gateway to the great outdoors!

justin and the sunset

our mission team (all three of them, justin, sue and amanda) from gateway ministries in aylesbury have almost come to the end of their very short trip with us. we hope that they have had a good time, we have certainly kept them busy with some DIY work that needed to be completed here at the village of hope and some spirtitual things in our community.

painting the front entrance wall!

each of their days has been very varied, from playing with the children in our unit, to painting the front entrance wall which was showing some signs of the winter weather, leading the thembacare service on wednesday afternoon and helping our with community work at thembacare, our sports outreach clubs and soup run. we also got time to travel down to false bay to watch the sunset, as you can see justin enjoyed himself.

sports outreach iraq

we hope that this will be the first of their trips to serve us and we look forward to seeing them very soon when we (me and maz) return to the UK later in the year on our 'fundraising tour'.

love is in the air....!

the village of hope has been blessed with literally hundreds of volunteers since we took our first steps as a project nearly 3 years ago, they are the life blood of the work we do here and we love hosting people who want to get involved in the lives of the children that we serve, not only here on the project, but also in the community via our sports outreach and at our sister project thembacare in grabouw.

as you can imagine spending time serving certainly has in impact into many of our volunteers lives and over the years we hear stories from lots of them that speak about 'rediscovering themselves', 'understanding the love God has for africa' or 'Gods love for the children that we look after', but never in our wildest dreams did we ever consider that the village of hope would be a place where two young people not only found God in a deeper way but also found their partner for life.

on sunday evening we had a wonderful skype call with two of our volunteers, both of whom have served with us and with thembalitsha in the past, who over their summer break spent time with us again this year and, without it being too obvious to some of us, fell in love in a way that has meant that they have committed their lives and love to each other....yes that's right folks we could be seeing our first village of hope wedding in the very near future!

we are so please for tyler and britton, we wish them all the best for the plans for their wedding and hope that they might be able to join us for at least part of their honeymoon....well done guys you are true stars and we thank God that we were just a small part of your big story, God bless you both.

new baby with new volunteers

amanda with our new arrival

on sunday afternoon we welcomed justin and sue, our friends from aylesbury gateway church, along with their friend amanda, also from aylesbury. they will be with us for just one week but as always things are never quiet here at the village of hope and by monday afternoon they had been able to welcome a new baby girl into our children's unit.

we are hoping that this cute little girl will be with us on a short placement, but as with most of our children things are never that simple. that said she is settling in well and the other children are making her feel welcome, we will keep you updated on her progress.

September News

Please consider supporting this day by giving up 30 minutes of your Saturday, on 15th October, to pray for the project. Signing up is easy: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/prayer66 and we will be posting prayer points very soon.

In the meantime here's all our other news......

News
Phew! Is it nearly October already?!

This month has been happily hectic but here are the highlights:
We have some wonderful news to share about our two brothers (see the Children’s Unit update), Maz is thankful that Mel is back, Arron has been away completing his sailing training, we’ve welcomed two new Dutch students and said goodbye to Britton….

The boys with their sister and foster Dad

Children’s Unit
Our children’s unit continues to be the main focus of attention here in Grabouw and each and every day presents itself with its own challenges. However this month we can share some amazing news: Our two little brothers, aged 4 and 2 years, now have a new family to care of them. This new family lives in Khayelitsha, the largest township in Cape Town with around 1.5 million people living in little more than a shanty town, however there are some wonderful people who live there and to find two of them, a Mom and Dad, is great news! We originally took the boys in last year because their home was found to be at risk by social services – Their parents were alcoholics and using drugs and one of the brothers is HIV positive. We were only supposed to have them for a few months, but as often happens here, the courts couldn’t come to a resolution until now. The new home for the boys is run by another NGO who we work closely with and we will make regular home visits to ensure that the boys settle well. The other fantastic news is that they are also going to be living with their baby sister, whom they hadn’t met before because she was removed at birth to another emergency care home. God is good!

Our other remaining children provide us with challenges. Many of them are HIV+ and that always means that we are kept on our toes and our house Moms, led by Maz and Mel, do a fantastic job ensuring nothing gets missed and that all the children are well stimulated both physically, emotionally and spiritually.

It seems that we have had birthdays galore but with 9 children, 10 house moms and a team of volunteers that isn’t surprising. It’s always a good excuse for us to spoil the children, which we love doing!

With the two brothers gone they were our 20th (yes 20th can you believe it?!) placement since we opened.  We now have space to offer hope to another little one and Maz is busy informing those that place children with us of that fact. One thing’s for sure, in a town like Grabouw, the space won’t be open for long.


Sports Outreach and Community Work
We are very excited to receive our two new Dutch students from the HAN university in Holland. Stephan and Weiker will be with us for 5 months and they are already having a major impact on our sports outreach clinics with fresh ideas to encourage the children that we work with. They’ve also been inspiring us and the local mentors who make up the team providing this ‘service’ to the 5 areas in Grabouw: Hillside, Iraq informal settlement, Waterwerks, Site View and Rooidakke (Netball only) as well as our outreach onto a farm in the Elgin Valley.

The amount of girls joining us to play netball, especially in Iraq, continues to encourage us and as we said last month it is wonderful to be able to provide these girls with a bit of ‘them’ time as they spend a whole day at school and then have to complete ‘chores’ when they get home. This could be collecting water from the local standpipe with 25liter buckets or preparing the meal for the family and often means that they arrive late. But to see them enjoying the games that we prepare for them is such a blessing and encourages us to ‘keep going’ as we seek to build valuable lessons into their tough lives. Last week we were able to pray specifically with some of the children who were feeling unwell or injured. Quite often they turn up with burns or blisters on their arms and legs where they’ve spilt boiling water when cooking.

Our Under 14 boys will be taking part in a soccer tournament run by Santos (a premier league side in Cape Town) in October. We will be playing against other teams from around the Western Cape and our team will be made up of the different cultures and tongues which make up the town of Grabouw. Most of our boys don’t own school shoes let alone football boots, therefore we are still looking for second hand soccer boots, sizes 2 – 7 (UK), which we will use for this tournament. If you have access to an old pair and live within kicking distance of Grabouw/Cape Town then we would love to hear from you. You could always post them too!

Our outreach into the community doesn’t end with sports. We are also involved in delivering soup from a local restaurant into a couple of soup kitchens and crèches each and every Friday. Last week we were able to bless around 50 children with a hand knitted teddy made by the local ‘teddy bear club’. For some, even younger teenagers, this would probably be the first teddy that they have ever owned. It was such a privilege to be able to provide these children with a little bit of love.


Other News
We shall miss Britton, who was with us for 3 months. She has returned to America to complete her studies, but we hope to see her (and maybe her new husband?) next year! Kat continues to provide Maz and Mel with support for the children in our unit and helps out with some of our sports outreach in the afternoon. We were joined by a young lady from Brazil for a couple of weeks and she is keen to bring some more of her friends over to work with us in the future.

Unfortunately our two pigs had become so greedy that we don’t have enough scraps to feed them, so we had to send one away to the butcher! But we know that the children will once again look forward to their bacon sandwiches!

The ‘German home’ is coming along very well and with some designated funding we have employed some local guys to come and help sort the kitchen, finish the lime, straw and sand mix walls and enable us to finally get into the home. We can’t wait to show you some photos of the finished building which we are so grateful for.


Events
Thanks to all of you who came and supported Rock for Thembalitsha in Aylesbury, despite the rain! Thanks also to Melissa Bassil, the organiser and all the bands that gave their time to play at the event as well as the other volunteers who lent a hand.

Also, thank you to the folks at Highcross Church in Camberley who raised £750 through a sponsored walk as well as two members of their congregation who asked for donations to us instead of presents for their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Not forgetting Viv Knight who’s raised £350 through a cake sale! Thank you all you fabulous people for your efforts.

VILLAGE OF HOPE DAY OF PRAYER
As we mentioned before, please support our prayer day on Saturday 15th October. Our previous prayer day earlier this year was really fruitful and we very much appreciated being lifted up in prayer for 24hrs. It reminded us that we needed to keep prayer at the top of the agenda. Sign up here: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/prayer66. We will be posting prayer points very soon.

NOVEMBER: Tim and Maz back in the UK
Yes, you will be treated to another visit from the Walkers! They are going to be in the UK all of November. Please let us know if you would like them to come and visit you! They are available for church talks, house groups, schools. They really do have amazingly inspirational testimonies from their life in South Africa and would welcome the chance to share them. They will also be accompanying Wholehearted.

DECEMBER: Wholehearted band on tour
If you haven’t already heard of Wholehearted or read about them on our blog then where have you been?! Not only do these guys have a great sound but they are fantastic supporters of our cause and are going to be touring England for a week at the beginning of December. If you are keen to hold a Wholehearted gig at your church or school then please email emily@thembalitsha.org.za as soon as possible. When you book Wholehearted you will get a Tim and Maz appearance in with the deal! You can find out more and hear their sound at www.wholehearted.co.za
If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

CHRISTMAS:
Yes, well it isn’t far away and we have the perfect solution to those hard-to-buy-for friends and relatives. You can purchase Christmas cards for different values that contribute towards things like food, clothing, fuel for Village of Hope. Please email jess@thembalitshauk.org.uk if you are interested. We will also be running the alternative gifts again which you can buy through ebay so keep your eyes peeled!


How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents under the ‘Support Us’ page on our website (www.thembalitsh.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

soup and teddies

each and every friday we deliver soup into the community, we support two projects, a multi purpose centre in rooidakke and a small creche in the iraq informal settlement. last week we were not only able to provide the hot soup to these precious children, which is donated from the local rose and bull restaurant, but we also gave out some hand made teddies to the children which had been given to us by the local round table.

the teddies were made by the local 'teddy bear club' and we were able to get these to those children most in need, to see even grown boys of 11 and 12 years old receiving a teddy and hold it close to their hearts was a special experience, to think that these kids might not have ever had their own teddy before was somewhat humbling and we hope to be able to do this again some day.

4th birthday parties

opening presents and eating cake...
..that's what birthdays are all about!

there never seems to be an end of our birthday celebrations, each and every month one or more of our children seem to have their birthdays, these are always precious times and maz and the team ensure that the birthday boys or girls are made to feel really special.

this week we held a birthday party for one of the little girls who has been with us from our opening day, looking back at some of the old photos it's hard to believe that this 18 month old is now 4 years old. we have obviously shared some real highs and some lows. we will never forget the first few months that she was with us, having to be fed through a stint as her fetal alcohol syndrome had caused some major issues with her swallowing, in fact it was thought that she would have to live with this all her life so to see her tucking in to her party food and drink was especially moving.

please keep following the progress of our children via this blog and if you would like to help support our work financially to enable us to help even more children like our 4 year old girl, then please visit either www.thembalitsha.org.za or www.thembalitshauk.org.uk

sports clinics

behind the goal during shooting practice in iraq
informal settlement in grabouw 

i think monday and tuesday afternoons are my favorite times of my week, although we run sports clinics for the children in grabouw each and every afternoon in 6 different areas monday and tuesday's are the only two days that i can commit to.

yesterday we had a wonderful time in hillside with around 50 children, both boys and girls, coming to play soccer (sorry football) and netball, and today we had about the same number in the iraq informal settlement. the kids we work with are so precious, many of them come from very difficult family situations, often living with many people in a single room tin shack or breeze block home, but the smiles on their faces when they see our team turn up is what makes the days so special.

this afternoon we were able to share the bible scripture about using the whole armour of God to protect ourselves against the evil that is part of our daily lives and i was able to pray for one little guy who had really bad tooth ache, we stood together and asked God to heal this guy, i pray that our prayers were heard and that his faith in Christ will restore what has been making his life a little tougher.

we see sport as a great medium to engage with the children, this enables us to get along side them, show them respect and teach them in a holistic way ideas that will help their educational, emotional, physical and spiritual growth.....

sad goodbyes, but happy futures await....

saying goodbye (with an apple in hand!)

on wednesday afternoon maz took our two brothers to their new home in khayelitsha, once again this day was full of mix emotions. as you can see we just love having the special children that need our care, be that medical or social, however we are just part of a bigger story and it is our aim to have the children placed either back with their own families or foster/adoptive care.

maz works so hard to find the right homes for our children and these two precious brothers are the 19th and 20th children that we have successfully placed back into the community since we opened in april 2009. Although we still have a few issues with some of the placements, we are so glad that we are able to be part of their growing up, stabilising them on their medication and finding them a family who will be able to love and support them during their lives.

we pray for the two boys, especially as they will now be sharing a home with their little sister and another 3 children and we also pray for their new parents that they will be able to cope with the children that they are taking into their home.

if you are in aylesbury on sunday....

this sunday some friends from our jolly little village in england have arranged a rock gig that will take place in aylesbury market square on sunday afternoon, it's a free event but there will be people selling raffle tickets and holding collecting tins to raise funds for the work we do here in south africa.

so if you are in the aylesbury area and want to rock your sunday afternoon please feel free to join us and in the process support children and adults infected or affected by HIV.