PRISM Logistics – 2014 Christmas Newsletter
Merry Christmas!
To our customers, colleagues and friends,
As 2014 draws to a close, we are mindful of how much each of you receiving this letter has contributed to the success of our business over the course of our twenty-one years. We’ve had another good, strong year and we thank you for your support. For me and for Paul, doing well in business is about helping you in yours, providing for our families and being able to do good in the world.
Please enjoy our year-end highlights of the powerful good works we’re supporting in Africa, which I’m proud to share are led and assisted by my daughter, Kindri Van Puffelen.
Jere Van Puffelen
Abundant Life Ministries – Uganda
Born in Denver, Colorado, raised in Danville, California, an alumnus of Auburn University’s School of Nursing in Alabama, Kindri Van Puffelen founded Abundant Life Ministries in 2011. She’d gone to Uganda on a short term trip with another organization to work with kids and help run a week of camp for AIDS orphans and was taken aback by the sheer number of children in the area. Uganda, a country about the size of the state of Oregon, has 20 million children under the age of 18, fending in large part, for themselves, caring for each other. The notorious Joseph Kony was known for attacking villages in the night, killing the adults and taking the children, with boys forced to become killers and girls to become sex slaves. Between this war and the impact of AIDS, the country and its children were largely in survival mode, with no intention, and little possibility, to consider how to become productive adults.
Sintaro Village – Ethiopia
In January of 2013, the Community Presbyterian church in which the Van Puffelen family are members, voted to adopt the village of Sintaro in Ethiopia, Africa. A family friend, Mike, had gone to Ethiopia and told Kindri Van Puffelen that ‘now I get it,’ having seen first hand, some of the need which she’d been addressing and learning about in Uganda for three years. He convinced Kindri to assist in the partnership with non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO): Hope Enterprises. The model for this work is entirely Ethiopian run. Hope Enterprises goes in to villages with NO resources. No government, not other organizations. No schools. And they primarily provide education and water, beginning with the launch of schools for 5-6 yr. olds and adding a new level of school for the next age bracket each year, with 50 students in each group level.
Our congratulations to Kindri Van Puffelen for her highly effective leadership and good works in Uganda and in Ethiopia, making a real difference in the lives of so many.