friendly but challenging encouragement from mal

we get the feeling that mal enjoyed the wonderful
scenery that surrounds us here in the
western cape!

as you will have read in june's newsletter we have welcomed barbara wood back onto our team and she will be followed in quick succession by josh (a young man from the aylesbury area), emma (a returning volunteer) and shana (who arrives slightly later in august) and we will cover those arrivals in a future post.

today however we want to express our heart felt thanks to mal calladine who visited us from england for a short but very exciting and challenging week last week.

myself and maz have known mal since his days leading the emerging generation stuff at the new wine conferences at the bath and west showground and we have kept in touch to be inspired, confronted and encouraged, even during his time in america, he is certainly a key part in our spiritual journey and is someone who has walked the path that led us to come serve in south africa.

we always make a point of touching base with mal when we have our annual home visits to england and have often chatted around him making time to come visit and impart wisdom to our small team at the village of hope and this was realised as he spent a crazy busy week with us last week. we did enjoy some 'down time' in cape town and franschhoek at the start and end of his stay but mal's main focus was to spent some time watching us as a team.

this 'team watching' meant that he played with the children in the children's unit, came out for some sports outreach, visited community members and engaged with our thembacare staff at our wednesday afternoon service, he also spent time with our local pastors, niel and frank, which was very helpful. he then took time with us both as individuals and as team where he led some workshops around the five fold ministry and some 'up, in and out' stuff that we had enjoyed so much many years ago. we were certainly blessed to receive his teaching, insight and God given wisdom as a team and it seemed right as we look to the next stage of the development of the village of hope.

we want to thank him for making the looooong trip down for such a short time and are looking forward to seeing how our team will move forward with some of the things he left us with after the school break, where both rob and emily along with mel are enjoying some much needed rest, and we are excited to see how the new volunteers will engage with refocused team!

walkers tour update II

we just wanted to provide a short update about our last weeks engagements before we fly off to germany and holland for a week long trip which will include visits to see the stuttgart university team who are looking to come out to the village of hope in early 2012, a meeting with the tutors at the HAN university including a chance to catch up with some of the students who have interned with us in the past, plus we have a couple of speaking events with an ex volunteer next thursday and friday.

so what did we get up to this week?

well we heard from arron, who is now in the caribbean, God is really using this time to speak to him about the next steps in his life and we also spent some time with our middle son, josh, as he came to visit on his way through to a party!

the service at the bridge at southcourt baptist church was great, it was wonderful to see some old friends and also have a chance to share with some new ones too...monday morning went well as we shared an assembly at the school that maz used to work at and we had the opportunity of taking a year 5 and 6 class with a question and answer session.

tuesday we meet up with a good friend, mal calladine, before spending a night with our son, his wife and our gorgeous little grandson's...its times like that when we really do count the cost that we have made to work in south africa, it would be so easy to stay in england and watch and support this little family as they start their journey, but we know we are called to do God's work with the other children that he has placed in our lives and we relish getting back to them too.

sophie and zac busy counting the money!

on wednesday evening we were able to share with some friends who now run the homegroup that we set up, it was great to have a chance to share and encourage them and to receive a gift of £9.62 from sophie and zac who continue to tithe their pocket money towards the work that we do at the village of hope, thank you guys it really does make a difference!

friday morning started with an interview with our local radio station, mix96, who will be broadcasting the interview on the 1st of december, world aids day, so if you are near a radio/internet connection we hope that you might hear us speak!

it was a pleasure to be asked to speak in long crendon on friday evening where we encouraged people with our stories of hope, it was great to meet up with tessa prodger, an amazing lady who has inspired and supported us for many years since we worked together at a crusader group in granborough.

as you can see our weeks are quite full and we will be speaking at the winslow vineyard tomorrow morning before flying out for our exciting trip as we hop over the water to see our friends in the eurozone next week!