their village and if it didn’t sell it will not be fresh the next day, plus they have other fresh Mango for the next day.  The computation among farmers and the negotiation between the buyers and farmers is other drama we love to watch when our father took us out to the market.

In our shelter we have a family culture in this month, which all of us gather together to eat a lot of Mangos. Our father will buy us a lot of Mango and Kal (our mother) will make us her delicious Mango juice and Mango fruit punch. We help her by washing and cutting the fruit. We all drink the juice and eat the punch. It gives us a special day to spend with together and to have a lot of Mango to enjoy. The least favorite part of this day is cleaning up the mess we make during preparing, drinking and eating but it is always the fun part of the day because we do it with dancing and singing.  We will send you some pictures of us spending our Mango day and some pictures of the market, so that you can enjoy the day too.

Do you love how we have this creative culture of ours? We hope you can be with us to have this day all of us together. Stay safe our families and we all love you so much.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: March 2023

Hi friends!

Hello dear friends, how are you? How is everything in your life? We all are doing great.

The March letter was amazing. Our father Tesfa read the letter for us and he made some ice so that we get to understand how cold the weather can get in Canada. We also put the ice to the outside and see the sparkling of ice with sun it was so beautiful. We learn about keeping promises and discussed about this topic with each other. It is better to say the truth than laying and breaking promises.

In this letter, we want to write about how we all spend our time (beside school) in the shelter. We all get up from bed around 12:30 (please refer to the note at the end of this letter for explanation) in the morning; we love to weak up early to see the early morning sun. Then we go to the toilet, wash our face and brash our teeth. We have a game (computation competition) in the morning of who get to the toilet first and it is always fun. Until breakfast is ready, we will do our responsibility in our shelter like we made our bed, clean our room, watering the flowers, cleaning the compound …etc. then we get ready for breakfast and  before we eat we gather together to pray. We thank God for the beautiful day and for the meal we have; we eat our breakfast and wash the dishes. When we done this the time will be 2:00 (8 am) at the morning so we will get ready for school.  

Some of us are a morning time schedule students and some of us are at the afternoon, so when the morning students go to school the rest of us start studying and doing school assignments and this is the same for the morning time students to do at the afternoon.  We eat our lunch 0:30 when to morning time students come to home and before the afternoon students go to school.

After we done school, we get back to home (shelter), change our uniform, and wash our face, hand and feet this give us a refreshment.  Then we will have some rest, games, playing and watching movies…. etc. when the time become 06:30 in the afternoon, we get ready for studying, doing homework up to 08: 00 at night.  After we eat dinner, we all gather to pray, we thank God for the wonderful day we had and for a bright tomorrow.  We get to bed at 09:30 except for high school students, they will study or doing some assignment.

We always love our days, we love our shelter/ home and everything we have in our life. We are so thankful about our father Tesfa,  our mom Kal, grandma Shelley, our friends in Canada. Our life was very difficult before we joined this shelter, our days and nights was very dangers and we was spend our time searching for food or place to stay. We have no words how to thank you. You changed our life and we can see our future brighter than a sun.  We love you our friends.

We hope you can see our day in the shelter in this letter. We love and pray about you every day. God be with you and you loved once. Stay safe.

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NOTES:

Kal is Tesfa’s wife and is a doctor.  Tesfa and Kal live very close to the shelter and they go back and forth (as do the children) between the shelter and their home.  Kal is very loving and meets with the older girls every week to provide motherly discussions, support and guidance.  Kal provides regular check ups for all of the children. Hearts for Ethiopia provided medical tools and equipment for Kal to be able to check blood pressure, vision, reflexes, temperature, etc.

How does the clock work in Ethiopia?  (I have been many times and I still don’t get it 😊).  Almost all Ethiopians use a modified 12-hour clock system.  The daytime cycle begins at dawn 12:00 (6:00:00 AM EAT) and ends at dusk 11:59:59 (5:59:59 PM EAT).  The night time cycle begins at dusk 12:00 (6:00:00 PM EAT) and ends at dawn 11:59:59 (5:59:59 AM EAT).  The reason behind this type of clock is because they are very close to the equator and daylight does not.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: February 2023

Hi our friends. How are you all doing? We are doing great. We started second semester of the school year. We were in the break for two weeks.  We spend our break by playing together games, planting flowers, drawing and learning how to cook. It was a very fun and relaxing break. Our rank was excellent, most of us rank first, second and third out of our classes. The minimum rank we get is. Our father, Tesfa was so happy about our rank and proud of us. We hope we make you proud too. Will work hard to make our rank in the second semester even more.

In this letter we all discussed on the idea we want to share and we come to one point. The victory of Adwa.

The battle of Adwa was the climactic battle of the first Italo-Ethiopian war. The Ethiopian forces defeated the Italian invading force on Sunday 1, March 1896, near the town of Adwa in north part of the country. The decisive victory thwarted the campaign of the kingdom of Italy to expand its colonial empire in the Horn of Africa. By the end of the 19th century, European power had carried up almost all of Africa after the Berlin conference, only Ethiopia and Liberia still maintained their independence. Adwa become a pre-eminent symbol of pan-Africanism and secured Ethiopian sovereignty.

In 1889, the Italians signed the Treaty of Wchale with the then king Menelik II. The treaty, signed after the Italian occupation of Eritrea, recognized Italy’s clam over the coastal colony. In it, Italy also promised to provide financial assistance and military supplies. A disputer later arose over the interpretation of the two version of the document. The Italian- language version of the disputed Article 17 of the treaty stated that the Emperor of Ethiopia was obliged to conduct all foreign affairs through Italian authorities, effectively making Ethiopia a protector of the kingdom of Italy. The Amharic version of the Article however, stated that the Emperor could use the good offices of the kingdom of Italy in his relations with foreign nations if he wished. However, the Italian diplomats claimed that the original Amharic text included the clause and that Menelik II knowingly signed a modified copy of the treaty.

The Italian government decided on a military solution to force Ethiopia to abide by the Italian version of the treaty. As a result, Italy and Ethiopia came into confrontation, in what was later to be known as the first Italo-Ethiopian war. Emperor Menelik II call out all Ethiopians to prepare of the war and to protect the land. Everyone was with the king and stand together to never been colonized and dependency. Ethiopians from North, South, West and Easter part of the country go to Adwa and defatted Italy. In this war the most moving part of it is the role of Queen Taytu. She was one of the strongest women in Ethiopia history, she was a warrior with a lot of wisdom and she has a significant impact in the victory of Adwa. Until now she is a role model of all women of Ethiopian.

The victory of Adwa is the biggest history of Black people. Adwa thought us how important is to stand together and to support each other for a better future. The victory give us independency, value and self-confidence.  Adwa is the biggest reason for the establishment of African union.  In our generation we need this history to encourage us to fight poverty, drought and many obstacles we are facing every moment. Adwa is us.

We hope you enjoy the victory of Adwa. We love you our friends. Be safe and have a great month.

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: January 2023

Letter from Tesfa's Shelter: December 2022