the first day

today, 29th march 2009 was a momentous day for all of us on the village of hope, this morning we welcomed our new careworkers, who will become the mums for the babies and young children who we will be looking after, as of next monday, 6th april.

maz and lisa have done a sterling job in organising all the procedures, contacts and the induction period and we were joined this morning by chris hinrichsen, the managing director of thembalitsha who introduced these ladies to the wider thembalitsha foundations projects.

we are so looking forward to all the next few days, months and years will bring so please keep up to date with further info via this site.....

planning to open

this week has flown by again and what with the arrival of pauline rowbotham and tim's mum and dad the village has grown once again.

the major news is that we have now offered jobs to the 8 careworkers (mums) who will be working up on the village of hope as they look after the children in the unit, these ladies will join us for an orientation week next week and then we will be taking in our first children on monday 6th april....this date is exactly 6 months since tim, maz and arron moved out to south africa and we are so looking forward to making a wonderful home for these children infected by HIV AIDS.

world tb day.....

just to let you guys know that today is world tuberculosis day and what with grabouw sitting as number two in the world of new infection cases we are doing so much work with people infected by this disease.......the problem that we have is to keep people on the programme as if they default they will become resistant to the drugs and will be unable to be treated...good news for us is with the amazing work our careworkers are doing in the local community we have moved from the number one spot from last year...which is great news!

tim speaks at local church with bethesda kidz in support...

yesterday we had the pleasure of being invited to share at the corpus christi church in grabouw, this was an opportunity for tim to bring the word, it was the first time that he had spoken in an african chruch and thankfully he didn't have to share the message in afrikaans, and for the bethesda kidz to lead the worship...it was a great morning where we met a lot of the local supporters of the kids work and for them to see how we are working with these wonderful disadvantaged children in grabouw through our schools and sports outreach.

the 30 kids really performed well, bring dance and actions to the songs we sing at the thursday afternoon bible club, we place no expectations of these kids, many of whom come from the squatter camps around grabouw, but it was amazing and quite moving to see the passion each child has to do their best for God, so as a treat we all went to kfc for ice creams after church!

the american team update

the american team have just arrived home and we thought that you might like to have a look at their blog which they kept updated during their visit, have a look here, read some of their experiences and see some of the photos they took as well......by the way its the first time i have ever been called a missionary! thanks guys

soccer in iraq (or irak as some say...!)

this afternoon myself and arron started our soccer outreach to one of the poorest areas in grabouw, this settlement or squatter camp is called iraq, and with no electricity and only a handful of stand pipes which provide water to this community it's not hard to understand why this is the place is in such need.

at 2.45pm we picked up a couple of local xhosa speaking guys from thembacare who had kindly said that they would interpret for us, our local schools worker, sandra, also joined us as we made our first venture to work with the young people of this area.

by 3pm we had made contact with a guy, called anderson, who i had met a couple of years before when visiting his wife who had been discharged from thembacare...funny how the first person i met was someone we knew!...he was interested in what we were doing in his community as he runs the 'adults' soccer in iraq and what with him, the other two xhosa speakers and a granny venturing into the settlement with a megaphone we really pulled in the kids for this first session!

as is the norm we spoke about the programme we are rolling out, with a focus on soccer as a lead into providing lifeskills to the local boys, our commitment to them, the importance of listening to the coach (that's me), and having fun.

the session started with a light warm up, today as a little cloudy in grabouw so that was needed even more than normal, then we split into 4 teams of 4 players for a simple game of soccer to see what the talent was like....and man could some of these boys play.....they all listened well, took on the importance of working as a team and we all had fun.

we are looking to develop this into two weekly sessions, tuesdays and thursdays and we are already looking forward to this coming thursday where we have asked the guys to spread the word throughout their community and we will once again share the love of Jesus with these children who society has destined to a life of poverty...

helpful americans

last week thembalitsha were blessed to welcome an amazing team from the infocus church augusta georgia, USA, the team worked on various projects, including graceland pre-school, thembacare grabouw and the school of hope. on thursday evening we had them stay over at the village of hope, it was great to get to know pastor brent and his team, they made a real impression on us and we hope we did the same.

friday morning we woke early for morning prayers, which was a truly wonderful time, then we had a quick orientation around the village of hope and finally split into different teams to complete work around the farm. the girls took it upon themselves to do some much needed deep cleaning in the new kitchen and bathrooms of the childcare unit and guys split into two teams, one started to put the new (new to us) tool shed/workshop up, whilst the others created a dam in the 'stream' so we could sink some concrete rings which will become the sump for us to pump water up the hill to the holding tanks to allow us to irrigate the land.....man this was a mission.........the four rings, of which i procured from a guy in town who just happened to have them left over from a job, weighed a ton and we had to 'roll' these down the hill through the pine wood to the 'cliff' overhanging the stream, we then set up a winch to lower these into the water....see our flickr account for more photos...man we wish that all the teams we receive on the village of hope will be as pumped as these guys....thanks guys..

surrender band

last night we joined a few hundred other 'fans' at the town hall in stellenbosch to hear the surrender band play some of the songs from their forth coming album, most of the band attend our local everynation church in somerset west and the lead singer, charl, works for thembalitsha. have a listen to their songs on line and if you like what you hear keep your eyes peeled for ways of purchasing the album after the 28th march.

the fires have gone

as you may be aware, the mountains that surround the town of grabouw and other towns towards cape town, including sir lowy's pass, have, for around 16 days, been covered in bush fires..the village of hope lies on the slopes of these mountains, in fact there are no other properties in between us and those mountains and at some points we were very close to the fires....the fire departments have been very busy trying to control these, using conventional firefighting methods as well as calling in helicopters to douse the flames at certain times.

we want to thank God for his protection over us, the farm and the towns that could easily been affected by this awful natural disaster, today as we took our early morning prayer walk there were no signs of the fires and we want to thank you guys for praying for us too

i love mondays.....

as promised we will try to bring you highlights and experiences from the work we are doing from the village of hope, so today i will share with you the highlights from my day, so here goes for a quick day in my life...

6.20am the alarm went off....not a highlight
6.45am after shower we (me, maz and arron) joined daz, lisa (seth still asleep) and johan for our early morning prayer time and bible reading....we normally meet at either 7.15 or some days 7.30am dependant on what the morning has in store, but today it was early as we had an assembly to do at a local school
7.15am tim and daz leave village of hope (VOH) to pick up our schools workers, sandra and reagan....
7.45am arrive at a local coloured school (serving the local apple farms), daz and sandra go off to share with the younger kids, maybe 8-12 years, whilst me and reagan share with the older guys, the assembly takes place outside in the playground/s......i open in pray, thanking God that he has protected our town and farms from the fires, and thanking him for the opportunity to go to school and learn, then reagan shares with the kids in afrikaans and i stand and listen!
8.30am arrive back at VOH, where we are going to have our weekly sports and children outreach planning meeting, myself, maz, arron, daz, lisa, seth (now awake and very interested in making himself heard), reagan and sandra present.....
8.31am saul, our amazing worker from france who is helping build and make amends to the current buildings at VOH arrives and i run through with him that we are in fact awaiting a team from america who will be making some amends to the thembacare centre at grabouw, we brief johan on the jobs required for the day and then make our way, in separate cars, to thembacare to meet the americans, set up the days work, i then return to the planning meeting where we share the ideas for this weeks outreaches to assemblies, only one more this week on weds morning, and the kids clubs and soccer outreach which we have to plan for this afternoon, as special club tomorrow which has been sponsored from some irish visitors, not ones staying with us i must add, weds, thurs and friday afternoons.
11.00am finish meeting, take sandra and reagan home, visit garage to mend a puncture on the condor (a toyota van thing which has 7 seats), get some money out to reimburse saul for some materials he has bought.
12.00pm visit thembacare to see how saul and the american team are getting on.
12.30pm find out that we have a water leak at our house, johan is fixing but we need to purchase further fittings to sort, go to town to sort, also purchase phone fittings to sort internet connection at volunteer unit.
1.00pm return home, help johan, johan helps me into the loft and i sort connections for internet...wow it was warm in the loft today
1.30pm, maz and lisa off to a toddler group in local squatter camp...i sort some issues with daz, johan and arron
2.30pm make sure footballs are pumped up for the soccer clubs, arron and daz at one and me and reagan at another......
2.45pm leave to pick up kids in hilux and take them to the soccer field...ok a piece of concrete which we have to sweep clean to make sure that all the smashed glass is off, yes glass not grass, so the boys and girls don't cut their feet whilst playing soccer and netball
3.15pm start warm up, not that we need it in the heat but its good practice for the kids.....teach skill, first touch, teach life skill, self control....pack up and return kids to homes.
4.45pm visit thembacare to see how the work team have got on
5.15pm get home, sit on new lawn outside volunteers and relax
6.30pm have tea and plan for the thembalitshauk board meeting which will happen at 9.00pm tonight
9.00pm thembalitshauk board meeting
11.00pm hopefully finish meeting and off to bed.......
...i love mondays, and i wouldn't have it any other way...bring on tuesday....what time up for prayer?....oh yea 7.15am a lay in!!!.....
timx

welcome to our blog

hi and welcome to the new blog, 'village of hope'...this will be a place where we hope to update you on all the work that the current team here in grabouw are up to....our team is made up of tim, maz and arron walker, daz and lisa (along with seth) muir and johan van de berg...this blog has been set up to allow us to communicate with the big outside world from our small 6 hectare farm in grabouw, south africa. we hope that this will be a place where you visit often to hear of the work we are doing as we seek to serve those infected or affected by the devastating disease HIV AIDS.....bless you and we hope that you will find hope in our journey.....the village of hope team march '09.