helping with some electric homework!

one of our sports mentors (rasta) with a
well worn soccer ball...anyone willing to help?

what started out as a simple visit to our sports mentors to inform them that the rain had washed out any chance of running our sports outreach in the iraq/zwelitsha informal settlement this afternoon turned into an opportunity to help two young school girls with their homework.

after chatting with the guys around a very warm wood fire about the need for some more footballs to be donated for the sports outreach over a cup of ricoffe i was asked to take their sister and a friend to the local library to enable them to do their homework, when enquiring as to what their homework was about i was told that they needed to find out about electricity.....some what ironic that the tin shack that they live in doesn't have access to electricity, or basic sanitation for that matter, but i thought that it could be an opportunity for me to take them to visit the very local, and even more ironic, water turbine powered electricity plant which lies around 2kms from their home.

chilling round an indoor fire with coffee

the girls enjoying a coffee at the visitor centre!

so we made the short trip to the palmiet dam power station, run by eskom, the same company who have completed our recent upgrades at the village of hope, and after a few minutes we made ourselves welcome into their 1st world visitor centre where the girls were presented with a pack of glossy brochures informing them about how electric is made.

back home with their info packs to help with their homework

we were also shown a short video giving some depth to the setting up of such a power station in one of the worlds 6 floral kingdoms, the cape fynbos, under the kogelberg biosphere....all this was a little overwhelming to the two girls who had only asked for a lift to the library where they would have had to scan books and paid for photocopies of info which really was on their (and their school mates) doorsteps, after a cup of coffee at the centre we returned to their tin shack, to a warm fire but alas no electricity for them to enjoy!

sometimes one has to just connect a few dots to make the day for people, if only we would take the time to do this (even me sitting here in south africa, a missionary to this land) for our fellow man.

what we did on thursday!

this is a kayak, it's your friend!

i hope those that read this blog on a regular basis, or even stumble upon it via an internet search, will see the heart of the stories that we share here are to encourage you that the support (be that financial, physical or prayerful) that is shown towards the village of hope and or the wider thembalitsha foundation is being utilised with as much diligence as we can. we are mindful that we are in a privilege position to be on the coal face when many of our friends and families have their nose to the grindstone and don't have the opportunity to see God move in the lives of the people that we have been called to serve, whether that be in the work we do with the children infected by HIV who live with us at the village of hope or via the sports outreach that we do in our community each and every term time afternoon (weather permitting!). we value your support, we thank God for you and hope that you will be encouraged by what you see and here God doing through us.

today i want to share a most amazing experience that we had last thursday afternoon when we took the 7 young men who help us to run the sports outreach in the community, we call them our 'sports mentors', out to a local dam, actually part of the palmiet river, to spend some time 'team building' by taking to the water in sit on kayaks.

the stretch of the palmiet on which we
enjoyed our first paddle!

the boys were unaware of this stretch of river which is only 15 minutes drive from the centre of grabouw, and hardly any of them had ever got onto a kayak, however after a lengthy briefing about water safety, life jackets and the art of paddling, from our good friend rikus from true north (a wonderful guy who runs outward bound type events) we were ready of our first venture onto the water for a two hour paddle up and down the beautiful valley.

the boys really enjoyed their time, the weather was fantastic and as we sent them out in pairs it was good to see them work together, to first go in the right direction and then with some momentum which meant that they were really motoring by the end.

we hope to do another team building event sometime this week, although the weather doesn't look to promising, however we are sure that this is truly something that the boys won't ever forget and we hope that some of the skills that they learnt, like talking to each other when putting the paddles into the water!, will help them as we seek to provide a professional sports outreach to the children that we have on our programme.