Happy New Year from all of us here at Village of Hope. As we enter 2012 we are full of excitement at what God has in store for us this year…We are also rather hot! The summer has decided to kick in and it has been in the mid-30s for the past week…phew! Anyway, we intend to grab 2012 by the horns, seizing every opportunity and continue our fight to restore hope to the communities we work with.
We want to invite you to join us in our quest and use this year to make a positive change . Why not sign up to volunteer or take on a personal challenge to raise funds for us? Two of our Thembalitsha staff might inspire you. Together with their friends they have organised two initiatives in aid of our Foundation. Frances from our sister project Bosom Buddies is completing 6 physically grueling trail runs within a month – for those of you who don’t know, these runs are actually like racing up and down a mountain! (Sponsor her here) And Amanda, our funding manager, is going to cycle from our Village of Hope project around the coast to the most southern point in Africa: Cape Agulhas.
Together we can make a huge difference. For more information on how you can get involved email us: info@thembalitsha.org.za…..Start now!
Village News
Tim and Maz returned back safely from their exciting tour or Europe – That might be a slight exaggeration but they did cover a few countries on their trip! The tour proved to be busy but very successful. It seemed a fantastic mixture of talks and presentations, worship events, radio interviews, plane flights and visits to past volunteers. They also managed to spend some quality time with their family too!
The rest of the team here were very relieved to receive them home! There were no major incidents whilst they were away, the project didn’t burn down and remained pretty much as Tim and Maz had left it! – Always an achievement!
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| The children opening their gifts from Operation Shoebox (Isaac ably assisting!) |
The Children in the unit had a most enjoyable Christmas time. This year, for the first time, all the children were able to spend at least Christmas day with either a House Mom or a relative. This was a really special time for the children. They all came home very happy and with huge grins on their faces. It must have been great for them to be so spoilt and have the sole attention of a normal family for a change. Our 11-year-old boy was the only one who was unable to go to a family. Unfortunately for him he had to remain at our sister project, ThembaCare Athlone, because he had just been discharged from hospital after yet more health battles. He is still there now. We have tried to bring him back to the children’s unit in between times but it just hasn’t worked – he isn’t stable enough and needs more medical support. Please continue to keep him in your prayers.
Christmas also saw a flurry of parties and celebrations for the children in the unit. This year our party, in conjunction with the day hospital and ThembaCare, was very generously funded and meant that we could have a magician: Mr Fu Lin Yu (get it?!) The kids loved it.
The new year brought in a new child who has come to stay whilst his home environment gets sorted. He is yet another little one suffering with HIV and TB but is a happy little soul and has made himself at home here very quickly.
Those kids who are old enough to attend school are back. Our 6 year old boy has started ‘big’ school and now has to wear uniform – he looks very cute and is very proud of his new attire but is a little overwhelmed by his new environment. Also, our 3 year old girl started preschool for the first time. She is loving it and is especially insistent on carrying her own rucksack despite the fact that it’s almost as big as she is!
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| Our Dutch and Australian volunteers with some of the kids from our sports clubs |
We were able to take the children from our sports clubs out for their annual trips to the beach again which is always good fun. It’s such a special experience for these children who, although they only live 20 mins drive from the sea, hardly ever get to visit the beach and for some it was their first time. We were also able to take them to a local restaurant to have burgers for lunch. The expressions on their faces really were priceless when they saw their lunches arriving. It really makes you realise how blessed we are to consider eating out as a normal activity.
These beach days were the final flourish of action from our fantastic interns from HAN University in Holland. Stephan and Weike really have helped to develop and refine our sports outreach, taking it to the next level, and we were very sad to see them go last week. They were so dedicated to us in their time here and really embraced the project as a whole. They go leaving a legacy and a high standard to retain – so no pressure for the next two students who arrive in February then?!
Other News
Volunteers:
Where would we be without volunteers? This year we have so many bookings (right through to July already!) and we are so thankful because if it wasn’t for these fantastic specimens we would really struggle to keep our heads above water. This month we were sad to say goodbye to Heather, whose solid, level-headedness and hard work was so valuable over her three months of service – especially with Tim and Maz being away. We also said goodbye to Stjjn who was with us for a month including Christmas and new year. He was a building student from Holland and helped to construct a new water tower on site so that we can install a new filtration system to purify the borehole water. We will miss trying to pronounce his name and his big hair!
Thankfully we’ve also been able to welcome some new volunteers. Jess Trigg from Yorkshire is with us for six months and is already getting stuck in with the Children’s Unit. She is revising all the activities and bringing in some fresh ideas. She is already looking a lot less pasty that when she first arrived thanks to the heat wave we’ve been having recently!
We are also very excited to welcome Tim Berger back. Tim has served here numerous times by bringing over and leading mission teams from America. This time he has arrived to serve us for 2 years and we can already see that he is going to be a great asset to the team – even though he’s another American so with him and Mel here us Brits are rapidly losing ground!
New Year, New Building:
Yes, you did read correctly! –Guess what? We have another group of students from Stuttgart, Germany, arriving to build another building on Village of Hope. The advance party of three has already arrived and another twenty-five will be joining them mid-February. The university are keen to build a long-tern relationship with us and will be putting a plan in place to return annually to add more structures. Once again they have raised the funds to do this themselves which is staggering. Our thoughts at the moment are that, hopefully, we will be able to build enough accommodation so that we can move the volunteers out of their current place and free up that space to develop the work of the children’s unit to include counseling rooms and a staff room for the House Moms as well as meeting rooms….but this will all take quite a while. We will be posting regular updates on the blog as to the progress of this next building. It looks like now we really are going to have a village of the land!
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 from the Support Us page on our website (www.thembalitsha.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you
