a flying visit....

we always love to welcome people to visit our various thembalitsha projects around the western cape, be it for a few days, a couple of weeks or even a longer term placement however we don't have many people who come for just a couple of hours but on monday it was my pleasure to be able to show brendon around two of our projects, thembacare grabouw and the village of hope.

i love to take people to see the work we are involved with in our local community, many of you will know that the village of hope is much more than our 9 bed children's unit and that thembacare serve more than the 7 people that stay in their inpatient unit receiving hospice care from our amazing team.

our work extends far beyond those boundaries, like the 7 sports outreach clubs we run each and every weekday afternoon during school term, or the rainbow smiles support group which meets every friday, along with our home based palliative care team who visit over 450 patients in the community who are living with HIV...we even venture out into the local businesses providing HIV, TB and blood sugar testing via our mobile unit, which is pulled around by my dependable bakkie.

during brendons short visit to grabouw he was able to pick up some of the sights, sounds, feelings and cultures that make up our wonderful little town, he was able to visit some of the poorest of the poor whilst still seeing the hope that is being provided by the likes of thembalitsha through our outreach programmes.

please visit brendons blog post, entitled, 'postitive about cape apples', to read what he thought about his short time with us, obviously things aren't always what they seem but i think brendon has picked up on the key reasons we do what we do here in south africa, i hope you will be encouraged and also challenged by his post.

church in the orchards

much of what we post on this blog is obviously about our work with the kids either in the unit or the local community, that's what the village of hope is all about, however we do have a life with other members of our town and much of that revolves around our 'church life' and the farming community....

we are just coming into the harvest/picking season and much of the towns (grabouw) wealth and well being is hanging on the trees in the orchards, today our amazing pastor, neil meyer (elgin united), encouraged us with thoughts around harvest and got us out into the orchards to pray not only for the fruit and the farmers, but also took us beyond the four walls of the church into what for many of the poorest people is their work place....

...we joined together for communion amongst the apple trees, individually took a ribbon and tied it round a tree and prayed for the forthcoming harvest both from the trees and also within our own lives. as we walked through the orchards we saw much of the fruit had been burnt by the hot sun that we have recently enjoyed, however the fruit is now so damaged that the farmers will have a hard job to sell it. as i (tim) looked at the fruit God reminded me that there were many many people in our town who are damaged, God bought me to a place to pray for the restoration of the fruit and also the restoration of the damaged and disadvantaged people of our town.

i obviously prayed for the farmers, but my mind was full of thoughts of the pickers and packers who work the land and live in the squatter camps and township around our town, those who have no electricity in their tin shacks, have to walk far to get their water and have little or no access to medical care, i also prayed for the kids that we work with who are infected or affected by HIV and AIDS. i prayed that God will produce a harvest of health and well being in their lives and that his kingdom might come through the work that we are doing as we seek to make a difference at the village of hope...