Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
When the children at Little Promises learned that Elyse Ellingboe was headed for Ivory Coast, in Africa, on a mission, they decided they wanted to buy toys for the impoverished children Ellingboe was going to work with.
The Little Promises youngsters far exceeded their goal of $40, Ellingboe said. They raised approximately $140.
“They heard that I was going to be on a mission, and I was going to work with kids who didn’t have toys,” she said, so the 3- and 4-year-olds go together and decided to buy toys for the African children.
They brought in their piggy banks and change, she said, and the total grew quickly.
Ellingboe was able to buy quite a few toys, she said, including yo-yos, Frisbees, faith beads, sunglasses, visors and a big parachute.
“These kids are great, and this place has been such a great help to us,” Ellingboe said of Little Promises.
Ellingboe left for Ivory Coast this week with a friend, Ashley Wong, and will be gone a total of about eight weeks with Conservative Baptist missionaries who are in their second year there.
The missionaries are heavily involved in the Muslim community there, Ellingboe said. They help build churches and are involved in orphanages.
The Ivory Coast is involved in a long civil war, she said. “The Lord will protect us.”
But she admits a little nervousness about the political climate.
“I’m hoping to learn to trust in the Lord fully,” she said. “I know it’s going to be different there.”
She expects to get another perspective on what’s out there in the rest of the world, she said.
Ellingboe is a 2006 graduate of Sweet Home High School. She attended Linn-Benton Community College and George Fox University for a year each.
She plan to return to LBCC in the fall to finish an associate’s degree in early childhood education.
She is an assistant teacher at Little Promises and works as a counselor at Camp Tadmore where her parents are on staff.
She and Wong are taking the trip “just to see what missions are like over in Africa, to see if that’s something we’d like to do as a career,” Ellingboe said.
“I feel like God’s been putting it on my heart for a lot of years to go to Africa and work with orphans, mainly.”