village of hope

praying for our children

2012-02-02T16:40:00.001+02:00

just chilling in the kitchen before dinner,
her favorite time of the day

on tuesday morning maz took our little two and a half year old girl into tygerberg hospital where she will stay for a few days whilst the team get her started on her ARV (anti retro viral) medication for her HIV. normally there's no need for our children to go to hospital to start this treatment but due to the fact that she is also on TB medication and has had TB meningitis then the staff want to observe her before sending her back to stay with us at the village of hope.

she is such a dear little (well not so little) thing, she copies everything anyone says and has really developed since she has been with us. please pray for her as she stays on her own and that there wont be any complications with the different types of medication.
we are longing to see her happy smile back with us again soon.

an update on our 11 year old boy is that he has now been discharged from the red cross children's hospital into our sister project, thembacare athlone, mommy maz visited him yesterday and he is doing a little better but he is still a poorly boy!

January News

2012-01-27T13:19:00.000+02:00

Happy New Year from all of us here at Village of Hope. As we enter 2012 we are full of excitement at what God has in store for us this year…We are also rather hot! The summer has decided to kick in and it has been in the mid-30s for the past week…phew! Anyway, we intend to grab 2012 by the horns, seizing every opportunity and continue our fight to restore hope to the communities we work with.

We want to invite you to join us in our quest and use this year to make a positive change . Why not sign up to volunteer or take on a personal challenge to raise funds for us? Two of our Thembalitsha staff might inspire you. Together with their friends they have organised two initiatives in aid of our Foundation. Frances from our sister project Bosom Buddies is completing 6 physically grueling trail runs within a month – for those of you who don’t know, these runs are actually like racing up and down a mountain! (Sponsor her here) And Amanda, our funding manager, is going to cycle from our Village of Hope project around the coast to the most southern point in Africa: Cape Agulhas.

Together we can make a huge difference. For more information on how you can get involved email us: info@thembalitsha.org.za…..Start now!

Village News
Tim and Maz returned back safely from their exciting tour or Europe – That might be a slight exaggeration but they did cover a few countries on their trip! The tour proved to be busy but very successful. It seemed a fantastic mixture of talks and presentations, worship events, radio interviews, plane flights and visits to past volunteers. They also managed to spend some quality time with their family too!

The rest of the team here were very relieved to receive them home! There were no major incidents whilst they were away, the project didn’t burn down and remained pretty much as Tim and Maz had left it! – Always an achievement!

The children opening their gifts from Operation Shoebox
(Isaac ably assisting!)

Children’s Unit
The Children in the unit had a most enjoyable Christmas time. This year, for the first time, all the children were able to spend at least Christmas day with either a House Mom or a relative. This was a really special time for the children. They all came home very happy and with huge grins on their faces. It must have been great for them to be so spoilt and have the sole attention of a normal family for a change. Our 11-year-old boy was the only one who was unable to go to a family. Unfortunately for him he had to remain at our sister project, ThembaCare Athlone, because he had just been discharged from hospital after yet more health battles. He is still there now. We have tried to bring him back to the children’s unit in between times but it just hasn’t worked – he isn’t stable enough and needs more medical support. Please continue to keep him in your prayers.

Christmas also saw a flurry of parties and celebrations for the children in the unit. This year our party, in conjunction with the day hospital and ThembaCare, was very generously funded and meant that we could have a magician: Mr Fu Lin Yu (get it?!) The kids loved it.

The new year brought in a new child who has come to stay whilst his home environment gets sorted. He is yet another little one suffering with HIV and TB but is a happy little soul and has made himself at home here very quickly.

Those kids who are old enough to attend school are back. Our 6 year old boy has started ‘big’ school and now has to wear uniform – he looks very cute and is very proud of his new attire but is a little overwhelmed by his new environment. Also, our 3 year old girl started preschool for the first time. She is loving it and is especially insistent on carrying her own rucksack despite the fact that it’s almost as big as she is!

Our Dutch and Australian volunteers with
some of the kids from our sports clubs

Sports Outreach and Community Work
We were able to take the children from our sports clubs out for their annual trips to the beach again which is always good fun. It’s such a special experience for these children who, although they only live 20 mins drive from the sea, hardly ever get to visit the beach and for some it was their first time. We were also able to take them to a local restaurant to have burgers for lunch. The expressions on their faces really were priceless when they saw their lunches arriving. It really makes you realise how blessed we are to consider eating out as a normal activity.

These beach days were the final flourish of action from our fantastic interns from HAN University in Holland. Stephan and Weike really have helped to develop and refine our sports outreach, taking it to the next level, and we were very sad to see them go last week. They were so dedicated to us in their time here and really embraced the project as a whole. They go leaving a legacy and a high standard to retain – so no pressure for the next two students who arrive in February then?!

Other News

Volunteers:
Where would we be without volunteers? This year we have so many bookings (right through to July already!) and we are so thankful because if it wasn’t for these fantastic specimens we would really struggle to keep our heads above water. This month we were sad to say goodbye to Heather, whose solid, level-headedness and hard work was so valuable over her three months of service – especially with Tim and Maz being away. We also said goodbye to Stjjn who was with us for a month including Christmas and new year. He was a building student from Holland and helped to construct a new water tower on site so that we can install a new filtration system to purify the borehole water. We will miss trying to pronounce his name and his big hair!
Thankfully we’ve also been able to welcome some new volunteers. Jess Trigg from Yorkshire is with us for six months and is already getting stuck in with the Children’s Unit. She is revising all the activities and bringing in some fresh ideas. She is already looking a lot less pasty that when she first arrived thanks to the heat wave we’ve been having recently!
We are also very excited to welcome Tim Berger back. Tim has served here numerous times by bringing over and leading mission teams from America. This time he has arrived to serve us for 2 years and we can already see that he is going to be a great asset to the team – even though he’s another American so with him and Mel here us Brits are rapidly losing ground!

New Year, New Building:
Yes, you did read correctly! –Guess what? We have another group of students from Stuttgart, Germany, arriving to build another building on Village of Hope. The advance party of three has already arrived and another twenty-five will be joining them mid-February. The university are keen to build a long-tern relationship with us and will be putting a plan in place to return annually to add more structures. Once again they have raised the funds to do this themselves which is staggering. Our thoughts at the moment are that, hopefully, we will be able to build enough accommodation so that we can move the volunteers out of their current place and free up that space to develop the work of the children’s unit to include counseling rooms and a staff room for the House Moms as well as meeting rooms….but this will all take quite a while. We will be posting regular updates on the blog as to the progress of this next building. It looks like now we really are going to have a village of the land!

HOW YOU CAN HELP

We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!

• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer

• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk

• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

VOLUNTEERING

We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on Volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents from the Support Us page on our website (www.thembalitsha.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you

info@thembalitsha.org.za

jolly hockey sticks

2012-01-26T12:34:00.001+02:00

the girls had left before we took this photo!
farm outreach kids with mariana (volunteer)

our recent long term volunteer, simon, donated a wonderful hockey set to our sports outreach programme which we are truly grateful for. last week we used this for the first time in anger at our sports project at a local farm and the children really loved it.

it was great to see both boys and girls playing together, thankfully the sticks and ball are made out of plastic and that saved, what surely would have been, a trip to the local hospital. we will use these again on other afternoons at the 5 other clubs we run, however some of the surfaces are less than conducive than the wonderful grass that the farm children are blessed with.

thanks simon and we hope you like the photo!

trot to adopt

2012-01-25T09:25:00.000+02:00

our good friend, tom digsby, from augusta in the USA who has been part of a few mission trips here at the village of hope is organising the second annual trot to adopt . the event happens this sunday and if you are in the area you can sign up to run the 5k or you could donate/sponsor someone who is running and some of that money will be coming directly to the village of hope to help in our work with the children infected by HIV that we work with.

follow this link to the trot to adopt web site and find out more.

volunteers come and volunteers go....

2012-01-24T14:14:00.002+02:00

heather wearing her trademark face pack, i mean smile!

this weekend was another one of those bitter sweet ones here at the village of hope. we had to say our sad goodbyes to two amazing volunteers but we also welcomed three more...such is our life.

heather (from australia) had been serving with us for 3 months, holding stuff together whilst tim and maz were away, ably supporting our dutch students at our sports outreach and we certainly will miss her cheery smile, so apt that she helped out and extended the work with our new rainbow smiles club, (a club for young people living with HIV in our community)....and the enthusiasm to put her hand in all those things that 'just need doing'. she was a real servant and we trust that she follows the path that God is leading her on and hope that she will be back soon!

first ukuqula II students

we also said goodbye to mariana, who joined us on a short 10 day trip from brazil, she was a real hit with the kids but as the girls left we welcomed the first three students from stuttgart university who will be building the new ukuqala accommodation. they spent the weekend enjoying our beautiful weather and yesterday got stuck in to their first working day in africa....an eye opener to say the least for these guys from germany!

welcome guys its good to have you with us and goodbye heather, come back soon.

the stuttgart team are coming again

2012-01-20T14:12:00.000+02:00

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.

pig leaves and tim and jess arrive.....

2012-01-19T12:59:00.001+02:00

tim trying to send an sms on his a new fangled phone!

jess enjoying the shade as she engages with the children!

during the last week we have extended our warm (in more ways than one as the summer weather has certainly arrived with full force as well!) to two longer term volunteers. tim berger has joined us for two years from the USA, tim has a long relationship with the thembalitsha foundation where he has bought mission teams over to serve the charity in the past. tim has a real servant heart, which has been demonstrated as he lead his previous teams and he has shown that as he settles into his role here at the village of hope. we hope that tim will also be a blessing to the wider thembalitsha grabouw team which includes themabcare grabouw where his arrival has been waited with great expectation (by some of the ladies!). tim is a bit of a technophobe so don't hold your breath if you are expecting lots of updates!

our second longer termer is jess trigg, a proud yorkshire lass who will be focusing her attention into developing the children's daily activities during her 6 month stay with us. she is already a big hit with the children but is finding the weather a little bit different to the normal summer conditions that she is used to!

heinrich and tim trying to coax the pig into leaving!

as these two wonderful volunteers arrive we have sent our latest little piggy to be turned into food which will be used to feed our children in the unit, whilst it was a sad and somewhat fraught goodbye.....where a comical chase ensued with johan, heinrich and tim spending a hot hour trying to coax the pig into our trailer.....mr pig you will taste good.

new year new schools

2012-01-13T19:01:00.003+02:00

first day at creche......so cute!

over the last week our older children have started their new school year, for two of the girls they moved up to the next class, our 6 year old boy he made the big step to start at primary school and our 3 year old she started creche for the first time.......starting something new is always an event that is filled with excitement and trepidation and starting school is no different. for our kids there is no mom or dad waving from the gate, but we are able to support them at this special time and it is wonderful to see these little ones leave in the combi in the morning, uniforms and ruck sacks shiny new, but the best is to hear the hubbub as they return to tell their stories of friendship and learning.

11 year old returns again....

2012-01-11T10:44:00.003+02:00

the wonder boy returns.

if you have ever visited the village of hope, or if you have been following our blog for any amount of time, you will have heard stories about our wonderful 11 year old boy who captures every-bodies heart. without going into too much detail he has some very complex medical conditions which are really playing havoc with his little body and he has spent a lot of time in the red cross children's hospital as they battle to understand and contain the illness which is overwhelming him.

he loves the village of hope, the house moms who love him as their own and especially mommy maz, who he continually asks for when he is away from 'his home'.......

yesterday we had the great news that he was stable enough to be placed back with us, following his hospitalization and care at our sister project, thembacare athlone. it is good to have his back with us, but because of his medical situation we have to continually monitor him and he is still on oxygen full time, however his smile and lightness of spirit lifts the atmosphere and he brings joy to the lives of all he meets.......thanks for all the thoughts and prayers that were raised up for him and we continue to pray for his full healing.......welcome home!

helpful volunteers

2012-01-06T15:39:00.000+02:00

stijn the builder

over the 3 years or so that we have been open as the project 'village of hope' we have been blessed with a plethora of volunteers, whether they have served with us for a day or committed to a life changing move to be with us for a longer period of time their presence here is much valued.

during the last week we have said our sad goodbye's to simon, a volunteer from england who was with us for 3 months and we want to wish him well with his next placement in tanzania, if you wanna keep up with simon then please follow this link to his blog which also picks up on some of the things that were going on at the village of hope whilst myself and maz were in europe!

the new water tank holder

over this christmas period we have been joined on the project by a young dutch man who has thrown his self into building us a new water tank holder, this is a somewhat tedious and lonely task, although he has been helped by our new grounds maintenance coordinator, heinrich.

we want to thank stijn, yes that's really how you spell his name!, and those like him who have served us so faithfully during 2011, we have some further sad goodbye coming soon with some of our dutch students but we are also forward to welcoming some new volunteers in just a few days time, its a bitter sweet time!...we will keep you updated with news on them right here on the village of hope blog.

being a blessing and being blessed!

2012-01-03T21:56:00.001+02:00

the girls netball team from rooidakke

during our journey into the unknown here in south africa our western thoughts and minds are being constantly challenged. today was another one of those days as we were able to bless around 20 children from our local community with a day at the beach and a burger and chips, which most of us would think nothing of doing either during a summer holiday or if you live 20 minutes from the beach here in grabouw on a weekend afternoon, however for these children this was a very very special experience of which they may have never known before or ever have the chance to experience again in the very near future.

beach cricket south africa style!

a game of 'beach tennis'

we all really enjoyed the luke warm sea, the hot sun and delicious burgers whilst having the opportunity to play some beach cricket, tennis and a game football, including a mixture of other people from the beach joining in our impromptu game which was a major success.

the day was made possible by some of our wonderful volunteers, from england, holland and an australian who provided us with her lifeguarding skills.

tomorrow we will be taking the some children from a local farm, whilst on thursday we will be taking two further groups from our local community sports outreach.

all the above is wonderful however what really hit me was the fact that about 20 minutes after i had dropped the children to either their tin and wooden shack or simple breeze block homes in the informal settlements in grabouw, i was able to take a shower to help cool me down and remove some of the salt and sand which had attacked my body during the day, with the knowledge that many of these children, and thousands like them in our town, live in homes with no running water or even electricity let lone a shower.

however i thank God that we were able to bless the kids, whilst also remembering we are constantly receiving blessings ourselves and giving thanks to God for that is the important thing!

new year and new baby boy...

2012-01-02T11:30:00.000+02:00

the last week of 2011 saw the village of hope offer new hope and a loving family environment to the 30th child since we opened in 2009. our home has been a little quite since our 11 year old boy has been in the red cross children's hospital, again, but we are now up to our full compliment of 9 children with the addition of a wonderful little boy who needs our support whilst his family get their feet back on track.

he is around 20 months old and is on TB medication and is HIV+ so please pray for him as he settles into life here at the village of hope, thankfully his grandparents have already made a visit to him, which is all positive news, lets hope that 2012 will prove to be a better year for him.

please could we ask you to continue to pray for our little 11 year old in red cross, he has had a rough time of it, unable to keep his food down over christmas, due to some of the medication he is taking, although maz was able to feed him his first meal when we visited him on thursday which was good to see.....we will keep you updated on his progress here.

may we wish you all a very blessed 2012.

father christmas visits grabouw again...

2011-12-28T12:14:00.001+02:00

santa (johan) and his little helpers!

during last week we made the necessary changes to our heavy duty trailer once again converting it into santas sleigh. the plan was to tow it into the community on thursday afternoon but with a little unseasonal drizzle we postponed it until friday afternoon.

this was the third year that we have taken santa into our community and this year johan, our maintenance man, was chosen to play the role as father christmas, following in the footsteps of my dad who played him last year and our wonderful norwegian volunteer, trondor played him the first year we were here.

kids chasing father christmas and his sleigh

we decorated the bakkie, toyota hilux, with tinsel and balloons, fitted a new speaker system which enabled us to play some traditional christmas hits at a louder volume than we had been able to do previously. johan was joined by some of our longer and short term volunteers in the sleigh where they 'gave' out sweets to the excited children that we passed by.

kids in the community, followed by a local taxi
trying to sneak in on the celebration!

its great to see the reaction of both the children and also the adults as they saw father christmas coming past their homes. this year we took a slightly longer route to enable us to reach more children, the joy on their faces was a sight to behold and the sweets were an added bonus.

if you would like to see a short video of last years venture then please click on this link which will take you to youtube, or if you would like to read more about our previous years stories then please click on these links for 2010 here and 2009 here

a happy christmas from the village of hope

2011-12-23T17:13:00.000+02:00

johan as santa as we prepare the bakkie to tow
the sleigh into the community!

we just wanted to thank all of our wonderful friends for their support this year, whether you are family, have volunteered (which automatically makes you family as well!), given funds, arranged an event, hosted us during our trips to europe, you know who you are and we really do appreciate you.

the children who live with us at the village of hope will be going to spend christmas with our house moms, thus giving the moms an extra few days with their families, the children a bit of a holiday and the volunteer team a little time to chill and enjoy the festive season.

so from the village of hope team, the house moms, the children in the unit and those in the community we want to wish you all a very happy christmas and a peaceful and prosperous new year.

unfortunately we can't post a photo of us with the children, but if you would like to receive one then we would be more than happy to email you one, so please get in contact, either through the blog or facebook and we will arrange that for you!

please could we ask you to remember our little 11 year old boy who is out of hospital but still very sick, he will be staying at thembacare in athlone over the weekend and we pray that he will soon be well enough to come back to stay with us, his family, here at the village of hope. thanks.

its hard not to take offence!

2011-12-21T08:10:00.000+02:00

the remains of our security fence!

yesterday we discovered that for the second or third time since we installed a 'security' fence around the village of hope that around 8 of the posts which were set in concrete to hold the fence had been stolen. after the original installation we were unfortunate to have around 200 meters of the fence stolen so we undertook to install a new barbed wire fence in it's place, fixing that to the posts, and in doing so spraying the posts with red paint so if anyone thought that they could take those posts we would know who did it and speak with them about it.

the fence isn't going to stop anyone getting onto the property but we thought it would serve as a deterrent, giving a visible and physical boundary to our land. yesterday i spent around R1,000 purchasing replacement wire, which had been cut to free the posts, which is money that you generous givers have donated towards the work we do with the children!.

in the afternoon i ventured into the township to see if i could spot any of the posts, and yes i found one, holding up someone else's fence around their home in the community......what to do now?....

...i know that this is the season for giving but its really hard to be forgiving!

please pray for safety and wisdom as we seek to take this matter further, we live in a very poor neighborhood and people are trying to provide for themselves and their families, however we need to make sure that people understand that they are stealing from their selves when they steal from us.

beach trips and christmas parties...

2011-12-19T14:40:00.000+02:00

moms, volunteers and lastly kids enjoying
a day at the beach

this could be somewhat of a reoccurring post over the coming few weeks as we enjoy some of the blessings that our children will be receiving during this christmastide and with the fact that the local schools close for their long summer/christmas holidays this means that our sports outreach into the community, which we run each and every school day afternoon takes a bit of a rest and we are able to do some more fun stuff with those kids and the others we support in our community.

in september we started a new club for children living in the local community who are HIV+ and known to either the day hopstial, thembacare grabouw or village of hope, and on friday, as part of their C
christmas surprise, we were able to take them to our local country club for an afternoon filled with fun and food, which they really enjoyed.

we were also able to take our own children (those that live with us at the village of hope) to the beach over the weekend, which was enjoyed by the children but more so by our house moms and the volunteers who are with us at the moment. we had a picnic at gordons bay, enjoyed some ice lollies and encouraged the children to take their first 'swimming lessons'!

over the next few weeks we will be able to share further with you about the ways in which we have been able to give these children some wonderful experiences, i must say that i'm not looking forward to taking 50 of our sports outreach children to the beach in early january, given the headaches of making sure everyone is safe, happy and accounted for, but i am sure they will all have a lot of fun.

could we also remind you to pray for our dear 11 year old who is back in red cross, not feeling to well at all and obviously missing this festive time of year with us! thanks

a very positive party...

2011-12-15T16:42:00.000+02:00

johan (sponsored by white squirrel) and
mother christmas hold court!

we (tim and maz) arrived back to find that the village of hope was still standing, we want to thank rob, em, mel, johan, our house moms and other key volunteers for doing such a wonderful job when we were away.

as with most things we found that there were a plethora of activities set up for the children to enjoy, which can be increasingly busy around this time of year as people want to bless our children and those that we support in the community with presents and parties, which are all wonderful but take time to arrange and run.

yesterday we had the pleasure of taking the children from the village of hope, along with those known to thembacare (grabouw) and our day hospital to a party, hosted at agape but organised by mel from the village of hope, a sister from the day hospital and marlene from thembacare. mel also had help from our longer term volunteer heather who had sorted a magician to keep the children entertained whilst they waited for their food.

around 80 children attended, along with all our thembacare community based workers and village of hope moms and some voluteers....father christmas (well it was a lady, which provided some hilarity all around) turned up with presents for all the children, johan and hinrich also kept the children busy with games etc and a great day was had by all.

Rocky Road No More?

2011-12-07T15:31:00.000+02:00

Those of you who've been out to visit us at Village of Hope will know that the approach to our property is a bit of a 4x4 challenge to say the least. Especially in the winter when rivers appear from nowhere after a small amount of rain! The track is unmade with potholes every few metres and it really takes it toll on our vehicles (as well as our backs!) and we are frequently taking visits to our friendly tyre fixers, Supaquik, to get puncture repairs and new tyres.

We have been hoping and praying that one day, we might have enough funds, or some generous person might donate us money, to fix the road and make it into a smooth tar road...and lo and behold, today there have been some 'road fairies/angels' sent to sort it out!

True, it's not tar race track by any means but it is certainly vastly improved and very luxurious in comparison to what we were experiencing yesterday.

The reason the track is being repaired is because the farm next door to us is being used to shoot a TV film for the next few days and they have lots of trucks and vans that would otherwise struggle to get to the location. Whatever the reason, we are very pleased that the film company have chosen to sort the track as it will benefit all of us for the next few months at least. Hurrah!...and who knows maybe next year we can tar it!!!?

Perhaps we will post a photo of the set if we manage to get a glimpse when they start filming next week.

a wholehearted walkers update III

2011-12-05T16:11:00.001+02:00

yes handri its ice!

if you have been following us recently you will know that we have been busy with a tour around england with a wonderful worship band called wholehearted, we have had an amazing time and we just wanted to capture a few highlights of the tour with you.

last monday morning we met the band at Gatwick at 7am and were joined by 'tour manager/driver/sound enginer' and wanna be drummer, mr james porter, after the first of many coffees we exposed the band made up of charl folscher, pierre and helena smith, handri and jaqueline de villiers and daniel botha, along with danni's wife sanmarie (who worked her magic with the multi media presentations during the evening) to the icy cold english weather, which was nice and frosty. we then drove down to Bath (taking around 3 hours!) and settled them in....later we met up later in Bath to show them the christmas market, but it was shut by 7pm! (typical!)

tuesday we met up for prayer and then ventured down to taunton for an evening event at the living light church, during the set up we were able to see the new video that had been shot in grabouw to accompany the bands new song 'hope is herre' which with the video images is very heart wrenching and certainly made an impact to those who saw it during the rest of the tour. the evening went really well, sound was great and we had a lot of people there, we even managed to get the text message service working linked to our justgiving page which was good, we shared about the work we do in grabouw, which i think touched people and the worship was also amazing.

at monkton combe

wednesday we had the day to spend with our son chris and wife claire and their two boys, the UK was on strike so it was busy everywhere so we chilled and then went to a farm with the kids...was nice, the band had a few issues with procuring equipment for the evening event which was to take place at 6pm at Monkton Combe school, around 130 kids who attend the school came along, plus my friend Mal and his wife, and chris and claire and the kids, me and maz gave a brief overview of our work in south africa and after a meal in the 'harry potter style' dinning room we hosted another event for the older more committed kids this was a more chilled event where charl shared and we ministered.

on thursday we met up for lunch in bathhampton with the band and left for Aylesbury, we arrived to set up for the event at aylesbury vale vineyard which was great, our UK marketing team made up of ellie and jess, ably supported by andy were wonderful, there were loads of people from different churches, some we knew and some we didn't and we raised a huge amount on the night!

river boat ride down the thames

our friday started with prayer and communion with mick at the vineyard, where he was also able to show the guys around their storehouse project which they were very impressed with, we then made our swift drive to london for the first gig at EN hammersmith, a great venue in a old church, no pews!, band were a little tired but we really enjoyed the cheese and wine on what was a bit more of a chilled out evening, where we once again raised quite a large amount for thembalithsa and we also had good conversations with new and old friends from wolfi's church.

wholehearted worship

now for our day off......well we were up and out by 9 for our tour of london, we managed to fit in lots of interesting things and had great fun with the band, we were in westmister at 12 noon for big ben, then onto horse guards and down to see the queen, the band we introduced to the london underground as we got on the tube to covent garden (the band were disappointed that there were no flowers!), then another tube to tower bridge, tower of london, then ferry down the thames back to the london eye for a quick spin, we then took a wander down south bank christmas market to a pub overlooking the river for a pint or two....then back to the station and home!...nice relaxing day off!

sunday had a bit of a different feel, i went to slough and shared with about 50 people at the EN church

charl sharing his highlights!

there, i gave the talk and finished at 12, but we took another hour to pray for people who were moved by my talk, which was great, maz and the band were at hammersmith, where they lead worship and maz spoke, it sounded like they had a good time, then i drove back to london to meet met maz and wolfi and spent the afternoon with them. the band went off to play at EN Stratford for their 3.30 service. me and maz then shared at the EN6pm service at Imperial College London, which went really well well.

we all met up in richmond for our last supper together and in true village of hope style shared our highlights and low lights of the trip, which was very touching.

it was an amazing time, we shared joy, fun, laughter, shed a tear or two and celebrated the new hope which thembalitsha are providing via the 7 projects in the western cape....thanks for joining us guys.

world aids day event/s

2011-12-01T12:00:00.001+02:00

if you have been following our blog for the last few years you will know that today, 1st december, is special day in our year.....working with people infected or affected by HIV and AIDS is what we do here in south africa and today is world AIDS day and we invite you to join us in raising the profile of our work in what is still a disease with a huge amount of stigma.

whilst we (tim and maz) are over here in england we have an opportunity for you to come and join us in aylesbury this evening where we will be hosting an event with the wonderful south african band, wholehearted. for more info on the event then please follow this link to both their facebook site and tour blog.

for those of you unable to join us then we are also hosting a day of prayer with the wider thembalitsha foundation where we are asking you to pray for the work we are doing with those infected by this disease. please follow this link to the news and media page on our website for our prayer requests.

or should you wish to donate to our wonderful work then follow these links to the donation pages which link to giving sites and accounts in south africa, england and even the USA!

Clowning Around - For A Reason

2011-11-30T17:29:00.000+02:00

There’s nothing we like more here at Village of Hope than a little light relief and perhaps the odd bit of slapstick humour, so what more could we ask for than the chance to see some clowns for free?!

However these aren’t your average clowns, they are a performance group called Clowns Without Borders. This fantastic organisation brings laugher into areas of the world that don’t normally have much of reason to laugh and have worked in refugee camps and warzones. This week, after entertaining our sister project, Graceland Preschool, in the morning, they came to Grabouw to perform for us and other children from the community in the afternoon! We cancelled our sports outreach for the day and invited all the kids from those groups to the show as well as bringing along some of the children from the unit at Village of Hope.

There were eight comedy characters all together, each from different countries around the world and their show was all slapstick and mime (with a few trombones and trumpets thrown in for good measure). They certainly didn’t take long to get us breaking out in giggles and we really want to thank them for taking the time to bring a little ray of sunshine in our town.

To read more about Clowns Without Borders, check out their website: http://cwbsa.org/

walkers update III (wholehearted tour news)

2011-11-28T18:30:00.001+02:00

well another week has flown by with our week long trip to germany and holland now over we are focusing all our attention towards to wholehearted tour which kicks off tomorrow evening in taunton, with further events in bath on wednesday, aylesbury on thursday on what is world AIDS day, and then a weekend in london starting in hammersmith on friday and finishing with 4 events with the everynation chruches on sunday....for further info the please visit the wholehearted facebook page or the wholehearted blog which they will be keeping updated with stories of their trip......but that is all to come, what follows is a short recap of what we got up to last week.

the ukuqulaII students

on monday morning we got up for the early flight to stuttgart where we had a short meeting with leslie, the project manager from the ukuqula I project, and then we had a three hour presentation by the students who will be working on the ukuqala II project. it was wonderful to meet these 25 students who have not only spent time looking at the 2012 project but also the long term development of the village of hope in the future.

in the evening we met up for a meal with the students who built the first ukuqula home in feb/march of this year, words cannot express how much their time and commintment to build us an amazing ecco house is appreciated and they will always be held up high in the stories of the village of hope.

some of our ex-HAN students
at the pancake house!

tuesday was another early start to make the hour long flight from stuttgart to dusseldrof where we were met by an ex HAN student, elsie and her father, we enjoyed an evening of football and food with them at their home just outside bemmel.

on wednesday we met up with the international department of the HAN (highschool arnhem and nijmegen) and their tutors to discuss the work that their sports, pyhsio and social work can do as they partner with our thembalitsha projects in grabouw, we also had a chance to speak to some of the students who will be joining us in early 2012, providing them with some cultural background to south africa and the types of things that they will be experiencing during their five months with us.

we were totally blessed by the amount of ex students that came to meet us at the 'pancake house' in nijmegen on wednesday evening where we took time to catch up with them and their progress since they left south africa, it was so good to see them all.

children at the emmaus school in arnhem

thursday morning was also an early start, no rest for the wicked they say!, where we had an oppertunity to share with 3 different classes of children at a school in arnhem, this went really well, they had some very good questions which followed a powerpoint where we showed them some photos of the work we do in grabouw.

gerrit spronk picked us up in arnhem and we enjoyed an afternoon in amersford before sharing with his home group in the evening. gerrit also drove us over 300kms on friday, taking us to meetings with an ex village of hope volunteer, leo, and then on to den hag to meet up with the dutch chefs who visited the village of hope with the culibus in 2010 and who are looking to set up a fundraising event in early 2012.

saturday was spent with eveline and bart in amsterdam, a wonderful if not somewhat 'hippy' city, before flying back to england during the evening to stay for two nights with josh's (our middle son) girlfriends (haddy) parents paul and lindy who made us feel very welcome after such a long trip.

heres to a wholehearted coming week!

December News

2011-11-25T17:53:00.001+02:00

Can you believe that Christmas is just around the corner?!

Every month here continues to be an adventure, especially because this month the B team have been in charge of the project! Tim and Maz are currently touring their socks off speaking at various fundraising events around the UK, Germany and Holland. They have been away since the end of October and are not due to return until mid-December so we (Rob, Em and Mel) have been trying to keep things running smoothly (well, as smoothly as they ever do here in South Africa!) So far, nothing horrendous has happened so we are patting ourselves on the back with one hand, whilst desperately praying that it remains that way with the other!

Children’s Unit
Mel has been spinning all the plates for the baby unit whilst Maz is away with the medical support of Sister Portia. Our 11-year-old boy continues to be a worry for us and his health seriously dipped a couple of weeks ago as he battled with another infection. We are in a constant tension with him, trying to maintain his comfort and trying to keep him out of hospital unless absolutely necessary. It’s hard to try and maintain the right balance, but at this stage there is very little the hospital can do and he is much happier in himself if he can remain in familiar surroundings. Thankfully, since he has been put on yet another course of antibiotics, he has bounced back somewhat and we are able to get smiles out of him again. We are praying that he remain stable from now on and still trusting God for a miracle for this precious boy.

Sadly we have to say goodbye to one of our lovely House Moms, Nothini. She is leaving because her mother-in-law can no longer look after her children and she can’t find anyone she can trust to look after them. Whilst we are pleased that she is putting the care of her children as high priority, we are sad to see her go. However, we remain thankful that God has swiftly provided us with a great replacement and we are confident it won’t take her long to learn the ropes.

Sports Outreach and Community Work
Our Dutch interns continue to do a great job in developing the programme we deliver. Weike has recently commenced a Mentor Training Programme. This is a six-week course for the four mentors who are young people from the community who help us with the clubs. At the end of the course they will receive a certificate to prove they’ve attended the course. Although the mentors are only half-way through the course they are already showing significant development which is fantastic. We did originally have five mentors but one of them, Reggie, has had to leave because he’s got a job. This is understandable and great news for him, but sad for us as he was great with the kids. Nevertheless we wish him all the best.

Other News

A New Rainbow
This month we have started a new venture in partnership with Abba (A Christian Counseling service here in Grabouw) and the Day Hospital. This is a support group for 9-15 year olds who are HIV positive and who have the added challenge of dealing with their status on top of the usual teenage issues. Although in it’s infancy, it is already proving to be very successful. Currently 16 kids meet every Friday afternoon at a church in the community and have a couple of hours to hang out together, listen to talks, play games and encourage each other. We believe that it is imperative that a group like this is available for HIV positive children to access. It has been noticed that this age group are the most likely to default on their medication because, as they enter adolescence and become more conscious of the impact HIV can have in their lives, they are choosing not to take it, perhaps because of the stigma that’s still attached to HIV and peer pressure. This is the kind of group that we hope the children who are currently staying at the Village of Hope will be able to join when they get older so that they will have somewhere to go to for support.

The children have chosen a name for their club (Rainbows Smiles) and it’s all thanks to the efforts of our wonderful volunteer, Molly Tokaz, that the group has taken off. Molly has since returned to the United States but has left it in the capable hands of our volunteers, Heather and Simon as well as Johan and Rejoice (who works for Abba).

A New Green-Fingered Friend!
We are also very excited to welcome Heinrich to our team. He has been recruited as our new groundskeeper and will be helping Johan to get our land here at the Village of Hope under control. He has already made good headway in the tidying up of the garden but he does have his work cut out as a lot of what we have here is currently ‘natural landscaping’ (or in other words, lots of overgrown grass and weeds!) Now that we have someone who is able to tend the land we are looking to revisit our vegetable garden and tame the plot into something more respectable! Perhaps one day we will have our very own version of the Garden of Eden – but hopefully with fewer snakes and more clothing!

Volunteers:
Well, we would be in a very tight spot without our volunteers. It’s all hands to the deck with the bosses away. Currently we have three volunteers with us. Katrin, the diplomatic Swiss, who has been volunteering since June; Simon, who arrived from England in mid October and Heather who joined us from Austrailia, via the USA a couple of weeks ago. These guys are such a blessing and help to fill the gaps with competency and enthusiasm. Heather is being ‘trained’ by Katrin to take over her responsibilities because Katrin is leaving in less than a week. We will be very sorry to see her go. Thankfully, she isn’t going far. She and her fiancé are moving to Cape Town and will be starting a family – so we can go and visit whenever we like! Simon leaves just before Christmas but he’s been keeping a blog whilst he’s been here (http://simonthursz-gapyear.blogspot.com/) and Heather is with us until January so will spend Christmas with us.

This month we also had other short-term volunteers: We had a two-week visit from the lovely Liz Dillon. Another Aussie! She was great fun and took everything in her stride. It was also special for us as she was a member of Every Nation in Hammersmith, London and had helped to fundraise for the jungle gym a couple of years ago. Along with Liz we had a mission team from America, the Infocus Church from Augusta, Georgia. They bless us every year with a fantastic group of people and achieved so much in a short space of time working both here and at ThembaCare Grabouw. Thanks guys!

Events

Tim and Maz on Tour
Tim and Maz are now in the UK (and Germany and Holland!) and will be there till mid-December. They are touring the country speaking at churches, small groups and schools. If you want to try and see them along the way then check out their tour dates under this blog post: http://thembavillageofhope.blogspot.com/2011/10/tim-and-maz-on-tour.html to find out when they are going to be near you.

Wholehearted
The South African worship band, Wholehearted, will be accompanying Tim and Maz for a week in December. They have an amazing ministry and if you have the opportunity to get to one of the gigs. Check out their facebook page for all the gigs to find one near you. (http://www.facebook.com/WholeheartedMusic?sk=events) . We were lucky enough to see their warm up gig earlier this month and can safely say that you won’t want to miss out! They will be in Bath, Aylesbury and in various areas of London.

Christmas
Well, it’s just around the corner!.. and we have the perfect solution to those hard-to-buy-for friends and relatives. You can purchase physical Christmas cards for different values that contribute towards things like food, clothing and fuel for Village of Hope. Please email jess@thembalitshauk.org.uk if you are interested. We also have e-gifts available to purchase through eBay. Follow this link for a full list (http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/monte_at_home/m.html?item=290630186720&viewitem&_trksid=p4340.l2562) or check out the event on the Thembalitsha facebook page for more details (www.facebook.com/thembalitshafoundation)

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Give - Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer. Or nominate us as your charity of choice within your church or business.
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents under the ‘Support Us’ page on our website (http://www.thembalitsha.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

walkers tour update II

2011-11-19T12:29:00.001+02:00

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!

Wonder-boy's 2nd Birthday

2011-11-16T20:37:00.000+02:00

Today we have been very excited to celebrate the second birthday of a little boy whom we’ve been looking after since he was just five days old. This precious little one really is one of our miracle children. He came to us because his family weren’t able to care for him correctly: His mother is HIV positive, blind and lives, along with the Grandmother, in a shack in one of the most desperate areas of town. She was not able to feed him properly so she was advised that sugared water would be a good alternative! Needless to say he ended up at the day hospital because he was hypo-glycaemic and then was referred to us by social services.

Babies born to HIV positive mothers have a slim chance of avoiding the virus but they have to wait until they are 12 weeks old to find out for sure one way or the other. We were praying very hard in those few months, asking the Lord to protect him from the virus. So we were over the moon to find that this little boy was, by God's grace, not HIV positive. He is wonder-boy! He is fit and healthy and it has been a pleasure to witness all the exciting developments in his live so far; learning to sit, learning to walk, learning to talk…Although it is sad that he cannot have a typical family around him to celebrate, I think, as far has he is concerned, we are his family. After all, we are all he has ever known!

We continue to work side-by side with the social services for this little one’s best interests and, you never know, by this time next year, wonder-boy might be celebrating his birthday with a family of his very own!….we will just have to wait and see.

walkers tour update.....

2011-11-12T18:48:00.001+02:00

we (tim and maz) have enjoyed a busy week here in england speaking at various events around the country, doing radio interviews and sharing our story about the work that we are involved with in south africa.

to give you a flavor of where we have been and who we have seen we thought that it would be good to provide a short update with some further news of future events where you could come and hear us speak.

last sunday morning we spoke at holy trinity ashby de la zouch with our good friend tim phillips and his wonderful church. we had the pleasure of catching up with an old volunteer from the village of hope, harry hoggarth in loughborough in the afternoon and then stayed the night with tim and sarah where we shared some time with their youth group, 'spagbol'. on monday morning we made the hour long trip down to st mary's primary school in aston le walls and shared at their school assembly.

on tuesday evening we spoke at a cluster group at holy trinity walton street and enjoyed a quick massage on wednesday morning with marianne elias before meeting up with grace perret who will be volunteering with us for 3 months from february.

we had the pleasure of speaking at a student alpha meeting with harry back in loughborugh, which we thought went really well and then journeyed on to spent the night with liz and shaun at cliff college in derbyshire. on friday morning we made what should have been a very scenic drive through the derbyshire dales, however it was a typical late autumn day and the fog kept us from seeing further than a few feet in front of the car.

on friday lunchtime we recorded an interview at UCB radio in stoke with paul hammond, which will be broadcast on his show on the build up to world aids day on the 1st december. we were able to promote the wholehearted tour and left their CD which we hope he will play on his show.

it was great to catch up with my (tim) old colleagues at bartuf in leeds before we met up and shared with jess trigg who's family made us very welcome at their home where we shared with her friends and vicar in mirfield, jess will be volunteering with us for 6 months from january and i am sure she will be a great asset to our team.

saturday morning we made the long trip down to spend time with trefor and mandy, stopping in to meet up with vicky ball, her husband fred and daughter becky who kindly donated some funds to enable us to complete the new german home....

....highlights for the coming week or so.

tomorrow morning we are speaking at the bridge (southcourt baptist church) aylesbury.

monday morning maz is sharing at the school where she worked in whitchurch and in the evening we are really looking forward to catching up with the thembalitshauk board at our board meeting.

tuesday we are going down to bath to see our son chris, claire and grandsons, arriving back in waddesdon to speak at pete and rachel's home group, thursday i (tim) am going to meet up with some old friends at a local pub and friday evening we are sharing with a church in long crendon with our good friend tessa.

we will provide you with another update before we fly out to germany and holland where we will be meeting up with the stuttgart team who will be coming out to build us another accommodation block in early 2012 and the HAN university who provide us with interns at the village of hope.

Y'all come back now, you hear?!

2011-11-08T15:13:00.000+02:00

WeedEat Your Heart Out

Well, the cats might be away working hard in the UK, but whilst they are we mice are scurrying around trying to keep the Village of Hope battleship afloat! - It gets a little crazy at times but we are hanging in there!

Last week we were very excited to welcome a team of 10 amazing people from InFocus church, Augusta, Georgia. InFocus not only support us regularly through an Adopt-A-Cot scheme but also bless us with mission teams every year and they never fail to disappoint. Last year the team knocked down an old braai and built a make-shift access road for the 'poo-truck' and this year they were just as effective. They were out in all weathers strimming and taming the out-of-hand grass and weeds. They repainted the entire outside of the children's unit and laid a stunning tiled floor (DIY SOS-style) for the day room at ThembaCare Grabouw.....all in five days! On top of that they were also able to spend time visiting outpatients with the ThembaCare carers and playing with our kids in the children's unit and in our sports outreach.

The whole team were great fun to have around and we enjoyed their banter and attempts at the British accent.

Thank you, guys! - And don't stay away too long.

To read more about what the team got up to in their time here visit their blog:

http://thetrackingblog.com/lovebeyond/

October News

2011-10-30T09:58:00.000+02:00

Once again we find another month flew by here at the Village of Hope, Maz’s sister, Viv, and brother in law, Mark, have been visiting the project on a sort of ‘holiday’ so Tim and Maz have enjoyed a few days away in the Cederberg mountains with them, which they tell us was beautiful....maybe because of the lack of mobile reception!?

This month our headline news must be the final completion of the house that was built by the team from Stuttgart earlier this year. Rob and Emily are thrilled to finally be in. We are also pleased to announce the appointment of a Nursing Sister to assist with the medical side of the children who live with us. Sister Portia will be shared between us and Thembacare Grabouw, where she will oversee our Home Based Palliative Care Team. She comes highly recommended and we are already seeing the benefits of having a professional nurse around the place.

The wider Thembalitsha Foundation held their ‘staff party’ at the Erinvale Golf Club, in Somerset West, and all of our staff were able to attend that. We enjoyed a hearty brunch and were entertained by some of the project managers who performed a variety of songs and skits...Tim and Maz ‘performed’ a version of ABBA’s ‘I have a dream’ with Maz in full 70’s regalia and Tim dressed up as an Angel, prancing round with his halo and wings!.....say no more.

Children’s Unit
Our little ones continue to challenge and amaze us. This month one of our little girls was readmitted to Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, with suspected Hepatitis, brought on by her immune system being suppressed with the HIV that she suffers from. Maz was trying to register one of our other little girls into a local crèche and found out that she didn’t even have a birth certificate. These things are sent to try us but we take each day as it comes and amazing things seem to happen. We thank God for these little miracles because without Him I am sure we would all give up!
The children enjoyed a week off from school, their spring break. This is always a taxing time for our House Moms who work a 12 hour shift (7am – 7pm) however we were blessed by having some help from our volunteers from the USA who tried to make their lives a little easier by entertaining the children in various ways.

Mark and Viv didn’t sit in the sun all the time, we did keep them busy with a few tasks. Viv helped out in the unit when the team enjoyed their staff party and we were blessed when Mark and his faithful assistant, Viv, turned his hand to the construction of a wooden sand pit, complete with a wishing well style roof to protect the children (and the sand) from the sun...Thanks guys it’s already a hit with the kids.

Sports Outreach and Community Work
During the spring holidays we took a day out to run another ‘Sports Saturday’ which is always a bit of a challenging day for us to organise but to see the smiles on the children’s faces always makes it worthwhile, especially as we held it on a Monday (!) which meant that they had a full day of activities on what can become a bit of a boring time away from school. The event was held at the Elgin Country Club, quite a contrast to the areas and living conditions that these children are used to, but it is so good to be able to bless them with those things that we so often take for granted. Over 130 children joined us for the event, in which we bring together all the different teams/areas that we work with on a weekly basis, we had 11 soccer teams and 6 netball sides and the children played so well in all the tournaments. For the record Hillside boys won the Under 14 soccer, a first for that area which they were so happy about, Iraq won the Under 16 tournament with some stiff completion from our newly found club from Site View. Rooidakke girls won the Netball tournament but were given a good run for their money from Hillside.

We were also able to take a team of under 14 boys to a soccer event held at Santos Football Club in Cape Town, this was part of the South African Police Force campaign ‘sport against crime’. We had a team made up of children from all around Grabouw, each of the teams/clubs /areas that we work with were represented. Whilst it was great to see the children from different colours and cultures come together to represent our town, it was sad to see other teams ignore the under 14 age limit, which meant that our boys lost all 3 of their games. It’s a hard lesson to learn but having good ethics and being truthful often means that you don’t win.......life skill 1...!

Our Dutch students, Wieke and Stephan are proving to be a real blessing and we thank God that he bought them to us at just the right time. They are helping to document the life skills, bible and health awareness programme which we run every afternoon in the community and this will be an amazing resource to pass on to our mentors when they return to Holland in January. They and the other HAN students helped out at the sports day which we were truly thankful for.

Other News
The Straw House:
As we mentioned in our headline news Rob and Emily have moved into the new long term volunteer accommodation, it has taken a little longer than we thought it would but with some designated funding that we received to complete the building we have finally managed to get them into their new home.

Volunteers:
We were blessed with the week-long visit from two of our long term friends from America, Helen and Jen. They joined us here at the Village of Hope and also blessed our Care Workers at Thembacare Grabouw with their fun and sense of humour. We have also been joined by Simon, a young man from England who will be with us until the middle of December....welcome to the team Simon.

Events and other stuff!
Prayer Day:
Our day of prayer this month was very well supported. Thank you each and every one of you who gave up some of your Saturday to lift up our project in prayer. It really means a lot to us to know that we are being supported in this way. If any of you have any feedback from your prayer time please do let us know.

Tim and Maz on Tour:
Tim and Maz are going to be in the UK (and Germany and Holland!) throughout November and some of December. They are going to be touring the country speaking at churches, small groups and schools. If you want to try and see them along the way then check out their tour dates under this blog post: tim and maz on tour to find out when they are going to be near you.

Wholehearted:
The South African worship band, Wholehearted, will be accompanying Tim and Maz for a week in December. They have an amazing ministry and if you have the opportunity to get to one of the gigs (listed in Tim and Maz’s tour dates) then don’t miss it.

World AIDS Day - December 1st:
This is a significant day for our project. Wholehearted will be doing a special gig at Vale of Aylesbury Vineyard Church for us. If you can get there please do. Also, if you are interested in raising funds for us on that day, why not suggest to your local school that they Wear Red for World AIDS Day and each student can choose to donate £1/£2 to be out of uniform? Quite a simple idea but it could be very effective. If you would like any help with fundraising materials please get in touch.

Christmas:
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in Thembalitsha’s hat! We will have alternative gifts available to buy on ebay by the end of this week. These gifts are ideal for hard-to-buy-for relatives this Christmas and start from £5. If you can’t wait to purchase email us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk to find out more, if not, keep your eyes on the blog and on facebook for more information.

Thank You:
Finally we just want to say a big thank you to High Cross Church in Camberley (again) for raising more money for us from their quiz night. High Cross Church have chosen us as their charity to support for the next three years and we are really noticing their impact. You guys are amazing!

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Give - Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer. Or nominate us as your charity of choice within your church or business.
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents under the ‘Support Us’ page on our website (www.thembalitsha.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

Tim and Maz on Tour

2011-10-26T10:30:00.000+02:00

I know you've all been counting down the days until you can see Tim and Maz again....
Well, I am pleased to tell you that it's only two more sleeps until they set foot on UK soil! Whilst they are busy trying to make sure they have handed everything over before they leave (and we are busy panicking about what to do when they do!) I thought I would let you know their tour details so that you can find out when you can see them. I have not put the full information on here (such as all the addresses etc) but if would like further details then please email me: office@thembalitshauk.org.uk and I will be happy to fill you in. Please try and see them if you can. They would love to see you and also have some amazing new stories to share from the project.

Here goes:

Sun Oct 30
AM Vale of Aylesbury Vineyard Church

Sun Nov 6 10:00am – 12:00am
AM Holy Trinity Church, Ashby De La Zouch
PM Loughborough

Mon Nov 7
AM Banbury

Thu Nov 10
PM Student Alpha, Loughborough

Fri Nov 11
PM Huddersfield

Sun Nov 13
Durham TBC

Mon Nov 14
AM Whitchurch School

Fri Nov 18
PM Long Crendon

Sun Nov 20
AM Winslow Vineyard Church

Mon Nov 21 – Sat Nov 26
Germany/Holland, visiting universities and ex volunteers, attending Dutch fundraising event

Wed 31 Nov
PM Gig and talk with Wholehearted, TBC

Thu Dec 1
PM World AIDS Day Event and Gig with Wholehearted, Aylesbury Vineyard

Fri Dec 2
PM Gig and talk with Wholehearted, Every Nation, Hammersmith

Sat Dec 3
PM Gig and talk with Wholehearted, TBC

Sun Dec 4
AM Every Nation, Hammersmith
PM Every Nation, Hammersmith

new wholehearted video shoot

2011-10-20T18:37:00.001+02:00

set up day 1 in waterworks

as part of our fundraising drive for the work that thembalitsha is doing in grabouw, via thembacare and village of hope, and the wider foundation with the other 5 projects in the western cape, we are once again partnering with the amazing south african band from somerset west called 'wholehearted', these guys filmed a music video with us last year (see youtube link here) and they have been visiting us and the communities that we work in to shoot a new video for a song that will be used to tell the story of the day to day lives of thousands of people in our town and other such towns like grabouw throughout south africa.

red ballons on some homes used to tell part of the story

yesterday afternoon and all day today we have been filming in the waterworks informal settlement, using everyday people to tell their everyday stories, we also shot part of the film with the soccer club that we run in the iraq informal settlement and also had help from the careworkers and house moms at thembacare and the village of hope.

soccer outreach with the kids in iraq

we were blessed to have the support of the whole community where we were filming and they were very keen in appearing in a film that will be used to support the work that we are doing to bring healthcare and education to literally hundreds of people like them, be they family, friends or neighbours.

as soon as the dvd is released we will be posting it on youtube for you to view but as you can see we have posted a few photos showing the filming and the team who are sold out to make a difference in the very lives of the people who appear in the dvd.

jesmond team put video on youtube

2011-10-19T19:04:00.001+02:00

this afternoon andy greenshields place a video montage that he had put together of the trip he made with the rest of the team from jesmond/newcastle to the village of hope earlier this year. if you wanna have a look at what mission teams get up to when they come to serve the community via our thembalitsha projects here in grabouw then please follow this link to andy's youtube post.

thanks andy and its great to have a record of what you did for us and our community.

sport against crime

2011-10-17T17:03:00.000+02:00

a rare corner for grabouw, the boys in blue!

as part of our community outreach i (tim) sit on the grabouw community police forum and on saturday we (the village of hope sports outreach team, our local mentors and our two dutch students from the HAN university) along with the local grabouw police station took a team of fifteen under 14 boys to play in a soccer tourament in cape town. around 16 police stations took part in this event from all over the cape metro and overberg region, the event was all part of the poilce campaign 'sport against crime' and was sponsored by shoprite and coke.

the boys looking a little
dejected after their defeat.

the tournament took place at the santos football club in lansdowne and the well manicured pitches were a little different to those that we are used to practice on in grabouw, in fact it was the first time some of the boys had put a real pair of boots on.

our team of 15 boys were chosen from the 5 different areas that we work in each afternoon, hillside, site view, waterworks, iraq and remhoogte farm in elgin, it was great to see the boys from the different areas come together to play as a team and practice some of the soccer and life skills that we have been working on within our weekly programme. unfortunately we didn't win the tournament but we did have a good time and we hope that next year the other teams will play by the under 14 rule which should enable us to win a few games!

as a prize from us each of the boys was able to keep the chelsea shirts that were donated to us by our good friend matt walker (no relation) which they were very pleased with...thanks matt.

vineyard workers!

2011-10-14T18:54:00.001+02:00

contrary to popular belief our intrepid assistant pastors from the vale of aylesbury vineyard (not the wine type!), aka mark and viv knight, aren't just sitting around and or sightseeing in our wonderful spring weather, no they have been very busy building a much needed sand pit for our children to enjoy this summer. we might post some further photos of the finished item but here is mark giving it the final coat (in his coat as today the weather broke!)....thanks guys, come back soon.

a new volunteer arrives

2011-10-12T17:29:00.000+02:00

simon helping with our tea time!

we are so pleased to welcome our new volunteer, simon, onto the village of hope team, he will be with us for a couple of months and come over to us via his good friend and one of our ex-volunteers, harry who was with us in 2010 and did a crazy bike ride fundraiser for us earlier this year.

simon has hit the floor running and was found this evening helping out in our children's unit at tea time, we hope that he continues to bond well with the children and look forward to him getting involved with our sports outreach in the community.

staff party

2011-10-10T11:30:00.004+02:00

the village of hope team, less me, looking fine and dandy!

last friday we held our 2011 staff party at the wonderful erinvale golf estate in somerset west, each of the 7 thembalitsha projects were present, in total around 130 people including our 10 wonderful house moms, johan our maintenance coordinator, mel kidd, me and maz.

the day started with a delicious hot and cold brunch, followed by update reports given by each of the projects, it was great to hear from each of the projects, it gave us a real feel of family and highlighted the amazing work that thembalitsha are doing to help the most needy people and children in the western cape.

we really wanted the staff to feel special and for them to see a lighter side of the management, therefore after the reports we were entertained by some of the project managers who performed a little ditty, me and maz tried our best to ruin ABBA's 'i have a dream'...maz looked wonderful in her 70's gear complete with blonde wig and tight hot pants....you don't wanna know what i was wearing and thankfully there will never be any pictures published of that on this blog anyways!

after the entertainment we had a short awards ceremony, some awards were very serious such as a long service award and johan received ours for 'all the hard work he puts in to save us money with his ingenious ways of mend and fix', our house mom franjoleen received an award as 'most competitive mom at the children's parties'....yes some where a little less serious!

it was great that all of our staff could come together and celebrate all the wonderful things that each of the projects have achieved over the last year, it is a privilege to be part of this foundation and to work with some of the most inspiring people on this earth.

sports saturday on a monday!?

2011-10-03T18:43:00.000+02:00

waiting for their awards

sorry for the lack of posts/updates from the village of hope. maz' sister viv and our brother in law mark from the vale of aylesbury vineyard (church, not wine estate) have joined us for a 3 week trip to see what we get up to and at the back end of last week we managed to get away for a few days, enjoying some time of rest and relaxation.....but we are back now and the updates should come through thick and fast again.

our 'first day back' was a busy one, not only catching up on emails and all those things we missed last week but running a sports day for the 6 clubs that we run each and every term time afternoon.

i must say a huge thanks to our two new dutch students, stephan and wieke, who along with emily and our local mentors, did a great job of planning and prepping the day, and not to take anything away from any of our previous students they have left an amazing legacy of documentation both physical and electronic which will make our lives a lot easier in the future.

hillside boys with their winning football shirts

the day began with the collection of the children from 5 pick up points in the formal and informal settlements around grabouw, our farm team was transported by their own transport. whilst we picked up the kids, the set up team got busy 'setting up' the pitches and organising the kits that each of the teams would wear. the sports outreach team, mentioned above, were joined by kat, mark, jen and a handful of other dutch students who would be the 'team managers'. we even had a visit from the children we look after at the village of hope, which was really special.

after the 130 children had arrived, prayers were said, kits handed out and the games began, we held a huge netball tournaments for the girls, with 7 teams taking part, and two groups of boys football, an under 14 and an over 14 tournament. made up of a total of 11 teams.

the joy, noise and sportsmanship that surrounded the elgin county club during the morning was amazing, all the children behaved really well, they played hard but fair and the standard of skill that was shown was something to behold, we are very proud of them that they are learning the sports, life and lifestyle skills that we speak to them about each and every week.

we were served a hot dog lunch, with rolls sponsored by the local spar and Vienna's from the roundtable, and after a short presentation/game from some of the other dutch (HAN) students about the need to collect rubbish and recycle the winners of the sports tournaments were announce.

for the record, the rooidakke girls team won the netball from a hard fought hillside team in second place in the league, and for the first time a team from hillside won the under 14 league, they were blessed with an A and B side, and iraq won the over 14 league with our new team from site-view coming a strong second.

the winning teams were presented with a soccer shirt (we wont mention their name on this blog but they come from west london and aren't my favorites (me being a QPR fan!).....but the kids really appreciated the thought and we hope that we will be able to repeat this again very soon.

gateway to the great outdoors!

2011-09-23T14:02:00.001+02:00

justin and the sunset

our mission team (all three of them, justin, sue and amanda) from gateway ministries in aylesbury have almost come to the end of their very short trip with us. we hope that they have had a good time, we have certainly kept them busy with some DIY work that needed to be completed here at the village of hope and some spirtitual things in our community.

painting the front entrance wall!

each of their days has been very varied, from playing with the children in our unit, to painting the front entrance wall which was showing some signs of the winter weather, leading the thembacare service on wednesday afternoon and helping our with community work at thembacare, our sports outreach clubs and soup run. we also got time to travel down to false bay to watch the sunset, as you can see justin enjoyed himself.

sports outreach iraq

we hope that this will be the first of their trips to serve us and we look forward to seeing them very soon when we (me and maz) return to the UK later in the year on our 'fundraising tour'.

love is in the air....!

2011-09-22T09:33:00.001+02:00

the village of hope has been blessed with literally hundreds of volunteers since we took our first steps as a project nearly 3 years ago, they are the life blood of the work we do here and we love hosting people who want to get involved in the lives of the children that we serve, not only here on the project, but also in the community via our sports outreach and at our sister project thembacare in grabouw.

as you can imagine spending time serving certainly has in impact into many of our volunteers lives and over the years we hear stories from lots of them that speak about 'rediscovering themselves', 'understanding the love God has for africa' or 'Gods love for the children that we look after', but never in our wildest dreams did we ever consider that the village of hope would be a place where two young people not only found God in a deeper way but also found their partner for life.

on sunday evening we had a wonderful skype call with two of our volunteers, both of whom have served with us and with thembalitsha in the past, who over their summer break spent time with us again this year and, without it being too obvious to some of us, fell in love in a way that has meant that they have committed their lives and love to each other....yes that's right folks we could be seeing our first village of hope wedding in the very near future!

we are so please for tyler and britton, we wish them all the best for the plans for their wedding and hope that they might be able to join us for at least part of their honeymoon....well done guys you are true stars and we thank God that we were just a small part of your big story, God bless you both.

new baby with new volunteers

2011-09-20T10:11:00.000+02:00

amanda with our new arrival

on sunday afternoon we welcomed justin and sue, our friends from aylesbury gateway church, along with their friend amanda, also from aylesbury. they will be with us for just one week but as always things are never quiet here at the village of hope and by monday afternoon they had been able to welcome a new baby girl into our children's unit.

we are hoping that this cute little girl will be with us on a short placement, but as with most of our children things are never that simple. that said she is settling in well and the other children are making her feel welcome, we will keep you updated on her progress.

September News

2011-09-16T11:49:00.000+02:00

Please consider supporting this day by giving up 30 minutes of your Saturday, on 15th October, to pray for the project. Signing up is easy: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/prayer66 and we will be posting prayer points very soon.

In the meantime here's all our other news......

News
Phew! Is it nearly October already?!

This month has been happily hectic but here are the highlights:
We have some wonderful news to share about our two brothers (see the Children’s Unit update), Maz is thankful that Mel is back, Arron has been away completing his sailing training, we’ve welcomed two new Dutch students and said goodbye to Britton….

The boys with their sister and foster Dad

Children’s Unit
Our children’s unit continues to be the main focus of attention here in Grabouw and each and every day presents itself with its own challenges. However this month we can share some amazing news: Our two little brothers, aged 4 and 2 years, now have a new family to care of them. This new family lives in Khayelitsha, the largest township in Cape Town with around 1.5 million people living in little more than a shanty town, however there are some wonderful people who live there and to find two of them, a Mom and Dad, is great news! We originally took the boys in last year because their home was found to be at risk by social services – Their parents were alcoholics and using drugs and one of the brothers is HIV positive. We were only supposed to have them for a few months, but as often happens here, the courts couldn’t come to a resolution until now. The new home for the boys is run by another NGO who we work closely with and we will make regular home visits to ensure that the boys settle well. The other fantastic news is that they are also going to be living with their baby sister, whom they hadn’t met before because she was removed at birth to another emergency care home. God is good!

Our other remaining children provide us with challenges. Many of them are HIV+ and that always means that we are kept on our toes and our house Moms, led by Maz and Mel, do a fantastic job ensuring nothing gets missed and that all the children are well stimulated both physically, emotionally and spiritually.

It seems that we have had birthdays galore but with 9 children, 10 house moms and a team of volunteers that isn’t surprising. It’s always a good excuse for us to spoil the children, which we love doing!

With the two brothers gone they were our 20th (yes 20th can you believe it?!) placement since we opened. We now have space to offer hope to another little one and Maz is busy informing those that place children with us of that fact. One thing’s for sure, in a town like Grabouw, the space won’t be open for long.

Sports Outreach and Community Work
We are very excited to receive our two new Dutch students from the HAN university in Holland. Stephan and Weiker will be with us for 5 months and they are already having a major impact on our sports outreach clinics with fresh ideas to encourage the children that we work with. They’ve also been inspiring us and the local mentors who make up the team providing this ‘service’ to the 5 areas in Grabouw: Hillside, Iraq informal settlement, Waterwerks, Site View and Rooidakke (Netball only) as well as our outreach onto a farm in the Elgin Valley.

The amount of girls joining us to play netball, especially in Iraq, continues to encourage us and as we said last month it is wonderful to be able to provide these girls with a bit of ‘them’ time as they spend a whole day at school and then have to complete ‘chores’ when they get home. This could be collecting water from the local standpipe with 25liter buckets or preparing the meal for the family and often means that they arrive late. But to see them enjoying the games that we prepare for them is such a blessing and encourages us to ‘keep going’ as we seek to build valuable lessons into their tough lives. Last week we were able to pray specifically with some of the children who were feeling unwell or injured. Quite often they turn up with burns or blisters on their arms and legs where they’ve spilt boiling water when cooking.

Our Under 14 boys will be taking part in a soccer tournament run by Santos (a premier league side in Cape Town) in October. We will be playing against other teams from around the Western Cape and our team will be made up of the different cultures and tongues which make up the town of Grabouw. Most of our boys don’t own school shoes let alone football boots, therefore we are still looking for second hand soccer boots, sizes 2 – 7 (UK), which we will use for this tournament. If you have access to an old pair and live within kicking distance of Grabouw/Cape Town then we would love to hear from you. You could always post them too!

Our outreach into the community doesn’t end with sports. We are also involved in delivering soup from a local restaurant into a couple of soup kitchens and crèches each and every Friday. Last week we were able to bless around 50 children with a hand knitted teddy made by the local ‘teddy bear club’. For some, even younger teenagers, this would probably be the first teddy that they have ever owned. It was such a privilege to be able to provide these children with a little bit of love.

Other News
We shall miss Britton, who was with us for 3 months. She has returned to America to complete her studies, but we hope to see her (and maybe her new husband?) next year! Kat continues to provide Maz and Mel with support for the children in our unit and helps out with some of our sports outreach in the afternoon. We were joined by a young lady from Brazil for a couple of weeks and she is keen to bring some more of her friends over to work with us in the future.

Unfortunately our two pigs had become so greedy that we don’t have enough scraps to feed them, so we had to send one away to the butcher! But we know that the children will once again look forward to their bacon sandwiches!

The ‘German home’ is coming along very well and with some designated funding we have employed some local guys to come and help sort the kitchen, finish the lime, straw and sand mix walls and enable us to finally get into the home. We can’t wait to show you some photos of the finished building which we are so grateful for.

Events
Thanks to all of you who came and supported Rock for Thembalitsha in Aylesbury, despite the rain! Thanks also to Melissa Bassil, the organiser and all the bands that gave their time to play at the event as well as the other volunteers who lent a hand.

Also, thank you to the folks at Highcross Church in Camberley who raised £750 through a sponsored walk as well as two members of their congregation who asked for donations to us instead of presents for their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Not forgetting Viv Knight who’s raised £350 through a cake sale! Thank you all you fabulous people for your efforts.

VILLAGE OF HOPE DAY OF PRAYER
As we mentioned before, please support our prayer day on Saturday 15th October. Our previous prayer day earlier this year was really fruitful and we very much appreciated being lifted up in prayer for 24hrs. It reminded us that we needed to keep prayer at the top of the agenda. Sign up here: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/prayer66. We will be posting prayer points very soon.

NOVEMBER: Tim and Maz back in the UK
Yes, you will be treated to another visit from the Walkers! They are going to be in the UK all of November. Please let us know if you would like them to come and visit you! They are available for church talks, house groups, schools. They really do have amazingly inspirational testimonies from their life in South Africa and would welcome the chance to share them. They will also be accompanying Wholehearted.

DECEMBER: Wholehearted band on tour
If you haven’t already heard of Wholehearted or read about them on our blog then where have you been?! Not only do these guys have a great sound but they are fantastic supporters of our cause and are going to be touring England for a week at the beginning of December. If you are keen to hold a Wholehearted gig at your church or school then please email emily@thembalitsha.org.za as soon as possible. When you book Wholehearted you will get a Tim and Maz appearance in with the deal! You can find out more and hear their sound at www.wholehearted.co.za
If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

CHRISTMAS:
Yes, well it isn’t far away and we have the perfect solution to those hard-to-buy-for friends and relatives. You can purchase Christmas cards for different values that contribute towards things like food, clothing, fuel for Village of Hope. Please email jess@thembalitshauk.org.uk if you are interested. We will also be running the alternative gifts again which you can buy through ebay so keep your eyes peeled!

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents under the ‘Support Us’ page on our website (www.thembalitsh.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

soup and teddies

2011-09-13T09:40:00.000+02:00

each and every friday we deliver soup into the community, we support two projects, a multi purpose centre in rooidakke and a small creche in the iraq informal settlement. last week we were not only able to provide the hot soup to these precious children, which is donated from the local rose and bull restaurant, but we also gave out some hand made teddies to the children which had been given to us by the local round table.

the teddies were made by the local 'teddy bear club' and we were able to get these to those children most in need, to see even grown boys of 11 and 12 years old receiving a teddy and hold it close to their hearts was a special experience, to think that these kids might not have ever had their own teddy before was somewhat humbling and we hope to be able to do this again some day.

4th birthday parties

2011-09-08T16:18:00.000+02:00

opening presents and eating cake...
..that's what birthdays are all about!

there never seems to be an end of our birthday celebrations, each and every month one or more of our children seem to have their birthdays, these are always precious times and maz and the team ensure that the birthday boys or girls are made to feel really special.

this week we held a birthday party for one of the little girls who has been with us from our opening day, looking back at some of the old photos it's hard to believe that this 18 month old is now 4 years old. we have obviously shared some real highs and some lows. we will never forget the first few months that she was with us, having to be fed through a stint as her fetal alcohol syndrome had caused some major issues with her swallowing, in fact it was thought that she would have to live with this all her life so to see her tucking in to her party food and drink was especially moving.

please keep following the progress of our children via this blog and if you would like to help support our work financially to enable us to help even more children like our 4 year old girl, then please visit either www.thembalitsha.org.za or www.thembalitshauk.org.uk

sports clinics

2011-09-06T17:36:00.000+02:00

behind the goal during shooting practice in iraq
informal settlement in grabouw

i think monday and tuesday afternoons are my favorite times of my week, although we run sports clinics for the children in grabouw each and every afternoon in 6 different areas monday and tuesday's are the only two days that i can commit to.

yesterday we had a wonderful time in hillside with around 50 children, both boys and girls, coming to play soccer (sorry football) and netball, and today we had about the same number in the iraq informal settlement. the kids we work with are so precious, many of them come from very difficult family situations, often living with many people in a single room tin shack or breeze block home, but the smiles on their faces when they see our team turn up is what makes the days so special.

this afternoon we were able to share the bible scripture about using the whole armour of God to protect ourselves against the evil that is part of our daily lives and i was able to pray for one little guy who had really bad tooth ache, we stood together and asked God to heal this guy, i pray that our prayers were heard and that his faith in Christ will restore what has been making his life a little tougher.

we see sport as a great medium to engage with the children, this enables us to get along side them, show them respect and teach them in a holistic way ideas that will help their educational, emotional, physical and spiritual growth.....

sad goodbyes, but happy futures await....

2011-09-02T09:56:00.000+02:00

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.

if you are in aylesbury on sunday....

2011-09-01T10:48:00.000+02:00

this sunday some friends from our jolly little village in england have arranged a rock gig that will take place in aylesbury market square on sunday afternoon, it's a free event but there will be people selling raffle tickets and holding collecting tins to raise funds for the work we do here in south africa.

so if you are in the aylesbury area and want to rock your sunday afternoon please feel free to join us and in the process support children and adults infected or affected by HIV.

crazy days.....but still loving it!

2011-08-26T18:12:00.001+02:00

creche in iraq squatter camp with
the soup in the buckets in the foreground

today has felt like a week in one day....so many things have happend during my day, stresses, strains, highs and lows, but one thing that bought me back down to earth with a big bump was around lunchtime when i was able to 'do' the soup run.

the soup run is a 'service' that we have been providing for a couple of years now and is a partnership between us and the rose and bull restaurant here in grabouw, in fact all we do is transport the soup to those in real need of a balance meal and we have been totally blessed by doing this.

lines of adults and children at the
multipurpose centre, rooidakke

today i was running around like a headless chicken, meetings here, there and everywhere and was slightly late with the delivery, as i arrived at the multipurpose center in rooidakke i was greeted by lines of adults and children waiting for the arrival of the soup, perhaps the only meal that many of them will have today.

i hope the photos show the huge need that we have here in grabouw and it is only our pleasure for the village of hope to provide this to our needy communities, non of this is for our own gain, we are just here to serve!

our new dutch students get involved....

2011-08-25T17:46:00.002+02:00

wieke with two of the children

this week we have been joined by our latest students from the HAN university in holland, stephan and wieke (with a 'w') will be working with us on our sports outreach into the community. they are both studying sports and sports management and are the 4th set of students that we have been blessed with.

they have helped at a couple of our sports clubs already however today the students spent the morning with our thembacare careworkers in the formal and informal settlements as they (the careworkers) visit the patients living with HIV and TB, it's always challenging to see the real side of grabouw but i hope it opened up their eyes to the problems that we face in our town.

stephan proving a real hit with the kids

this afternoon they joined us at one of the sports outreaches at a farm in the elgin valley, where they engaged with the children and helped deliver our lifeskills and lifestyle programme. i hope they will be ready for next week when they will really get their hands dirty as they help us serve the kids in our community with a well constructed and life enhancing programme which uses sport to relate with the kids in a positive way.

our brothers meet their new family!

2011-08-23T18:28:00.000+02:00

the boys enjoy a cup of coffee with
their sister (enjoying the bottle) and their new dad

the boys new mom and dad, with their sister.

we have been providing a loving home for two brothers for the last year or so, their family background is very difficult and whilst they still have parents they are not able to care for them due to wider health and social issues. the brothers also have a baby sister that they have never seen, well not until today!

maz has been working very hard with both our local and regional social workers to find a new home not only for the boys but also one where they will be reunited with their sister in a new family.

we have a wonderful relationship with another ngo (non governmental organisation) called home from home, who we have successfully placed our 9 year old girl with and this afternoon the boys met their new mom and dad at their home in khayelitsha (cape town's biggest township)....

...it was a very special meeting and one that we will be working to a fully integrated placement by the end of next week....we need to take things slowly and today the boys were able to see their new bedroom and explore the home with the knowledge that they will be going back for a longer visit this weekend as the new parents take them under their wing to become an whole new family.

please pray with us that this couple will provide that love, care and stability that this little guys have missed from their natural parents....thanks

ever wondered what a short term mission team gets up to?

2011-08-22T17:29:00.001+02:00

last month we had the pleasure of welcoming joe williams and his team from jesmond onto the thembalitsha projects here in grabouw (see post here about their arrival). one of the team, andy, has made a short account of their trip, which we have posted below. i hope this will give you some idea of what our short term mission teams get up to and will help you see the benefits to both them and to the community that we serve.

Andy’s Africa Account

Our  time  at  the  farm  mainly  consisted  of  2  duties,  helping  the  ‘house  moms’  and  painting  the  house.  Helping  out  the  ‘House  Moms’  look  after  the  children  was  very  tiring  at  first because  they  were  so  energetic!  It  was  also  great  to  see  a safe  haven  for  them. 

We  worked  to  decorate  an old  house  that  was  being  converted  in to  a  new  office;  again  this  was  another  time  to  see  the  team  work  together  productively.  Although  some  would  say  equal  amounts  of  paint  ended  up  on 
the  floor  tiles  than  the  walls!  

I  was  also  privileged  to  accompany  a  couple  of  the  Themba‐care  Nurses  on  one  of  their  rounds  of  the township,  Rooidakke.  Feeling  slightly  daunted  as  I  was  split  from  Izze, I  joined  8  Nurses  and  we  headed  out in  a  Combi  (van).  It  was  a  relief  when  the  2  Nurses  and  myself got  out  in  the  township  to  do  the  round.  The aim  was  to  check  that  the  patients  were  taking  their  medication  and  that  their  prescriptions  were  in  order.  What  they  explained  and  became  obvious  as  the  morning  went  on  was  the  problem  of  relocation.  The  government  had  a  housing  improvement  plan  where  they  were  building  new  houses  for  those  living  in 
shacks.  However  this  was  proving  problematic  in  finding  some  patients.  Moreover  I  was  astonished  by  the  commitment  and  professionalism  of  the  Nurses  as  they  were  coming  to  work  immaculate  dressed  and  yet  they  too  were  living  in  the  Townships. 

We  also  spent  time  helping  to  run  a  holiday  club  for  a  local  church.  This  was  great  to  harness  all  our  individual 
skills  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  children.  The  first  couple  of  days  were  mayhem  but  we  soon  settled  in  to  a 
routine:  running  games,  teaching  them  songs,  crafts  and  everyday  we  managed  to  give  a  short  Bible  Message.  Some  of  the  older  children  could  understand  English  so  we  pray  that  the  seeds  we  sowed  in  those  2 weeks  can  grow.

We  also  had  great  time  of  relaxation  and  fellowship  in  our  time  off. 

Highlights  include  standing  on  top  of  Table  Mountain,  seeing  penguins  at  our  feet  and  celebrating  the  4th
 July  on the  farm  with  the  kids  and  the  American  Volunteers,  Britton  and  Tyler.    In  addition  each  evening  we 
had  a  time  of  study,  alternating  between  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  Tim  Keller’s  book,  ‘Counterfeit 
Gods’. These  were  great  times  to  focus our  work  on  God  amongst  the  excitement  of  the  trip  and  spend  time 
learning  from  each  other.  In  each  morning  meeting  we  would  close  with  The  Lords  Prayer  and  this  was  great as  it  made  me think  on  each  sentence  and  gain  a  deeper  understanding  of  God’s  sovereignty  at  the  start  of 
each  day. 

I  had  a   great  time  with  Joe,  Izze,  Lucy,  Beth,  Jen  and  Jasper  learning  from  and  assisting  in  the work  of  the  Village  of  Hope.  Many  thanks  go  to  Tim  and  Maz  for  their  hospitality  and  the  great  encouragement  they  are  in  being  a  light  of  God  in  Grabouw.  A  connection  with  the  project  has  been  made  and  I  hope  to  support  it  more, it  will  always  be  in  my  prayers  and  I hope  to  return.  

One  thing  that  it  has  taught  me  is  that  although  I  have  my own  difficulties  they  are  nothing  in  comparison  to  the  needs  of  those  in  Grabouw,  I  have  nothing  to  worry  about.   It  is  my  prayer  that  the  Lord  continues  to  bless  The  Village  of  Hope.

thanks for the brief but positive account andy, and we hope to see you again very soon.

August News

2011-08-16T21:30:00.002+02:00

Yes, Tim and Maz are going to be at your disposal throughout November and early December so if you want them to come and pay you a visit just drop us an email. We’ve also got bands doing gigs to raise money for us and another day of prayer coming up. Make sure you check out the ‘events’ section of this post so you don’t miss out!

It’s wonderful to have Rob and Emily back with us from their 4 week trip to England. Mel has been away for a few weeks on a funding support trip to the USA so our long term team, which completed by Arron and Johan, is still down one member. That said we have had some wonderful support from Britton, Tyler (who’s brother and father joined him for a few days from Dallas), Barbara Wood who has returned for the third time, Katrin who is serving with us for 6 months and Claire who is staying with her Grandmother in town...so once again it has been a very busy time!

Children’s Unit
Our top news story is that our 11-year-old boy has returned from his ‘holiday’ at Thembacare Athlone, following his time in hospital with further respiratory problems. We had a good meeting with the team from the Red Cross children’s hospital who were happy for us to provide that special care that he needs. Unfortunately he is now constantly on oxygen so his attendance at school is restricted, however he is so glad to be back home with Mommy Maz and the wonderful house mom’s who care for him so well.

With our 11-year-old being away for all that time we did have some space to take in another little boy, aged about 1 year, who’s mother had abandoned him with his Grandmother, who was sick herself with TB. Therefore we have shifted a few beds and cots around to help us provide beds for the 10 little children who live with us at the Village of Hope.

This new boy should only be with us for a short time as we have already made contact with the family who really do want to care for him. Please pray for his family that they might understand the responsibility that they have towards this boy.

All of our House Mom’s have been now completed the St John’s First Aid course. It’s good to have a full team back together. These ladies, who all live in the community, do an amazing job for us, looking after the needs of our children on a 12 hour shift is not an easy job.

The children (of school age) have been back for a couple of weeks, and we were able to secure a place for our little 4-year-old boy to join the other children at school. He had been so excited about going to school (and had been on the school run, just for the ride, for over 6 months) but when the volunteer led him into his class for the first time tears filled his eyes and he wasn’t quite sure what to do! By the time we collected him he had a smile on his face and was full of stories about the new friends he had made and the exciting things that he had done. It’s so special to be able to offer these children the ‘normal’ experiences that we all take for granted.

Sports Outreach and Community Work
Our sports outreach clubs started again after the winter holidays. We can’t wait till the next Dutch students join us next week! Our ‘skeleton’ staff of Arron, Emily, Kat and Britton are joined each week by our local sports mentors, Justin, Roger, Michael, Reggie and Lee who are all pupils at the local schools. These guys do a great job for us and have enabled us to continue to provide clubs in each of the 5 areas in Grabouw: Hillside, Iraq informal settlement, Waterwerks, Site View and Rooidakke (Netball only) as well as our outreach onto a farm in the Elgin Valley.

We have been excited about the amount of girls joining us to play netball, especially in Iraq. These girls spend a whole day at school and then have to complete ‘chores’ when they get home. This could be collecting water from the local standpipe with 25 litre buckets or preparing the meal for the family. They often arrive late because of this but to see them enjoying the games that we prepare for them is such a blessing and encourages us to ‘keep going’ as we seek to build valuable lessons into their tough lives.

We still continue to ask for second hand soccer boots, sizes 2 – 7 (UK), which will enable us to keep a stock for when we play what we hope will be more regular games against other clubs in the local area. If you have access to an old pair and live within kicking distance of Grabouw/Cape Town then we would love to hear from you. However our need is growing for a full time Sports Outreach Co-ordinator, which could be a position that is filled by a local person and or complimented by an Intern who could stay with us for a year’s placement.

Other News
The Straw House:
Tyler, Arron, Johan and Katrin, along with support from Rob and Em, have been busy ‘plastering’ the inside of the new house that was built by the team from Stuttgart earlier in the year. The process involves applying our ‘homemade’ lime, straw and sand mix by hand to the straw walls. Not only is this time consuming but has proved somewhat dangerous with a few people receiving ‘burns’ from the lime.

Volunteers:
Tyler has now left us to return to Dallas. Before he left he was joined by his older brother and father for a few days. It was great for Tyler to be able to show his family around the work that we are doing here in Grabouw and the projects that he has become so involved with. They also cooked us up an authentic Mexican meal before they left bringing all their spices from the States!

We said our goodbyes to Joe and his team from Newcastle, but then had the privilege of welcoming Suzie and her all-female team from the Mid Cities church (the church where Tyler attends in USA) who were over with us for a week.

Events
Well, first of all we have to say a huge congratulations to newly weds Rachel and Neil Thomlinson. But we also want to say a big thank you! Instead of choosing to stock up on crockery and coffee machines at John Lewis they decided to hold their wedding list at Just Giving and give us the money!! Bless you guys!

Another thank you goes to Lisa Smith who braved a sky dive and raised £200. No mean feat (or should it be feet?!)

We continue to be stunned by the lengths you lovely people go to in order to raise funds for us! – Keep it up!!!!

SEPTEMBER: Rock for Thembalitsha
If you are near Aylesbury on 4th September why not rock out and support us at the same time?! There will be 6 live bands playing in the market square from 2pm as well as a BBQ and a raffle (where you can win a large flat scree telly – not bad eh?!)

OCTOBER: Village of Hope Prayer Day
We are holding another prayer day on 15th October. Our previous prayer day earlier this year was really fruitful and we very much appreciated being lifted up in prayer for 24hrs. It reminded us that we needed to keep prayer at the top of the agenda.
You can even sign up now if you like: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/prayer66

NOVEMBER: Tim and Maz back in the UK
Yes, you will be treated to another visit from the Walkers! They are going to be in the UK all of November. Please let us know if you would like them to come and visit you! They are available for church talks, house groups, schools. They really do have amazingly inspirational testimonies from their life in South Africa and would welcome the chance to share them. They will also be accompanying WholeHearted (see below)

DECEMBER: Wholehearted band on tour
If you haven’t already heard of Wholehearted or read about them on our blog then where have you been?! Not only do these guys have a great sound but they are fantastic supporters of our cause and are going to be touring England for two weeks at the beginning of December. If you are keen to hold a Wholehearted gig at your church or school then please email emily@thembalitsha.org.za as soon as possible. When you book Wholehearted you will get a Tim and Maz appearance in with the deal! You can find out more and hear their sound at www.wholehearted.co.za

We are going to be posting these events on the Thembalitsha Facebook page as details develop.

If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents under the ‘Support Us’ page on our website (www.thembalitsha.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted.

how to make someone's day.....provide them with candles and matches!

2011-08-15T19:57:00.000+02:00

barbara and our good friend
outside his small home

you may remember the story about a young 16 year old boy that has become a great friend to me, read the short blog post from december 2010 by clicking here, well yesterday, via some funds that were donated from a generous guy in england we were able to bless this local teenage boy with some basic supplies.

the photos show barbara wood, from aylesbury, southcourt baptist church, with this young guy both inside and outside of his small wooden shack in the zwelitsha (iraq squatter camp) here in grabouw. this guy is such a blessing to me, as he helps me to translate to the younger xhosa speaking kids at our sports outreach each tuesday afternoon.

you couldn't imagine the delight in
receiving a couple of candles and a few matches!

he was so happy with his parcel, which included some tinned and dried food, as well as deodorant and much to his delight some matches and candles. we (thembalitsha/thembacare/village of hope) don't normally hand out support in this direct way, as it can create a culture of reliance upon us to provide, which is obviously unsustainable and doesn't empower people to help themselves, however there are some exceptions to every rule and it was such a humbling experience to know that these few supplies will help this young guy not only to have a fuller stomach and less body odour but also light for him to do his homework in these dark winter evenings!

more birthdays and more fence stolen!

2011-08-14T13:38:00.000+02:00

two year old girl, her mother, our house mom and
other children enjoying a game of pass the parcel

we have been able to celebrate two birthday's this weekend, yesterday i celebrated my 44th birthday with maz and arron, they took me for a wonderful birthday lunch at the guardian peak vineyard near stellenbosch and then we enjoyed an evening of cheese and biscuits with our wonderful volunteers....however that wasn't the main party that we had a the village of hope this week!

on friday we were delighted to have a birthday party for one of our newer children, she came to us a few months ago and has been very ill since she has been with us, ending up in hospital with TB meningitis however it was great to celebrate her second birthday and also welcome her mother, who is also quite sick, to the party. as usual our house mom's and volunteers did an amazing job with lots of party games such as pass the parcel and lots of yummy food.

unfortunately we did suffer another loss of fence and fence posts from around the edge of the property on friday, this is a real pain in the neck and we are wondering what to do to prevent more being stolen. we are trying to make those that steal it realise that they are actually stealing from themselves as we have to spend donated money to replace that which is stolen rather than helping those in need through our two projects (village of hope and thembacare) here in grabouw.

continuing sodexo support

2011-08-08T16:17:00.000+02:00

tim, barbara receiving a donation of food from colin

our long(er) term volunteer barbara wood from southcourt baptist church in aylesbury (where myself and maz were married over 20 year ago) works for sodexo in england and has been instrumental in bringing us together with their local team here in south africa. we first came into contact with sodexo over a year ago and as part of their nelson mandela day commitiment to the local community they encouraged staff to donate dry goods for the continued support of the orphans that live with us on the village of hope.

it was great to meet up with colin from sodexo, who is pictured with me and barbara, who handed over the items that had been donated. it's great to know that there are people in high level industry willing to make a difference to those less fortunate. the support we receive is part of sodexo's wider 'stop hunger' champain and we thank them for getting involved locally.

wholehearted donations via sms?!

2011-08-03T16:23:00.001+02:00

the wholehearted band, who will be touring england with us (tim and maz) in december, are currently on a short tour of south africa, we have set up a simple way of giving via sms (text message) and over the last few days we have received over 50 of these sms' which automatically donate R10 direct to thembalitsha here in south africa.

we have also set up the same system in the UK where you can text a message and donate any amount direct from your mobile phone account, if you don't believe it works or if you would like to make a R10 donation from south africa or any amount from the UK then please follow these simple steps.....and if you are quick you could be the first person to donate from the UK which would prove to us that it is working...go on you know you want to!

from south africa sms HOPE to 38415 and R10 will automatically go to thembalitsha

in the uk text HELP07 £10 (or the amount you wish to donate, which can be from £1 upwards)
to 70070 and that amount is directly sent to thembalitsha via our justgiving site.....

unfortunately nothing like this exists in the USA or around the rest of the world yet however if you want to give online then please go to our justgiving site here!

relaunched thembalitsha web site

2011-08-01T13:28:00.000+02:00

we are pleased to announce that we have relaunched the wider thembalitsha foundation web site, this is something that emily has been working on for a few days (thanks emily) and whilst there are a few further tweaks to make with additional items such as the volunteer testimonies, we are really pleased with the result.

please follow this link to the site and see how the village of hope fits within thembalitsha and be encouraged by the work we are doing to provide new hope to those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS, TB and the disadvantaged here in the western cape.

soccer balls supa quick!

2011-07-29T18:03:00.000+02:00

front page news, along with worries about
the water shortage in cape town!

over the last few years we have been blessed with a constant supply of soccer balls, we have received them from various different sources, FNB (first national bank), BP (petrol station) and various donations from volunteers, this has meant that we have never been in desperate need. however with around 150 children benefiting from our sports outreach programme each week we do tend to need a huge amount of balls, especially if we are doing drills where each child has their own ball. with that and the fact that we do like to bless our most regular kids with a ball that they can play with on the days we aren't in their area, so our 'stocks' tend to deplete very quickly.

at the back end of last month we were discussing whether we needed to set aside some of our cash to go and purchase some balls from the local sports shop to restock our bags but as i was buying some tyres from the local supa quick in grabouw i got chatting with the manager there about how they could help us as we seek to support those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB, he quickly got on to the area manager and within a few weeks had called to say that they had some balls to donate to us.

last monday willie and his family made a visit to the village of hope project to hand out the balls, which we will use in the local community in our training sessions and he also handed out some goody bags to the kids who live with us in the children's unit, the story made the front page of the elgin grabouwer, which you can view by clicking on the image.

thanks willie and the supaquick grabouw team.

precious 11 year old boy returns to village of hope

2011-07-28T14:02:00.000+02:00

arron carries in the oxygen machine as our
11 year old boy returns to the village of hope

for those of you who have been following the story of the village of hope since the beginning or if you have ever visited our project you will know of our wonderful 11 year old boy who seems to capture every ones heart. his story is one that could be made into a movie, he has complex medical condition (which has been documented in an up and coming book about paediatric palliative care) and since arriving at the village of hope in may 2009 from our thembacare unit in athlone he has been in and out of the red cross children's hospital in cape town with various problems.

yesterday myself (tim) and maz had a 2 hour meeting with the various paediatric, infectious diseases and pulmonary doctors at the red cross hospital who are still very concerned about his condition but were happy to allow us to take him 'home' for his ongoing palliative care. he still needs to be given oxygen 24/7 but we feel that we can maintain his medical needs and are so happy that he is back with us.

he said his sad goodbye's to the wonderful team at athlone and jumped into the car to make the hour long journey up the mountain to grabouw. he never stopped talking and can even say 'grabouw', as we arrived we could hear the other children singing his name and he was greeted by all the house moms and the 9 other children who stay with us. it was an emotional return, the other children were waving from the unit window and as soon as he entered the door they came up to him and gave him big hugs and kisses.

we are so glad to have him home and would ask you all to join us in our prayers as we seek to provide a loving home for him and the rest of the children we look after.

first day at school (for our 4 year old)

2011-07-27T11:14:00.000+02:00

its a long way on your own!

this time last year we were able to providing a home to two brothers who had been staying at our thembacare unit in cape town, there was hope that these two could have been reunited quickly with their sister, who is staying at another care home, however as with many of our children's cases these things don't happen as quickly as we would like. their mother is now very very sick and it looks like we might be responsible for these two precious boys for a lot longer than we first thought.

as we didn't expect to have them for so long we held back from placing the oldest one at the local preschool as we didn't want to take up a space that could be used by another child who would be in greater need, however with the change of events maz felt that it would be best (not only for the 4 year old boy who is getting extremely bored by having to stay at home at the village of hope all morning with all the babies when the other older children are at school, but also for our house moms as they were finding hard to keep him from crawling up the walls!) that he was found a place at the school.

well yesterday he had his first day, tyler our longer term volunteer took him to school, and although he looked so grown up with his new school bag and flask full of juice once he knew that he was going to be staying the little guy was totally overwhelmed and burst into tears....shame.

however on his return at lunch time he was full of beans and was excited to tell people about his first morning at school.

fence and post stolen again

2011-07-25T18:29:00.000+02:00

what was left of our security fencing!

have you ever heard the term 'don't bite the hand that feeds you', well that's exactly how we were left feeling over the weekend as we once again found that our fence and posts had been stolen from the southern edge of our property.

the people we serve have desperate lives, which drive them to seek out anything that they can sell for food, drink or drugs to take their mind off the existence that makes up their lives...however what is very hard for us is that it seems like we give with one hand and they bite the other.

i am sure that this is nothing vindictive, but the money that we will now have to spend on replacing the fence, which we installed to provide us and the children we look after with some protection, could have been spent on staff wages, kit for our sports outreach clubs or food for the children!...it's a tough call and a tough world...

mom's plea as home burns down

2011-07-24T08:09:00.000+02:00

we have had a sms (text message) from a mom of one of our 'discharged' children to say that her tin shack burnt down and she is now staying with neighbours. the winter weather, wind and rain has returned to grabouw and people are struggling just to keep warm.

this mom lost everything in the fire, clothes, food, bedding etc, these people have such tough lives anyway without this kind of thing bringing more pain and misery to their lives. we (voh) will be helping out where we can with a small food parcel and some new (second hand) clothing but this type of event is a daily burden that we face....please stand with us as we seek the best way to help those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB.

arron and tyler start the plastering

2011-07-19T13:24:00.000+02:00

arron and tyler getting plastered.

after a succesful test patch we are now confident that the lime, sand and straw plaster mix is ready to be applied to the inside of the new house built by the team from stuttgart university earlier this year.

arron and tyler are now busy getting their hands dirty and applying the mix onto the straw walls. this might take some time, but we hope that once this is completed we will be able to re install the kitchen and then start moving rob and emily (our long term volunteers) into their new home. thus freeing up space in the short term volunteers accommodation.

mid-cities team enjoy their week long trip

2011-07-16T20:41:00.000+02:00

the team at the top of sir lowry's pass

last saturday morning we were joined by 7 young ladies from the mid-cities church in midland, texas, joined us at the village of hope for a week long stay, during the week they were able to bless our community in many different ways, on wednesday afternoon they lead the service at thembacare, grabouw, and gave out goodie bags to our staff, they also helped out with a sports outreach in iraq squatter camp, played with our wonderful babies and children in the unit and completed some much needed maintenance around the 'farm'.

for some of them it was their second visit to work with thembalitsha and for others it was their first time, we were once again sad to say our goodbyes as they made their long trip home, but we hope to see them again in the very near future.

July News

2011-07-15T18:06:00.000+02:00

The roles were reversed this month as Tim and Maz took over from Rob and Em who, along with their two children, made a 4-week trip back to England. Mel, Arron and Johan also maintained the balance of the Village of Hope and we were joined by two longer term volunteers from USA, Britton and Tyler as well as two mission teams. The first team were from Jesmond, Newcastle, England who stayed with us for just under 3 weeks or other team, made up of 7 ladies were from the Mid Cities church in Texas. Yes it has been a very busy time!

Children’s Unit
We still await the return of our wonderful 11 year old boy from his short but much needed stay at Thembacare Athlone. Unfortunately even that team couldn’t prevent him from needing to return to the Red Cross children’s hospital in Cape Town where he had another relapse. His prognosis isn’t great but we really want to make his time special if he is to pass on and we are making all the plans we can to ensure he enjoys his stay with us back ‘home’ at the Village of Hope.

The little girl who was hospitalised with TB meningitis is back with us. She is a real pickle, eats for England, South Africa and the world, given half the chance, but has a beautiful personality which endears her to all who meet her.

Some of our House Mom’s have been on a St John’s First Aid course, which has lasted 3 weeks!, We are very grateful to our volunteers who stepped into the breach on many an occasion. It seems that they really enjoyed it despite the hard work and the children certainly made the most of the extra attention!

The rest of our children have been enjoying their 3-week holiday time in the unusually warm winter weather. It was 27 degrees here on Sunday with beaches crowded. Tim was on weekend duty so didn’t get the chance to enjoy it. Although the sun is shining the ground is still wet and playing out can be somewhat of a messy time....for the kids and moms!

We were sad to say goodbye to Eveline, our student from the HAN University in Holland who has been on a social work placement with us for 10 months. We celebrated with her on her last night which was a very tearful event for everyone. Thanks for the presents Eveline!

However with one goodbye there always seems to be another hello, and we have had the pleasure of welcoming Katrin, from Switzerland, who will be working with us for the next 6 months, she is really fitting in well and it seems like she has been around for ages already.

Sports Outreach and Community Work
We also sad our goodbye’s to our Sports Management students, from the same university in Holland, who have been helping to extend and underpin our sports outreach over the last 5 months. We will really miss Djuri, Jasper and Talitha. They have made a huge difference during their stay, especially with our younger sports mentors who were are working with wherer they have encouraged them to step up and run the sessions. Thanks guys.

The end of June/beginning of July sees another long holiday season here in Grabouw so we have made the most of the break to take some time out from our weekly schedules. However we always seem to be busy in the community. We have continued to meet once a week at the Iraq Squatter camp, where we were able to bless some of our regular children with some warm winter clothes which were donated by the local Round Table.

And we continue to put the advert out for our need of second hand soccer boots, sizes 2 – 7 (UK), which will enable us to keep a stock for when we play what we hope will be more regular games against other clubs in the local area. If you have access to an old pair and live within kicking distance of Grabouw/Cape Town then we would love to hear from you.

Other News
The Straw House:
Tyler has been busy mixing up the lime based substance which will clad the outside of the new house, we have had one test area which worked very well, however the image of the whole house, both inside and out needing to be plastered with this mix (twice) seems a little daunting.

Volunteers:
We celebrated, maybe a little too hard, the 4th of July with our American volunteers, we really did have a party to remember. The fireworks went up and down well, if not with our neighbours, we are sorry guys and now understand that it’s illegal in SA to set them off!

Becca and Rebecca have returned back to Bath we want to thank them for their selfless help. As we said in the intro we have welcomed Joe from Newcastle with his team and we hope that they enjoyed their time with us. Britton continues to work closely with Thembacare but has also undertaken a survey for our which we hope to publish at some time, it’s great to be able to give a task to someone knowing that it will be done to a good standard.

Alternative Gifts:
Thanks to all who brought our Gifts of Hope through Ebay on Father’s Day. The trial seemed to be successful and we are looking to put something more permanent in place for the future. We will keep you posted as we get it up and running. In the meantime, if you are looking for a gift for someone then do email us for more information and we can sort you out!

Events
Huge congratulations to Andy Gilbert and ex-volunteer Harry Hogarth who survived their sponsored cycle from Calais to Lausanne. Through their effort they managed to raise £2000!

Also, Claire Gomulak, Liz Eades, Jess Stratford, Brady Roberts, Dayna Roberts, Sophie Child ran the London 10k Run for us and their blood sweat and tears raised £1500
Thank you so much to all!

If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents from our website (http://www.thembalitshauk.org.uk/). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

new boy is placed at the village of hope

2011-07-12T17:41:00.000+02:00

today we had the opportunity to offer a short term home for a 9 month old boy who is in need of our help due to some unfortunate family circumstances.

it's always good to know that we can offer new hope (thembalitsha means 'new hope' in the xhosa languague) to a child, whether they stay with us for a short 3 month placement or over a longer period, however it's hard to understand the social, medical and cultural issues that the family are facing that mean that we have to provide this home.

we ask you to pray for the family as they seek to get their lives back on track to provide this baby boy with a stable home for his most important years.

new village of hope accommodation video

2011-07-11T09:20:00.000+02:00

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!

making hay (sorry firewood) whilst the sun shines!

2011-07-07T17:18:00.000+02:00

doh...now we've blocked the road we
need to let tim's bakkie out!

it might be winter here but we are enjoying some very warm weather at the moment, however when the sun sets it's getting really cold, hence the need to cut some of our tall pine trees to create so much needed firewood.

arron, tyler and johan have been busy felling some of our older pine trees, please pray for them as they do so!

village of hope goes wimax with telkom...an end to cable theft?!

2011-07-05T18:26:00.001+02:00

red circles don't really exist but show line of sight from
village of hope to hanskop mountain top transmitter

over the last three years we have suffered cable theft of our telephone lines on too many occasions, as you can imagine for a unit that cares for children infected or affected by HIV, AIDS or TB this severely limits our ability to communicate with the wider health and social services...this is compounded by the fact that most of the organisations that we work with still operate on a phone and fax method of communication so email via a cell phone (mobile phone) isn't even an option.

we also try to provide our volunteers with access to the internet, where contact with 'home' is vital to their sanity, therefore there was great rejoicing last week when telkom confirmed that we were being considered for connection to their wimax (wireless phoneline) technology. all we need to confirm was that we were in line of sight of one of their transmitters and we would be linked up.....as anyone who has visited the village of hope knows the mountain range that surround our town has a famous land mark, hanskop, which hosts a large mix of transmitters, towers and radar, and thankfully as the photo shows we are about as close to that mountain as anyone could be....

once all that was confirmed all that was required to save us ever worrying about the cables being stolen again was an engineer to come and put up a 'satelite' style dish on top of the baby unit and hey presto, telephone and internet connection without wires!!!!......

4th of july at the village of hope

2011-07-04T11:31:00.000+02:00

mel, tyler and britton celebrate
the 4th of july with our children

this morning we were greeted by a rendition of 'the star spangled banner' by two of our three volunteers from the USA who are celebrating some sort of independence day?!, they have been busy making crowns and flags with the children and can be seen here with some of the house moms on what must be a very special day for them.

later we are going to be having a 'braaibbq' (yes that is a word) with hot dogs and hamburgers (all the way from hamburg, which is in germany!), along with lots of scary fireworks which i am sure the children will love, we hope!.

to all our american volunteers (i mean those from north america, not including canada), where ever you are in the world, we just want you to know that we are thinking about you today...no really we are!

saying goodbye again...

2011-07-01T11:38:00.000+02:00

elelien and maz sharing stories in the baby unit
with our house moms and other volunteers

we are totally blessed to have so many wonderful volunteers and students who come to serve us at the village of hope project, however as with most good things time catches up with us and departure dates arrive all too soon.

last night we had a good bye braai for one of our dutch students, evelien, who has been with us for the last 10 months as she studies 'social work' at the HAN university. evelien has become a firm favorite not only with the children in our unit but with those we have placed back into the community, she has also made some real ties with our house moms and key members of our team.

she also shares my keen interest in formula one and has been an ever present companion at the local bar where i watch most of the races. we will all miss evelien so much but wish her all the best for her future studies and hope that one day she will return to visit us again.

small change....

2011-06-28T08:12:00.001+02:00

praxis group staff, guernsey

yesterday we were joined by a new longer term volunteer, katrin, all the way from switzeland, via guernsey. she has come to help out in the children's unit and our sports outreach clubs. katrin's boyfriend is from grabouw and she returned with matthew with a wonderful donation from his employer in guernsey.

staff at the praxis group collected £450.00 of loose change and the wonderful management team at the company then matched that so we were blessed with a total of £900. have a read of the article about this venture from the local guernsey newspaper here and see how any small change can be made for good!

newcastle team arrive

2011-06-27T09:37:00.000+02:00

jesmond team on strand beach

last week we were delighted to welcome back joe williams, who volunteered with us before the whole of the village of hope was set up in 2008. joe spent three months with us on that first visit, but has bought six of his home church friends with him this time.

the team are from jesmond, newcastle, and they will be with us for just over two weeks. they are all very keen and will be helping out with the children in our unit and some of the holiday clubs that we support during this three week winter break. they will also start painting the new office space, which maz is very excited about.

winter arrives with avengence

2011-06-24T17:13:00.000+02:00

family sit around fire and potjie

on tuesday afternoon we were basking in temperatures in the high 20's and could hardly imagine that within two days we would be sitting with frost on the ground and the need of a fire to keep warm. not only have the temperatures dropped but the amount of rain, falling as snow on the high mountain tops that surround the village of hope and the town of grabouw, has washed away the roads and caused some homes to become very unstable.

this community sits with a real conundrum, the winter weather which is much needed by the local farmers to send the apple trees and vines into hibernation comes at a price for those living in the townships and squatter camps, these people who live in little more than 'garden sheds' with no electricity or even basic sanitation have a tough time even in the summer months. it is hard to imagine how these people survive these harsh days.

there were many who left without soup today

we are able to do a little bit to help, every friday we collect soup from a local restaurant and next week we are going to be distributing some of the children's clothes that we have been sorting from the donations we receive. however today there were so many people, especially children that we had to turn away from the soup run, to see their eyes full of joy turn to sadness is so tough.

if you would like to help us make a real difference to those either affected or infected by HIV, AIDS and TB, as well as supporting the children in the poorest of the poor communities then please get in touch.

assi in again....

2011-06-22T12:56:00.000+02:00

sorry that these updates aren't about better news but we must remember that most of the children that we provide a home to here at the village of hope are either infected with HIV and or TB, others like our wonderful 11 year old boy have even more complex medical conditions.

unfortunately the news on assi isn't great, after being discharged from the red cross children's hospital on his last visit, he was placed at our thembacare unit in athlone, cape town, which cares for more chronic cases, however his health has deteriorated so much that he has been readmitted to the hospital for further care and tests.

we are now in a place where we are asking what is the best for his future and although we never want or wish for any of our children to pass away we must ask God to hold him in His hands as we are coming to the end of our understanding of his case and we don't want him to suffer much more.

please pray for us and for assi who is a dear dear boy...

June News

2011-06-18T13:12:00.001+02:00

Tim and Maz were away in Europe for two weeks during the month where they not only had chance to meet their new Grandson, Elijah, but also took time to visit the building/architect students in Stuttgart, along with their professor, which was great.
The remaining team headed up by Mel, Rob and Em did a fantastic job of ‘holding the fort’ but had to face some tough challenges especially with one of our children who was very sick.

Children’s Unit
During the month two of our nine children have been in hospital for long periods of time. Our wonderful 11 year old boy had a relapse and ended up back in the Red Cross children’s hospital in Cape Town where he received wonderful care to stabilise his lung condition. Unfortunately for us we felt it unwise to bring him back to the Village of Hope in Grabouw, based on our colder winter weather and higher altitude that could affect his health, but he has found a temporary home at Thembacare Athlone, which is one of our other Thembalitsha projects so we keep good contact with him and are working with ThembaCare to find a more long-term home for him.

The other child, a little girl of 18 months, suffered a seizure bought on by TB meningitis. This was rather scary for all involved but thankfully, through the good work of our team, she was transferred to the Tygerberg hospital where she is receiving treatment which we hope will mean that she will be back with us very soon. Her story is a sad one as her mother is also very sick at the moment and also in hospital.

The two little brothers who are with us at the moment celebrated their birthdays this month. They turned five and three and, as usual, we threw a party for them which is always a good excuse to bake a sticky cake for the kids (which the moms and volunteers appreciated too!!)

Sports Outreach and Community Work
Whilst Tim was away Arron, Shane and the Dutch students took a team of 13 players to Caledon (a town about 45 minutes drive away) to play a full 11 a side game against two teams from that area. The teams were once again made up of children who we work with each week from around our town. It’s great to see children from different areas, cultures and backgrounds come together to play. The report back was that the boys played very well and we won the first game and drew the second...Well done guys!
Our sports clubs continue to expand and we have been approached by another farm to introduce the life skills and lifestyle programme to their children, which we are looking forward to. This further expansion means that we are looking for a full time Sports Outreach intern who can come and work with us for a year. If you know of anyone then please contact us for further information. Strangely enough, the farm who has approached us is intending to use money that was given to them by a Waitrose social investment scheme. It’s great to see that these UK schemes are actually working and making an impact on the people who need it here in SA.
We still have a huge need of second hand soccer boots, sizes 2 – 7 (UK), which will enable us to keep a stock for when we play what we hope will be more regular games against other clubs in the local area. If you have access to an old pair and live within kicking distance of Grabouw/Cape Town then we would love to hear from you. We are also on the look out for soccer balls as our supplies are being worn down and worn out as well as netball bibs for the girls with all the positions marked on them.

Other News
The Straw House:
The new house is nearly ready for it’s outer coat! We will be busy mixing up the lime-based plaster over the next few weeks and once that has been sorted we will reinstall the kitchen which was removed to allow us to reskim the floors, both inside and out. We can’t wait to get into the house now but we know that this will be a slow process.

Volunteers:
We are very busy with volunteers at the moment. This month we have welcomed two Rebeccas, who are friends so it’s very confusing for all of us! They stayed with us for a fortnight in their year out before uni and were a great blessing to us as we found out last minute that we had to send lots of our House Moms on an intensive three-week first aid course. As a result we were very short staffed and the Rebeccas did an excellent job filling in in the Children’s Unit. It would have been a real strain without them.
We have another volunteer from the States, which means that there are now more American than English volunteers staying with us (slightly scary!). Britton is actually working with our sister project, ThembaCare Grabouw, assisting with their Voluntary HIV and TB Testing Unit.
We said goodbye to Shane (or Sugar as he became known to us!). He has returned to America. We were sad to see him go and will miss him a lot.
Over the next three weeks we are going to be full to the gunnels as we receive two mission teams in succession. There is a sneaky feeling that they might have to turn their hands to plastering the house!!

Alternative Gifts:
This month, with the help of our lovely marketing team, we have launched a trial range of alternative gifts called Gifts of Hope which are available to buy through Ebay. To see what is on offer go to our facebook page and check out the Events section. There are a variety of gifts to suit all budgets and we can guarantee that they will be very much appreciated by us and the lucky recipient. If they prove popular we will make them a permanent feature and extend the range to include other Thembalitsha Projects. At the moment you can buy a chicken, veggie seeds, a football or even a pig!

Events
Please support some dedicated and crazy people who are going to great lengths to raise funds for us. Andy Gilbert and ex-volunteer Harry Hogarth are cycling from Calais to Lausanne (sponsor them here http://www.justgiving.com/cycle4hope) and Claire Gomulak, Liz Eades, Jess Stratford, Brady Roberts, Dayna Roberts, Sophie Child as well as Naz Bhana are running the London 10k Run for us (sponsor them here http://www.justgiving.com/10kThembaTeam2011 http://www.justgiving.com/Nasreen-Bhana)

If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents from our website (http://www.thembalitshauk.org.uk/). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

saying goodbye on youth day

2011-06-17T14:28:00.000+02:00

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

fathers day gifts?

2011-06-13T12:15:00.000+02:00

a pig, not your dad!

if you are anything like me, no not in the way that i am a tall long haired hippy who lives in south africa but some one who finds it really hard to find a suitable present for fathers day, then we have the answer to your problem.

the amazing uk marketing team (yes those 3 part time volunteers) have come up with a wonderful way to save a long and unsuccessful trip around your local town centre and have put together some very imaginative presents for you to purchase for your dad to help him realise he is someone very very special.

..now we must state that your dad won't actually receive the present, we will!, however if he wants to check he could get on a long flight to cape town to come and visit, which we would love for him to do, but we will promise that with the money raised from the sale of the items that appear on our thembalitshauk facebook site will go directly to the children that we are helping.

if you follow the link from our facebook page you will then see the items ranging from a soccer ball, or a packet of seeds to a lovely little piggy, you can then purchase them via the ebay site thus making your quest easier and giving your dad some satisfaction in the knowledge that he didn't get another novelty gift that will sit on his desk, by his bed gathering dust but that he is really really make a difference to children living with HIV and AIDS here in south africa!

more crazy fundraisers!

2011-06-09T12:05:00.000+02:00

it seems that the summer weather in europe has encouraged a few more crazy people to step up and raise funds via different means for the work that we are doing out here in south africa....please visit the following links to the justgiving pages that have been set up to support the work that we are doing with children infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB.

andy and harry have set up two separate pages, no competition then guys! to raise funds as they ride from calias to laussane see harry's page here and andy's here.

mark lucas is walking up the three highest peaks in the UK in under 24 hours (or so he hopes), that happens this weekend so please visit his page here, with a wonderful photo of mark!

and some other crazy people are running the london 10k in july please visit and donate to their page here.

thanks to everyone who supports us, whether that's via a fundraising event, a one off donation or monthly giving, your money really does make a difference.

wanderers return

2011-06-08T09:57:00.000+02:00

tim and maz have arrived back at the village of hope project after their short holiday in europe where they enjoyed catching up with family, meeting their new grandson, eli, and visiting the ukuqala team in their university city of stuttgart in germany. thankfully they didn't eat any cucumber whilst they were away but it now seems that beansprouts were the things to avoid anyway!

they arrived back to find a busy village of hope, during their time away two girls from england, both called rebbecca, a young lady from the USA who is going to be working with thandi at thembacare and returning volunteer tyler had arrived. unfortunately one of our new little girls had been taken into hospital with TB meningitis and the team have been running around trying to care for her and her mother who is also very sick with AIDS.

the village of hope is also once again without internet, the phonelines were stolen at the end of last week so our updates and replies to emails will be limited (i am currently sitting at thembacare grabouw writing this short update!) please pray that this gets sorted soon so we can keep in contact with the outside world....it's good to be back!

Eldest Boy Discharged from Hospital

2011-05-28T17:43:00.000+02:00

Hello folks!

Many of you have been asking for an update on our eldest boy. Thank you for all your prayers and good wishes for him.

The good news is that he has been discharged from Red Cross Hospital. His saturation levels stablised whilst he was there so he has also been able to be off oxygen. He is currently staying, as we had hoped, in ThembaCare Athlone whilst we look into options for his future. ThembaCare is the best possible place for him at the moment as he will be surrounded by familiar faces and definitely smothered with love and attention. It is also only a short drive away from the hospital so is much more convenient in that respect.

We will post more news on this little man as and when we have it, but please continue to keep him in your prayers.

May News

2011-05-20T10:55:00.000+02:00

Well the sun continues to retain some of its heat and the much needed winter rains are still to come, this is good news for the new house, which needs to full dry out before we can apply the protective outside coat so let’s continue to pray that we can get that done soon. The team from Stuttgart have now left and many of them are back in Germany after a short break where they took in some of the sights of this amazing country, but there is still quite a bit to be done on the house before it can be used for our longer term volunteers, more of that later.

Contents:
Children's Unit
Sports Outreach and Community Work
The New Volunteer's House
Other News and Volunteers
Ebay
Events
How You Can Help
Volunteering With Village of Hope

Children's Unit
The good news is that we are once again up to our full complement of 9 children. Yes, that’s right, after a couple of months when we have had space we have now been able to provide a home to two little girls! Whilst it is amazing to give these children some new hope and the love that will hopefully lead to them being placed back with their families, it does bring home the fact that there are so many children who live in families that aren’t equipped to care for even their basic needs, let alone provide the right quantities of the medication that can suppress the HIV virus.

Much of the work that we do with the children is to provide them with a balanced life, looking at their physical, educational, emotional and spiritual needs whilst they stay with us, but that isn’t sustainable if their parents, or carers are unable to provide that when they are placed home. Therefore regular home visits to those we have placed home and contact with families, who are still around, whilst they are here with us, is a key part of what we do and we are thankful to people like Evelyn, our student from the HAN university who helps Maz and Mel with this.

Evelyn also generously provided an Easter Egg hunt for the children over the holidays which, as you can imagine, they were VERY enthusiastic about!

We have celebrated 2 birthday’s during the last month, these seem to come around so quickly. One of the new girls also had her birthday, I thought that she was only 2 years old, it turns out she was celebrating her 3rd birthday that just shows how small and malnourished she is! Also our eldest boy is now 11 years old! Unfortunately his celebrations were slightly dampened by a visit, on his birthday, to the Red Cross children’s hospital. He has since had to be admitted back into Red Cross as the doctors are worried he is in the early stages of heart failure. Please join us in prayer for his future.

Maz and Mel also ‘enjoyed’ a day of team building with our house mom’s. This took place at a local outward bounds centre and included raft building and then racing them on the dam. This was quite an achievement for all of our moms, especially those who can’t swim!

Sports Outreach and Community Work
We had the wonderful opportunity to take the Rooidakke team (who won our most recent Soccer Saturday) down the mountain to play against a team from the Lwandle Township which sits between Somerset West and the seaside town of Strand. For some of the boys it was the first time that they played a full 11 a side game and many of them turned up without shoes therefore they had to play in just the socks from the kit that we had made up of some of the soccer kits that we have had donated over the last few years. The boys did look quite a sight with our blue and white hooped tops, green shorts and a mixture of different coloured socks, however, as my Dad used to tell me, ‘it’s not necessarily the team that has the best looking kits that has the best players’ In reality our team was beaten 0-1 but the boys literally played out of their socks and really deserved to win with some very good skills which surprised the other team.

As you can see from the above report we are in huge need of second hand soccer boots, sizes 2 – 7 (UK), which will enable us to keep a stock for when we play what we hope will be more regular games against other clubs in the local area. If you have access to an old pair and live within kicking distance of Grabouw/Cape Town then we would love to hear from you.

The integration of the health awareness programme, which has been introduced by the HAN university students is proving to be a real hit. So far we have covered basic hand washing, oral hygiene and we will be moving on to cover some more sensitive topics to do with HIV and sexual disease awareness. As you can imagine every child was keen to receive a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste to use at home, so once again this is an area of need for us as these items can prove to be quite expensive. If you have access to any health products we would be delighted to hear from you.

As the winter weather starts to build we often have to cancel our sports outreach due to the rain, which can fall in abundance at this time of year, however since October 2010 we have only had to postpone one sports club, which is absolutely fantastic and gives the children something to look forward to each week. When the rain starts to fall we are keen to keep contact with the children so we will make sure we turn up even if the weather is poor and do some home visits which the kids love for us to do. They are very keen for us to see where they live and are very proud of their homes, many of which are shacks made out of old pieces of tin, wood and cardboard.

The New Volunteer House
The team from Stuttgart have now left us, returning home to Germany to complete their studies. What they have left us with is a home that is around 90% complete - which we are truly grateful for. There are a number of items (around 40 at the last count!) that still need to be completed; these include very small items such as the sealing of the work tops which are made from cast concrete, to the larger task of fully rendering the ‘cob’ wall once it has fully dried out.

The home will become a space for our longer term volunteers to stay and we are keen to get this completed to allow Rob and Emily, along with their two children, to move into thus allowing our other longer term volunteer, Mel Kidd, to move into their room giving her a little bit more privacy. However we currently don’t have the budget to complete the £5K work that needs to be done therefore if anyone would like to donate toward these costs which will enable us to compete this quite spectacular eco house then please contact us!

Other News and Volunteers
Adventure to the Eastern Cape:
We (Tim and Maz) had a wonderful trip to visit one of our successful home placements. The boy, who is now 5 years old, stayed at the Village of Hope and we were worried that his family had lost contact with him, however around a year ago we were able to place him home with his mother (who has since passed away from the HIV, AIDS virus) and his Great Aunt, who is still caring for him.

The Great Aunt was keen for us to visit them in their ‘location’ in the rural Xhosa homelands in the Eastern Cape, so we made the 2500kms round trip over the Easter weekend to stay with them. I am trying to write up the details of our trip (which I would be happy to send anyone keen to read them) which included the fact that we were the first ‘Europeans’ to visit their location, staying in their homemade round mud hut, and being welcomed into a culture which hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. It was a real eye opener to live with no running water or electric for those few days and one that we hope to repeat again sometime!

Animal Update:
Our male pig has met his demise and is being turned into what we hope will be some wonderful Ham, Bacon and Sausage! Poor Mrs Pig wasn’t lonely for long though as we now have another little piglet. We are also just about to purchase some Turkeys which we hope will be ready of Christmas, Arron and Shane have been busy building them a home near enough for Mrs Pig to see her new neighbours.

Some sad news is that we think we have lost our dear little Jack Russell, Bruno, who hasn’t been seen for around a week, we are just hoping that he has gone on a long holiday but the reality is that we might have lost him for good.... ☹

Volunteers:
Shane Johnson from the In focus church in Augusta, USA, has been a wonderful addition to our team, he has been willing to put his hand to anything and he, along with Sophie Child, is coming to the end of his trip. Sophie has been a God send! Throwing herself into our sports outreach programme and been a willing driver on the early morning school runs. We will miss these guys when they leave.

And Finally:
Tim and Maz are going to be in Europe visiting both England and Germany for two weeks, where they will be catching up with their new Grandson, Elijah, who was born in April, and other members of their family and church. They are also going to be visiting the team from Stuttgart where they hope to meet up with their Professor to make a link for a future team.

EBay:
We are now registered as an official charity on EBay! This means that if you sell anything on their site you have the option to donate some of your sale price to us and it’s also another way you can just make a donation too. We are in the process of setting up an alternative gifts shop and hope to have that up and running in time for Father’s Day….so we will keep you posted on facebook about that.

Events
Please consider sponsoring Andy Gilbert and Harry Hogarth as they cycle themselves silly from Calais, France to Lausanne, Switzerland to raise funds for us. They are going to be covering an epic 796km in total and all within just 6 days! It’s easy to sponsor them just follow this link: http://www.justgiving.com/cycle4hope . We also have some other enthusiastic sporty people running the London 10k at the beginning of July! http://www.justgiving.com/10kThembaTeam2011

If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

How You Can Help Thembalitsha
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!

• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!!
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm!
• Pray – Sign up to pray for us regularly

To get involved further email us at info@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering With Village of Hope
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering or to request and application form, please email us at office@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

eldest boy back in red cross

2011-05-19T11:47:00.000+02:00

unfortunately our eleven year old boy has been readmitted to the red cross children's hospital following a routine visit last monday. for around a month now he has become increasingly reliant on oxygen and towards the end of last week his saturation levels started to dip even when he was on his machine, therefore the visit was in fact a God send. he has been kept in to monitor his lungs, heart and liver but we have had encouraging news to say that he is now off the oxygen machine and breathing normally.

there is some concern that due to the altitude of the village of hope, grabouw sits along the edge of a wonderful mountain range, and the damp conditions, it rains a lot in the winter and the town has the highest rate of new TB infections in south africa! that if he is discharged he might not be able to come home to us, but we have a couple of plans and thembacare in athlone is a wonderful home and where he was prior to being placed with us.

please continue to pray for him and also the team at the village of hope as me and maz are flying back to england today for a couple of weeks holiday, to see our new grandson!.....

bruno gone but never forgotten!

2011-05-16T18:29:00.000+02:00

our little bruno is missing!

yes that's right our wonderful little jack russell, bruno, has gone missing. a week last saturday he went out on a 'run' with one of our volunteers, and never returned. we think that he followed a bike race which was taking place in the mountains around the village of hope and ended up at the elgin country club, where he was seen on saturday afternoon.

what happened next we don't know, did someone take him home, did he get lost on his way back or did he get into trouble with a snake or a snare?...we have put a 'wanted' article in our local paper but we haven't heard anything since that came out last friday.

whatever it seems like we have seen the last of him, which is a real shame cause he was a real character around the place, the children in the unit loved him and he was the first dog that i had ever owned...and i miss him :-(

birthdays and a new child

2011-05-12T09:30:00.000+02:00

party time at the village of hope, again!

once again we are back up to a full compliment of 9 children here at the village of hope, it's wonderful to offer a child in desperate need a home but there is always a sense of the depth of the problem that created the need for that child to be placed with us. this new 18 month old girl comes from the iraq squatter camp area of grabouw and the family are struggling to keep her on the anti rectro viral treatment that will suppress the HIV that is attacking her immune system.

we have already been to visit the mom and dad at their home and we are expecting them to make their first visit to see their child this morning. we hope that the time that this little girl spends with us will enable us to not only stabilise her condition but also help her family understand her complex needs.

yesterday afternoon we were able to throw a party for a new little two year old girl, who not only celebrated with her new friends but her mother bought up a cake which is fantastic news and shows the commitment that she is making towards her child which is very encouraging.

watermarks...identifying the maker

2011-05-09T13:51:00.000+02:00

on saturday morning we were fortunate to visit the barnard gallery in newlands, cape town, to view the exhibition by duncan stewart called watermarks. we only met duncan a few weeks ago, as our good friend set us up to stay over with duncan and has wife natalie in their home in port elizabeth as we traveled to the transkie (see ealier post).

we were so blessed to meet this amazing man, who has a living faith in christ and who challenges people through his art to think beyond ourselves. it was great to hear duncan speak, not only about the art, but what inspired him. his work has such depth and can be viewed on many different levels, watermarks is subtitled 'identifying the maker' and duncan explores the use of water within this work and asks the question of what watermark would we have if we were held up to the light, would we have the makers watermark?

if you are in cape town, or even south africa, then please take time to visit the gallery on main street in newlands and be inspired and even challenged by the depth of the art that duncan is exhibiting.

have a look at his web site here and visit the gallery's site here.

11th birthday....for our eldest boy..!

2011-05-06T18:16:00.003+02:00

joy at seeing his birthday cake...
he didn't really eat it as he loves meat!

today our wonderful eldest boy here at the village of hope celebrated his 11th birthday, maz and the team organised a party for him, with loads of sticky cake and sweet things, however his favorite food has always been inyama, or in english 'meat'....therefore there was plenty of biltong and pepperoni pizza for him to feast on.

inyama......meat pizza

the day wasn't all joy and presents as he had to make his scheduled visit to the red cross children's hopsital for his check ups. maz, mel and one of our house moms left at around 5.30 this morning, yes it does need three of them, one to push the trolley with his oxygen in, the other to push his wheelchair and the other to carry the wads of documents that he has accumulated over his little life.

presents as well!

i hope the photos will show a very happy boy, with the rest of the amazing children that we provide a home to here at the village of hope, enjoying his party. sorry no full face photos or names due to their protection on the internet!

this little piggy went to market....

2011-05-05T15:42:00.000+02:00

mrs pig having her last piggy back!

well we didn't have to take the piggy to market just to the man with the gun....yes that's right our male piggy is off to make us some much needed bacon, ham and sausage tomorrow morning, after his 5 months of piggy bliss at the village of hope.

we have really enjoyed having him around and we think arron's experiment with the pigs has gone very well. i suppose the proof will be in the pudding (nice black pudding to go with the sausages!) but we have already decided to keep his 'wife' as the next plan is to get her another husband who we hope will provide us with a constant source of piglets for us to grow on.

it was quite a sad moment as i took the photo, she is making the most of the piggy cuddles, as you can see!

sister projects

2011-05-04T19:05:00.000+02:00

for those of you who have visited us in grabouw you will know that the village of hope isn't the only thembalitsha project in the town, in fact our 7 bed inpatient unit called thembacare was established in 2006 and it was during the visits that we made to that amazing project in 2006 and 2007 that inspired me and maz to not only move to south africa, but also to the town of grabouw and set up the project village of hope....wow that was a long sentence!

each wednesday i run a small 'church service' at thembacare where the staff and patients join to praise God for the work he is doing through this team, i would encourage you to visit their blog, which is usually updated monthly with their newsletter, and i think this months news is well worth a read as it includes the work that the wonderful outpatient palliative care-workers do as they support over 450 people, infected by HIV and TB in our town.

follow the link here to the thembacare grabouw site (you will notice the similar look to our blog with new logos etc!) and if you think you could provide some much needed financial support to ensure that we continue to provide a much needed service to our community then please contact me!...

sunday at the dam

2011-05-03T09:42:00.000+02:00

the long walk to the waters edge

the village of hope is a full time project, the children we care for live with us in our children's unit and are looked after by a dedicated team of local 'house mom's' who work a 12 hour shift rota. other members of the team (including our volunteers) start each day at 8.15 at our morning planning and prayer time and finish their day by around 5pm, sounds simple hey! but as with anything that involves kids, especially those living with HIV, and a project involved in social issues there really isn't a 'clocking off time'...therefore we need ensure that we have 'cover' both overnight and during the weekends...

each of our volunteers take turns doing 'weekend cover' and we are keen for the children to understand that sunday is special and that God loves them, therefore the people on weekend cover either take the children, and house moms, to a local church, or spend sometime singing, reading bible stories or creating an activity around that story.

children playing at the dam, they all got every wet by home time!

last sunday afternoon we (me and maz) took the children down to the local dam, which is looking very empty at the moment. it's always a special time as we show the children new things, spending time travelling in the back of our bakkie (pickup) is a highlight of any trip and the children just love to explore. whilst we were down at the waterside maz asked the children what song we could sing, and without hesitation one of our little 4 year old girls piped up, 'fishing for Jesus'...which was so apt given the surroundings.

please continue to pray for us as we seek to not only provide a 'home' for these precious ones but also show them that even though many of them haven't known the love of a family that God does love them and that they are special to Him.

returning from the transkei

2011-04-29T12:43:00.000+02:00

we (myself and maz) have just returned home from a wonderful, if not somewhat challenging trip, to the xhosa homelands of the transkei. it is really hard to put into a few words the experience that we had as we made the 1000 kilometer trip to visit one of the boys who we had provided a home to at the village of hope. his grandmother had invited us to stay in their traditional family home over the easter weekend and to be welcomed with open arms by the whole village was amazing.

maz with the little boy outside his grandmothers home

our arrival was the height of conversation, the grandmother was somewhat of a local celebrity as she welcomed the first european visitors to visit their village into her home. the 'location' as it was called was around 20 kilometers from the nearest tar road and was made up of simple roundhouses (rondavels) none of which had any access to running water or electricity.

we were invited to join the village in a celebration on saturday afternoon where a large cow had been slaughtered and cooked for all of us to share and on easter sunday morning we visited the great grandmothers home, she had never met a white man before, let lone invited him into her home.

it was wonderful to see the boy, who is now 5 years old and coping very well in his new home, and to meet his extended family, to share in their daily lives and struggles. i am currently trying to document our experiences on the trip into some sort of format that i could share and maybe i will post that on this blog when it is finished.

April News

2011-04-19T09:40:00.000+02:00

Much of the focus of our previous newsletters, as you would expect, has been about the work that we are doing on the village of hope and in the community with children infected or affected by HIV and AIDS, however this month we must start by highlighting the work that the amazing students from Stuttgart university and their project managers (Leslie and Ulrika) have done over the last month as they have built us an additional house here at the village of hope.

  The New House 
The headline this month has to be the near completion of a new home that at team of students from Stuttgart University have not only built for us, but also designed and funded which is an incredible answer to prayer.

The house has been created using local materials, straw, clay, water, local timber and much thought has gone into the using recycled materials where possible. The fronts of the kitchen cupboards are made out of old ship sail, the windows in the kitchen and bathroom from old washing machine doors and the insulation (other than the cob style walls) is made from fibre made of old plastic bottles.

The house will be used as part of our volunteer accommodation. Initially it will provide Rob, Em and their children with some space away from the shorter-term volunteer unit. They have been living in the volunteer unit since they arrived over 18 months ago and are very excited about their new home! In turn this will also enable Mel Kidd (another long termer) to move into her own room and hopefully give her some much-needed privacy.

Over the past month we have watched the students mix the clay and straw walls, tread them down around the substantial timber frame, install the roof and ceilings, and generally throw themselves into making this home. It’s a great addition to our project and they’ve done it with such enthusiasm (working all hours God sends) and dedication and produced something that they can be proud of which will stand the test of time.

There is still some work that needs to be done. Floors and the concrete work tops need sealing and we will need to wait for another month or so for the cob walls to dry out before we can apply the final finish to the inside and outside walls.

Children’s Unit  
The weather has continued to be a blessing to us with temperatures still in the late 20’s or early 30’s most days however the nights are getting colder as we near winter so we can expect the rainy season to be on us very soon.

The children have just enjoyed their first of two ‘autumn’ holiday’s playing in the garden, around the jungle gym and making regular visits to see the new house being built. Whilst the German students haven’t had much time to be with the children they have grown to love them and their visits to check if they are still working!

A few of our ‘discharged’ (such a harsh word for the miracles that these children are) children were able to visit us for the morning as we celebrated our second birthday - Yes, I know, hasn’t time flown! Also the little girl who now lives with a new foster mom in Khayelitsha wanted to come up and spend some of her holiday with us. This was really precious and encouraged us to think that the children do have an amazing time with us and that they want to return to visit when they can.

We were able to provide a home for a short time for a baby boy who’s mother was in hospital having tests and treatment for ‘multi drug resistant TB’. It was a joy to be able help out in this desperate situation; one of many that we see in our community every single day.

We (me and Maz) are going to make a long, but exciting, road trip over the Easter weekend to visit one of our other discharged children who now lives in the rural Xhosa homelands of the Eastern Cape. It’s actually very close to where Nelson Mandela comes from. We were invited to come and stay by his Granny who is keen to show us around the area. She is desperate for a ‘Village of Hope’ in that area which is where many of our Black community come from and where the AIDS virus has taken an even more devastating toll on the local people. Who knows there may be a calling to create a Village of Hope II?

Sports Outreach & Community Work 
The work that we are doing in our local community with the 9 – 15 year olds has once again extended back up to 5 areas. We have reconnected with the boys in the Waterwerks informal settlement which, aside from our Iraq squatter camp, must be one of the poorest areas in our town with maybe 20,000 people living one on top of another in basic tin and timber structures with little or no sanitation or electricity. That said, the kids are wonderful and we have identified a new local leader who will help us with that project.

It really is a privilege to be able to share some basic sports and life skills along with bible stories with these children each week. The students from HAN university in Holland have also helped us to introduce a health section to the programme which has been fun. We’ve started to teach the children how to wash their hands and when to do it and will be moving on to dental hygiene over the next couple of weeks.

Our numbers are growing and the children seem to enjoy themselves. Arron is doing really well with his team in Rooidakke (more on them later), and Sophie Child has made a huge difference as we try to introduce Netball into that area too. We also have 3 committed local mentors who are really stepping up to the plate as we invest in them so they can invest in their peers.

The new Dutch students helped with the organising of our first sports Saturday of the year. 11 boys’ soccer teams and 3 girls netball teams made up of the children that we work every week in our communities, joined us at the Elgin Country Club for a morning of fun and competition. The German students provided much needed hands on support as team managers and really got into the event wearing their team colours and encouraging the children, win, lose or draw!

After the 90 or so children had received their prizes and a bowl of hot soup (slightly out of season given the sweltering temperatures - however that was probably the only hot meal of the day that they would have received), the Dutch students challenged the Germans to a 9-a-side football match! This was not necessarily the best idea given the history of the nations but a great game was had by all! I played for the Dutch team who, because of me, Shane (our American volunteer) and a Dutch girl, were the weaker side compared the German Team who Arron played for! The result? Well let’s say that history repeated itself with the game being decided by a hotly disputed penalty which was given by our English ref, Rob House, in the last minute of extra time...You can guess who won!

The prize for the winning boys’ side is to take them down the mountain to play a match against one of my friend’s sides in the Lwandle Township. That’s happening this coming Saturday so please pray for the Rooidakke under 16 team as they play against a very good Lwandle team. We need to find them all football boots or trainers before they can compete which may prove a challenge.

Other News
Animal Antics: 
With the new house taking up a lot of our thinking time it’s hard to know what else to write about, however we have now got 4 little laying chickens who are providing a regular supply of eggs to our children’s unit. The pigs are growing and Arron is keen not only to turn some of that into bacon but also to extend our livestock to include turkeys, which we have heard are very tasty around Christmas time! 

Our New Look:
You may have already seen my blog post about our new logo but this is the first newsletter since then! We are very excited about our new look and are busily starting to apply it to all our documents and communications. Of course we are indebted to Mel Kidd, our onsite long term volunteer, who just happens to be an Art Director and created the logo.

Good Food For A Great Cause:
We had a very successful evening a couple of weeks ago where we had the opportunity to raise the awareness of the charity locally and get a bit of extra dosh too! A local chef, Gordon Manuel and his wife Emma, offered to host a meal for us at their restaurant, which is on one of the many stunning wine estates close to here. They provided the venue and their skills for free and all we had to do was pay for the ingredients for the meal. We managed to fill the restaurant with local movers and shakers who bought tickets for the gourmet food which Gordon provided. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the evening where we were able to share a bit about what we do and show a short DVD. We are hoping to do another similar event later on this year. We also raised not far off £1000 which is not to be sniffed at!

Volunteers: 
We have been joined by Shane Johnson from the InFocus church in Augusta, USA. He will be with us for 3 months and joins Sophie our other longer term/short term volunteer. It’s great to see returning people and we trust that he will enjoy his stay. That said, we have had a stomach virus going around not only the volunteer unit but also within the German building team and all of our volunteers have been hit by that over the last month.

We have already hosted 10 volunteers on the project this year (and that’s excluding the German team) so we are happily busy. We even have bookings for people who want to come and volunteer for 2012 which is amazing – and very good forward planning! So if you are interested in coming out any time soon don’t be slow in applying!

Grandparents Again!:
We (Tim and Maz) are also celebrating the birth of our second Grandson, Elijah, who was born late on Sunday 10th April. We will be returning to England to make a short visit to see him, as well as planning in time to make a visit to the German University, which we are very much looking forward to.

Events
The prayer day which we organised last month was extremely successful. Thank you to all those who signed up to pray on that day. We are already seeing amazing breakthrough since the event. You can read more details about it from the blog post earlier this month. It makes us wonder why we didn’t think of doing it before! We are planning another one for October which will coincide with the Thembalitsha Foundation’s Birthday. We will keep you posted with more information nearer the time.

We are planning our annual Cycle for September and we still have places available for a the 10k London Run in July. Please get in touch if you would like more details. We are also looking at doing a charity ball for World AIDS Day this December.

If you have an idea for an event that you would like to organise for us do let us know as we would love to have more things planned in the diary for this year and desperately need more people to be doing stuff for us. We will do our best to support you in making it successful.

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!

•    Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer
•    Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk
•    Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk

Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on Volunteering for the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents from our website (www.thembalitshauk.org.uk). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!