saying goodbye....

lauren, jess, kat and ashlyn with some of our
thembacare staff who they have been working with

over the last few months we have been blessed to have the help of a plethora of volunteers who have been working with both the village of hope via our children's unit, sports outreach and rainbow smiles club, but also with our sister project thembacare grabouw.

this afternoon we held our regular wednesday 'church service' at thembacare, which was lead by our wonderful team from midcities in the usa, more of them later in the week, but this was the last 'service' for four of our volunteers, jess, kat, lauren and ashlyn.

we want to thank and honor them for all their hard work, commitment and willingness to give so freely of their time to help those that we seek to support. we will really miss each and everyone of them and whilst some have really got their teeth into their own project, like jess and the support she has been to rejoyce and the other team members at our rainbow smiles HIV support group, or katia with her medical side, the others are invaluable and play a big role in 'just being big sisters' to the children that live here with us and those we work with in the community.

so we say a sad farewell but each of them knows that they will always have a place at the village of hope should our paths cross again in the future.

as per a previous post entitled 'an alternative view' please visit jess' and kats blogs via that link and laurens but clicking on this link

sad goodbyes, but happy futures await....

saying goodbye (with an apple in hand!)

on wednesday afternoon maz took our two brothers to their new home in khayelitsha, once again this day was full of mix emotions. as you can see we just love having the special children that need our care, be that medical or social, however we are just part of a bigger story and it is our aim to have the children placed either back with their own families or foster/adoptive care.

maz works so hard to find the right homes for our children and these two precious brothers are the 19th and 20th children that we have successfully placed back into the community since we opened in april 2009. Although we still have a few issues with some of the placements, we are so glad that we are able to be part of their growing up, stabilising them on their medication and finding them a family who will be able to love and support them during their lives.

we pray for the two boys, especially as they will now be sharing a home with their little sister and another 3 children and we also pray for their new parents that they will be able to cope with the children that they are taking into their home.

saying goodbye on youth day

yesterday was 'youth day' here in south africa, a day off for the school children and a day where the nation remembers the events of june 16th 1976...see last years post here, this year we were part of an outreach at a local farm where around 200 children joined us for some fun, sports games and food, however the weather put an early end to our day.

it was a bit of a mixed day for us as we said our sad goodbye's to our latest wonderful dutch sports students from the HAN university. we have been so blessed by the help we have received from djuri, jasper and talitha who have not only enabled us to continue the wonderful work of our sports outreach into the community each and every afternoon but they have developed our lifestyle (healthy living) programme which now sits within the daily programmes that we run with the children aged between 9 - 15 in 5 different areas of grabouw.

these guys will be sadly missed but we trust that they will succeed in all that they plan to do in the future and look forward to welcoming them back someday to see the effect of their work in the lives of the children that they worked with....thanks guys you are superstars