big shot cricket coming to SA

on the eve of the football world cup we have some exciting news that 'big shot cricket' will be coming to grabouw to run a programme with the children in our community. this week long cricket based outreach programme will be held at groenberg school between 7th june - 11th june (the very first day of the 2010 world cup).

we are really excited about this venture, the opportunity it will present to children who we work with and it will be a chance for the wider YWAM team who are coming over to work in grabouw from the 15th may till the end of the football world cup to use their skills as they help run this event.

if you would like to find out more about how you might get involved then please email us.

anthony finishes in style

tim's sister vicki and her family have just set off for the airport after their 4 week trip to see what's been going on at the village of hope. a great time was had by all, it was good for tim to show her around the projects, places, meet the people and put names to faces. we were also blessed by having vicki's husband chris, who is a member of the thembalitshauk board come and visit, along with his father anthony.

anthony certainly left his mark at the village of hope by putting his artistic skills to use and painting the village of hope logo on the entrance walls. (picture shows anthony with the finished logo).

thanks guys it was a pleasure to welcome you onto the project.

after another fire

on thursday evening i was contacted by a member of the local community letting me know that around 20 homes (shacks) were on fire, there was nothing we could do until morning and as soon as we woke we contacted the people on the ground to see what we could do. rob and the team (along with trondor, our norwegian volunteer) went along to share out blankets and clothes to those affected. trondor has posted an excellent item on his blog (you will need to use google translator to convert from norwegian to english) which you can read.

sadly not only were homes burnt to the ground but a young girl visiting her grandmother was unable to get out of the shack quick enough and she died at the scene, unfortunately she was a friend of one of the elder girls who live with us on the village of hope, who's home was also burnt down at the same time, it was a real blessing that she was stopping with us at the time as she might also have been affected by the fire.

please pray for those who have lost their homes and also the wider community as we seek to help those affected in a practical way.

smash it up....!

winter is upon us and one of the changes we were looking to make to the volunteer accommodation was to remove the existing brick fireplace, which took up a lot of valuable space, and also failed to work on the few occasions that we attempted to use it......

the last few days have been somewhat wetter than we are used to so tim and the other guys at the village of hope have started the long task of removing this very well built fireplace, taking down the chimney, which had become a bit of a rat run (literally) and the rest of the bricks to make way for more worktop space for food prep for the volunteers and maybe even the luxury of a freestanding fireplace for those long winter evenings which are drawing ever closer!

children reunited

today the village of hope has good reason to celebrate as by the end of the day we will have placed 4 of our longer term children who have been staying with us in the children's unit back with either their biological or new foster families.

robin (9) and his sister lenna (1) have been found a foster family in grabouw. they will still be in contact with their mother and father (who both live in the town) and we will work with the local social workers to ensure that this placement works well for all parties.

kirian (2) and robert (3) have been reunited with their families, both have very tough circumstances to go home to, being HIV positive and living in poor conditions it's been hard to bring the families up to speed with the responsibility they have to their children ensuring that their financial, spiritual and health care needs are maintained.

all four of the children have been with us at the village of hope for over 6 months and the boys (aged kirian and robert) have spent most of their lives either with us or at the thembacare unit in grabouw and for them to be placed back home is a real achievement.

(the names of the children have been changed to protect their status but the photos show maz and lisa making sure the families understand the commitment they are making and another with the mothers first cuddle at home for many years).

village of hope sports outreach

the vision of the village of hope is to reach out to the children of grabouw who are infected or affected by HIV, AIDS or TB, we do this in two different ways, one is through our 9 bed children unit up at the village of hope and the other is via our soccer outreach.

each afternoon the sports outreach team at the village of hope go into our local communities, be that in the informal settlements of hillside and rooidakkes, the squatter camps of waterwerks, iraq and elgin timbers or a local apple farm, where we bring together sport, lifeskills training and the love of jesus to around 160 children each week.

this week tim had a chance to take out his sister (vicki) and her family to see the sports clubs in action, this photo was taken by anthony knight, vicki's father in law, who captured this outreach in all it's glory.......bible to the fore, tim and soccer just slightly out of focus!

Happy 1st Birthday to us!

yes that's right the village of hope children's unit is one year old today!, we have so much to be thankful for and so much to look back over the last year. unfortunately without great internet access we won't be able to post a photo to accompany this but please know that value your thoughts and prayers as we seek to make a difference to the children in grabouw, either via our AIDS children's unit or via our sports community outreach.....

.....thanks for following the developments over the last year or so and hopefully with our phonelines restored over the next few days we can post some updated photos on the flickr site.

happy easter from all at village of hope

we just wanted to wish all our friends, supporters, volunteers old and new, a very happy easter from everyone at the village of hope. we have once again had the phonelines cut so have been offline for a week now but all is going well other than that.

the children and house moms joined us at the the elgin united easter day service this morning and have enjoyed an easter egg hunt around the new playground and jungle gym at the village of hope on their return. 4 children are away on home visits over this easter weekend so we trust that those will be going well.

(the photo shows maz in the background showing some of our children where the eggs are!)

once again happy easter and we will be in touch as soon as we get back on line.