christmas present for maz

christmas may have passed last weekend but in true style our amazing friend matt walker arrives with something to blow us away.....maz has only been saying recently that she can never get to a computer, even in our new office, however today her dreams have come true as matt bought us a brand new laptop....this man has a wonderful heart of generosity and we want to thank him for all his love and support over this last year.

walkers christmas newsletter!

we (tim, maz and arron) wanted to send out a more personal Christmas newsletter, but due to some internet/googlemail problems we weren't certain on who received this and who didn't, therefore we have decided to at it to this blog with a link from our individual facebook sites.

we hope you enjoy the read and want to encourage you to continue to follow our progress on a daily basis here at the village of hope blog.


Walker Christmas Update from Village of Hope

Grabouw, South Africa

Dec 2010.

Firstly we (Tim, Maz and Arron) wanted to bring you a more personal news update from the Village of Hope Grabouw, rather than the more ‘corporate’ ThembalitshaUK newsletter that you may normally receive.

Well what a year 2010 proved to be and we will try provide some of our personal highlights (and maybe some low lights) throughout the next few paragraphs.

We started the year in the wonderful summer weather of South Africa, always a bonus for those of us that love the sunny weather, however within a month of the New Year starting Arron had made the long trip to Harpenden, England (complete with snow), to join Paul Baker and the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) team of another 20 or so young people from around the world who were on a 6 month Sports DTS and who would serve in Grabouw during the 2010 Football World Cup.

Whilst Arron was way we (me and Maz) enjoyed sometime as ‘Derby and Joan’, the first time since we were married, 23 years ago, and even went to see Elton John in Kirstenbosh Gardens together....(not one of my choices, I managed to miss the Cliff Richard concert! Tim).

As Arron left Harry Hogarth joined the Village of Hope team and became one of the family, Harry was one of many volunteers who came to join us throughout the year and we are grateful for everyone who has visited and served us during this year, including the return visits of Jess Strafford, Barbara Wood, Emma Podmore, Tim Berger and his team from Dallas, Krissy Clarke, Mel Kidd and her amazing friends (Mel has stayed to serve us long term), Fran Black and her sister Kate, Matt Redette sent another team, Tom Digsby and the team from Infocus, man the list goes on and if we have missed anyone we are really sorry.(dan williams, the margette and leo, gerrit and all the students from the HAN in Holland, trondar and greta from norway!)

Tim’s sister Vicky, husband Chris and their children Faith and Joel, along with Chris’ father Antony joined us for an extended stay (due to some volcano blowing it’s top and delaying flights in Europe, when will the airlines in England cope with ‘out of the norm weather conditions’?, we hear that England is at another standstill due to a little bit of snow!).

Rob and Emily (and their amazing children Rosie and Isaac) recommitted to volunteer with VoH (Village of Hope) for another 2 years and we were visited by members of their family through the year as well.

Early in March we had some mixed news, Tim’s Granddad passed away (97 years young) two days before the arrival (birth) of Tim and Maz’ first grandchild (Alfie), Tim returned to England to attend the funeral but had a blessing of meeting Alfie for the first time. Maz spent some time on a visit to look after Alfie later in the year which she enjoyed immensely.

The YWAM team joined us for nearly 3 months to bring a sense of hope to the children of Grabouw that we work with on a weekly basis throughout the year to bless them over the World Cup celebrations, we had up to 400 children a day join our clubs, who were feed, watered, entertained and watched the big game on a screen at a local school. We want to thank them for all the hard work that they put in to make that time special for some of the most poor and needy children that we work with.

Trefor Williams came over during the early stages of the World Cup to run a Big Shot cricket coaching course, well he is Welsh and needed an excuse to get involved in the football fest, we just wish that the England football team had turned up too and that would have made the year even better...Josh was also over at the same time and Tim, Josh and Arron, along with some of the YWAM team were at the awful 0-0 draw with Algeria at Green Point Stadium, and yes I did boo Wayne Rooney (thanks for the waste of hard earned cash there guys!). Matt Walker was over doing some big business work around the World Cup and we enjoyed his humour and support during that time.

Our work in Grabouw has extend during the year, we have successfully place 15 children home with either foster, adoptive or their own families and the support to our children living with HIV is increasing by the day. Maz was ably supported by Lisa in the baby unit and Daz ran a very effective sports outreach programme, Rob and Emily provided much needed admin and fundraising support and Johan managed to keep himself busy with new projects on the farm and also at Thembacare Grabouw.

We enjoyed a short trip ‘home’ to England in August, where we enjoyed a family holiday at Wick Court near Bath, we also celebrated Alfie’s dedication at that time with our extended family which was an amazing blessing. We were also able to share some stories about the work that we are doing with churches and other small groups, it was good to catch up with friends and Trefor and Mandy Williams made us feel at home as usual.

In August the health of our eldest boy, Assi, gave some rise of concern, especially when we were away in England, the team over here did so well in supporting him as he spent time at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, where we thought we might lose him to the disease which has plagued him for the whole of his little life, however through God’s grace he is back with us, fitting fit, learning new things each day and gives us hope that through prayer God can restore what would seem a hopeless situation.

Assi is one of many miracles that we have seen this year, and to work with so many needy children is a real privilege, however to complete the work that we have started all costs money, supporting 12 staff, running vehicles, buying food etc is a real drain on our finances and although many of you will be facing an uncertain future with the down turn in the world economy we urge you to partner with us for a few pounds a month to enable us to help those widows and orphans that we work with.
As the year came to an end Arron managed to find another trip to go on, this time to work with Big Shot Cricket at an outreach in Uganda, he has certainly travelled a lot this year, we wonder what might be in store for 2011!

As we come to the end of another busy year Tim’s Mum and Dad (Ann and Roger), son Chris and his wife Claire and Alfie, along with Claries parents, Paul and Sue, have joined us the celebrate Christmas together and it is wonderful to share the day to day work that we do with our closest family.

We want to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a bless 2011, and if you would like to find out any more info about the work we are doing please visit our blog, which we try to update daily @ www.thembavillageofhope.blogspot.com or if we could tempt you to donate to the work then follow the links from the Thembalitsha website @ www.thembalitshauk.org.uk

Tim, Maz and Arron Walker Grabouw Dec 2010

homes for sail.....take 2

see previous story here.
once again we have been blessed with the provision of two sailing (yacht) sails from our friend mike in somerset west, and once again we have blessed another family in the iraq squatter camp, grabouw, with a new roof.


photos show arron, our eldest son chris and chris' father-in-law paul smith taking a morning to cut and install the sail.

christmas in the squatter camps

i don't think anyone can really appreciate the poverty that surrounds our town until they have visited the poorest of the poor, not just on some township tour but walking, talking, sharing time and conversation in the very homes of the thousands of people who live in some of the worst conditions in the world. the contrast between the have and have nots is somewhat brain challenging but God has provided us with a platform to not only help but really engage with these people.

on fridays we are provided an amazing pot of soup from our local resturant (the rose and bull) which we normally share with a local soup kitchen that cares of the needs of a small number of people in the rooidakke informal settlement, however last friday (christmas eve) the centre was shut but we still had the soup to give out...therefore rob (house) called me to see who we could bless with it.

we made our way to the iraq squatter camp, which sits above rooidakke, in my bakkie and encouraged everyone to go and collect their pots where we then ladled out soup into litrelly hundreds of bowls...it was an amazing sight to behold as the rains fell on the tin shacks people were blessed with hot soup, full of meat for their christmas eve meal...

i thank God for the opportunities he places for us to be his hands and feet in some of the most shocking places of this amazing country of south africa.

santa hits the big time!

for the second year running the village of hope hit the front page headlines in the christmas edition of our local newspaper, the elgin grabouwer. see story as image and click for a larger version.

but this year santa has gone one step further by appearing on youtube, see link here . emily house, our wonderful film tech guru, put this clip together to give you all a flavour of the event, include the assembly by johan, decoration by tim and rob, our santa played by tim's dad, and elves fran, kate, jess and mel giving out sweets from the sleigh, unfortunately you don't really see arron, josh, chris or dan who were playing crowd control!!!...hopefully you will see the joy that was bought to hundreds of children who can be seen running after the sleigh in the waterwerks squatter camp.

next year we will have to go one step further, but for now we want to wish you all a very happy christmas from the team at the village of hope, grabouw, south africa.

kayak day makes the news

as you may have read last week we took 50 children who have been the most regular at our weekly sports outreach clubs to the local dam, read story here. well the story has been reprinted in our local paper, see image to the left and if you would like to read further click onto it for a larger copy.

christmas decorations

this afternoon the boys, arron, josh and dan, with the help of a few friends, put up the christmas decorations in the children's unit...i know we are late but better late than never!