Virginia Grace Tait (known as Auntie Grace by her friends) began her mission work in Peru at the age of 27. She served in several South American countries. She returned home to the U.S. for a brief period to care for her mother who passed away in 1991 at the age of 100. Shortly afterwards Grace returned to the mission field, this time to Equatorial Guinea and finally coming to Cameroon. She used her teaching skills to teach English. In 2006 she saw her lifelong dream of adopting and raising orphans come to pass. She put her life savings towards the building that is now Grace Tait Shelter. The shelter was run from her teaching pension. Soon after she founded GTS, she fell ill and suffered from dementia and glaucoma. In Dec. of 2011 this precious woman went home to be with her Lord and Savior. As it happens sometimes in Cameroon certain individuals took advantage of Auntie Graces' situation to pilfer her pension money putting the ministry in a dire situation. At that time another ministry (Bread for Life) stepped in to help "clean up" the situation, bring the property back up to standard, raise sponsorship for the children since Grace's pension money was no longer there to run the ministry. A missionary stepped in for about 1 1/2 years. He made hard decisions...sending many of the orphans back into bad situations because of lack of funding. This missionary left to GTS to do what he originally came to Cameroon to do and the monies again began to dwindle. It was at this state that the government office of Social Affairs (who oversees orphanages) thought that they were going to have to close this orphanage and turn over all of the land and buildings to the village. Social Affairs was 2 hours away from a meeting where they were going to do just that when Tim walked through their doors. "You're here! We thought you had already gone back to America!" (George the department head thought we had already gone to the U.S. for our furlough). "Can you help with Grace Tait Shelter?". And so began our very direct involvement with GTS. We desired to help so that the vision that Auntie Grace had poured her heart and life savings into could continue. Now with Hope Filled Futures, in partnership with Bread for Life, GTS will become a "Station of Hope". GTS used to have about 50 children and several widows; it now has a Cameroonian husband and wife who care for the 12 remaining orphans (13 more have been rescued since and 25 are currently living there) . There was very little funding, a few donations and a small farm. They were in a very desperate situation. It is located in a very rural setting and needs all the help they can get as all the children are not fully sponsored. We consider it a "God thing" that Tim walked into the government office on that particular day. Won't you consider sponsoring children so we can better meet the needs of the children living at GTS and continue rescuing more children from desperate situations?