help from afar

james and his new friends in the community

john, friend and wood pile!

the support that we recieve via our mission teams not only blesses us but also our local community. it's hard to quantify what a mission trip 'achieves', i mean we hardly ever seen any physical healings when we pray for people there and then and we aren't in the business of preaching the gospel from the roof tops, i suppose what we do is to use saint francis of assisi's model of 'continually share the gospel at all times and if nessasary use words' and this was our testomony this week as we have welcomed a team from the mid-cities church in midland texas for another 'mission trip'.

this team was made up of a family of 5, mom and her 4 children ranging from two daughters aged 24 and 14 and twin brothers who are celebrating their 11 birthdays with us today!....the other member of the team is an 18 year old young lady who was part of their mission trip in 2011.

worshiping at thembacare

delivering the friday soup to a local creche

as with any mission trip and or short term volunteer we try to give them a flavour of the things that we are doing both on the project here at the village of hope, at our thembacare hospice and out in the community via our home based care and sports outreach teams. however the reality of our day to day duties sometimes take over and this team have been a real blessing as we tried to juggle their trip with our daily jobs.

now 22 divided by 2 equals 11...(happy birthday boys!)

they have been such a willing team and to see them share this experincence as a family is very special. the boys have been able to help with the cutting, chopping and burning of our laying brush as well as blessing one of our local communities with a trailer of fallen branches for their fires. they have helped in the children's unit, lead our wednesday afternoon 'service' at thembacare and visited the sick with our home based paillative careworkers. this morning the team were able to come out into the community to distribute some of the tin sheeting that we were blessed with, this went to some of our sickest and poorest patients who are served by thembacare in grabouw.


guys it has been wonderful to spend time with you, thanks for your hard work, the servant hearts that meant that no job seemed to hard or meanial, your smiles and kind words, not only to us as a team but wider into those that we are called to serve.