a full children's unit

children enjoying the late autumn afternoon sun 

we start this blog post with some great news.....for the first time since we had the unit extended by the students from stuttgart university we have a full unit!

over the last month we have had five new admissions who join children who have been with us for some time, however whilst we are so pleased to be able to provide a stable home to these children the news of any new admission is always tinged with sadness as every child who is placed with us arrives with a story of suffering and pain. unfortunately this is so true of the three children who we have been able to help this week.

as per normal we can't go into each of their individual cases but please pray for us as we seek to provide a safe home for three little ones who have had a very troubled life so far and also their family who are obviously struggling to support them at home. we hope to be able to sort something quickly with our social workers but as always things don't always follow a quick path.

ukuqala3 arrive with a passion to build together...

starting the works last week

this morning saw the arrival of the full team from the university of stuttgart who will be spending the next six weeks at the village of hope creating the third phase of the ukuqala project and unlike the previous ukuqala teams the ukuqala3 team will not just be focusing their attention on one area of the village of hope, this year it is their plan to bless us in three different ways.

the first will focus on completing the ukuqala2 building which needs to have it's outer coat of lime and clay applied, thus ensuring it is waterproof and able to take our first lot of volunteers in what will be our short term mission team accommodation.

the ukuqala3 team arrive!

they will also be building an ablution centre which will be made up of three separate buildings, a toilet block, a building for showering and also a wash room with sinks and washing machines, this will be positioned near to the ukuqala2 building thus enabling us to provide facilities to our short term volunteers.

filling and leveling the site

however the main focus of their time will be around extending our current children's unit, building a new straw bale constructed bedroom block which will enable us to host more children, provide them with a bigger kitchen and bathroom as well as creating a new entrance and office space. all of the above will mean that the current long term volunteers will move out of that space and share the following six weeks with myself and maz in our home.

david knight from southcourt baptist church is helping the team, his building skills and knowledge have already been seen to provide great insight and we pray that his time with will be both productive and satisfying.

long and short term volunteers join the walkers house

we will include the students in all aspects of the work we are doing in grabouw, they will have the opportunity of joining our outpatient careworkers in the community as they visit the sick in their small homes and the sports outreach and rainbow smiles clubs will be blessed with their input which we hope will provide them with an opportunity to see how other people live and who the legacy of their building works will benefit in the future.

all in all we know that it's all going to be a crazy time, the german team will have to learn to work in africa and realise that things move on a little slower over here, not that i have learnt that very well but that is the reality of it, our team will have to move around and have their space invaded, but we are so blessed to have them around and we thank God for sending them to us to enable us to serve our community better.

for more info on the ukuqala project please click on this link.

the village continues to bring ho ho hope!

santa and his sleigh before we left the village of hope

it has been another amazing year here at the village of hope, we continue to see God's provision to us as we seek to serve the community of grabouw especially focusing on those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB, all of which are rife in our town.

we could spend a whole blog post about the wonderful things that have happened this year, all the stories of the children that we have helped to find a stable family to go home to live with or those that we are still seeking to help via our children's unit, we could talk about the provision of a new building provided by the students from stuttgart university or the people carrier bought with funds from our friends in england and the dutch charity 'wings of support'. we could provide a long update on the sports outreach which has grown from strength to strength, now engaging with more local mentors who have been supported by the students from the HAN university in holland but all that would take such a long time, so we urge you to venture through the previous posts on the blog to find out what we have been up to during 2012.

children excited to see santa coming to their street

however what we would like to share is the fact that our incredible team of permanent staff (our house moms and maintenance team) and our willing band of volunteers, both longer termers, short term mission teams and individuals, have continued to offer hope in what can sometimes be seen as hopeless situations and this culminated in our annual sleigh ride into the areas where we work day in day out.

it was great to see the children and members of their families that we work with enjoying the sight of father christmas being towed through the town, up the main street and then into each of the communities, many of whom live in little wooden shacks with no water or electricity. the whole community seemed to be out on the street and although we did bless them with a few sweets and apples that wasn't the reason we run this event.

kids chasing santa and his sleigh 

the main reason to do this again was to bless them with the chance to see santa coming to their streets and for that to provide another sign of hope as we celebrate the most amazing story of hope, that of a little baby coming to earth to show us how to live, to love one another, our neighbours and even our enemies, as we love ourselves, to look after the widows and the orphans and proclaim the good news that he can provide hope in the most hopeless places. thank God for Jesus and we thank him for inspiring us to do what we do each and everyday here in this little town in south africa.

happy christmas and may you see hope in 2013 as we enter another year of opportunity to serve those less fortunate than ourselves......

topping out...or the richtfest

ground floor walls completed

it seems that we go from the sublime to the ridiculous here at the village of hope, our last post contained the info about how we provided some very basic care for a couple of families that had lost everything in a fire that destroyed their home and possessions in one of our informal settlements in grabouw and today i am posting a blog about the wonderful party we had to celebrate the hard work of our stuttgart students as they close on to the completion of our second building that will host our international volunteers.......

richtfest (topping out)

...everything is connected as we wouldn't be able to provide the help to the community without our volunteers and we are so thankful to them and to the amazing german students who have been working so hard to not only build but also provide the design and concept of our new building but sometimes your brain struggles to come to terms with the two worlds in which we seem to live.

the richfest party

however that's the conundrum we live with everyday and we have to deal with that...what we wanted to share with you the wonderful evening and traditional ceremony that we had last night with the students as they performed the 'topping out' or what they call the richtfest of the new building. this is richtfest is only completed once the roof is finished and they have worked hard very hard each and everyday, performing taxing building skills with little knowledge or experience, and having to contend with the warm (if not hot) summer sun to enable that to happen this week.

we had a great time, listening to their speeches, which were set to rhyme in both german and english and we enjoyed a braai and some beer together....with less than two weeks to go before they leave this was a good time to reflect on all that has already been achieved (i am sure the photos show some amazing progress) and gives them renewed energy for the final push.

thanks guys, we truly love, respect and commend all that you are doing to further the work of the village of hope and the wider thembalitsha foundation here in grabouw and south africa.

the stuttgart team are coming again

german newspaper article

this coming weekend we are going to be joined by the first 3 students from this years ukuqala project. these students from stuttgart university will be following in the footsteps of the previous group who built us a wonderful home this time last year. have a look at this newspaper article which appears on their website which picks up on the work that they did last year.

be assured that we will keep you informed of the progress of the new building which the rest of the team, who arrive during the middle of february, will build for us.

new village of hope accommodation video

we were so blessed to have the team from stuttgart university come not only to build but to fund and design the new accommodation here at the village of hope. the team kept a record of the progress of the building and have produced a short one minute 30 second video to show how the house literally came up out of the ground.

please visit a link to the video by clicking here, you will see our little jack russel, bruno, makes a brief appearance as well....i miss that little dog so much!

stuggart team visit thembacare grabouw

it has been another busy day at the village of hope, let lone the 'normal' day to day stuff that we are involved with, taking our kids to school, doing hospital visits, praying for our children etc, we have also had the chance to meet up with an organisation called 'rice bowls' who support projects like the village of hope with finances to provide nutritional meals...more of that on another post.

we also took some of the students from stuttgart university on our weekly soup run, where we deliver soup, made at the local rose and bull restaurant, to a soup kitchen in rooidakke, the students also visited the squatter camp of iraq and met some of the children that we work with on our sports based life skills programme.

on our tour of grabouw we visited our sister project, thembacare grabouw, who provided the only over night palliative care for our town of around 60,000, the 7 beds are constantly being used by people suffering from the effects of AIDS and our home based care team support over 450 people who are HIV+ in our town and surrounding farms.

5 of the students are pictured with sister thandi who runs that amazing unit.

please visit the ukuqala blog here for more info and photos from their trip.

firm foundations

Jesus talked about setting our lives on firm foundations and this is something we are learning in a very pratical way here at the village of hope. not only are we trying to set up a project which is well managed and sustainable but yesterday we had 7 lorry loads of concrete delivered to enable the team from Stuttgart to lay the foundations of the new accommodation block which they are building for us at the village of hope.

the team are doing an amazing job and we continue to thank God for sending them to us as we seek to help children infected or affected by HIV and AIDS here in grabouw.

photos show the first pour and the site at the end of the day.

keeping it level....

the team from stuttgart universtiy have been doing an amazing job this week, leslie, ulrika and gerhard have been working all hours God sends in making sure that the foundations of our new build are level and stable....it speaks so much to me as we think of the 2 years we have been running the village of hope, without firm, level and solid foundations any project is unstable and is at risk of crumbling when any presure is put on it, however with lots of help we are getting closer to this project being less reliant on one or two people and ensuring it's longer term success by spreading a load over a firm foundation.

on friday afternoon i took the boys from the children's unit down to see the work being carried out and each of them had a look through the 'dumpy level' to check on the progress....see photo......we hope and trust that the work that we are doing in their lives, as they stay with us at the village of hope, will also provide a level and stable foundation for their little lives.