Let me introduce you. This is Njabulo...

If you were to get a tour of my life over the past year, Njabulo would be part of it. I've seen him multiple times every week, his smile has brought joy to my day as I brought him snacks or juice to his hospital bed. Let me explain a bit more of his story...


At our monthly HBC meeting back in July, one of our home-based caregivers told me about this patient that had no one to look after him. After the meeting, eager to get back into home-visits again, I followed her on a to see the patient. He was unable to stand, speak, or care for himself and in a terrible state. We had no idea what was wrong with him, but it was evident that the home conditions were such that he was being hugely neglected by his family. His brother's wife was 'assigned' to care for him, but wasn't up for the job. He'd been staying there for over a month, and had never been taken to the clinic or hospital, and had rarely been washed. He was in a very sorry state.

I referred his case to Xoli who picked him up two days later to take him in the back of the Thembalethu pick-up to the Injesuthi clinic. They transferred him onto the hospital where he remained for almost a month. Upon discharge, Xoli returned with Njabulo back to his home where she found the situation of poor care had not improved, while his level of need remains high. I called Philanjalo Care Centre in Tugela Ferry where I am working part time since getting married. It is a step-down care unit funded by the Department of Health. The doctor agreed to admit him, and Njabulo remained there for the past five months, and with some extra tender-loving care, Njabulo is able to speak somewhat again, can roll himself in a wheelchair and feed himself. He has a great laugh, and always has a smile on his face. Amazing joy for a guy who will require assistance for the rest of his life and will probably never walk again.

Just last week, Njabulo received a 'pass-out' to return home for Christmas. He's been asking to go home for months now. I dropped him off with his brothers and sisters in law (pictured) as a kind of trial-run to see about his long-term care. I'll pick him up to return him to Philanjalo for a follow-up visit to the specialist doctor in Pietermaritzberg in early January. At this point I remain unconvinced that the care he receives at home is sufficient, and hope to work with both Philanjalo and Amangwe social workers to find a long-term solution for care for Njabulo.

Zulu-ized

While Emily was visiting, we went with some friends from Tugela Ferry to a Zulu Cultural village. Traditions and dress vary between areas, but here we are dressed in the coastal Zulu attire, slightly different as you'll see from our Zulu wedding reception pictures. Eugene is dressed her in the skin of the cheetah, reserved for the king. 

Care Centre Building Progresses

 

 

 

 

 

Burning to see the lay of the land. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Leveling the land.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The building structure goes up. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Structure is up, slab is laid.  

We met together with the local area's Home-Based Care volunteers to dream, vision and plan for the future of our new Thembalethu offices and community centre!

Succulents, Joy and Building!

You'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious,
the best not the worst;
the beautiful not the ugly;
things to praise not things to curse.

Do that, and God, who makes everything work together,
will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
Philippians 4:8-9

It's springtime. Such a beautiful time of year, perhaps my favorite season, and it certainly is here in Tugela Ferry. We still have some cool, crisp nights, but during the day the sun is often out, the winter sun that you can still enjoy without getting scorched. We've been spending a good amount of time in our garden, shifting plants around and learning that it really is a near-desert, and the only things that survive the full sun are succulents and cacti.

Much like the climate, I feel like I am also just coming out of a winter season. A season of feeling a little like everything seems a little bit dried up, like the challenges of living and serving in South Africa, in the midst of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has struck the Zulu people, like it's all just too much. I found myself being very negative, losing a sense of God's hope in the situation.

In the same way that the temperatures are starting to peak again while winter fades and summer nears, I feel like God has also been filling me again with joy and giving me encouragement.

In fact, things have been going very well for Eugene and I, and for Thembalethu.

We have a fence up on our land and I'll be going out again on Monday to support the work as we clear the land and start to build! From our board member, John Grant, and his connections, we have received a lot of donations for the building: fence, machinery to level/clear the site, blocks, bricks and discounted steel structure to build upon.

We brought the Department of Social Development social worker out on home visits to our HBC patients, as well as a food drop to an orphan-headed household. This should help move along our application to the Department to put in a soup kitchen for orphan and vulnerable children and our indigent HBC patients.

As we continue to share God's love and hope to a community suffering from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the goals of our Thembalethu Care Centre are:

• To increase our involvement in the community and in the lives of the sick, orphaned and vulnerable. We've been seeing people in their houses and working out of our bakkie (pick-up) for two years now, and having a centre will allow us to see people both where they live and at our centre.
  
• To provide support to the community through HIV support groups for those infected and affected, support groups for gogos (grannies) looking after their grandchildren as well as groups to provide support and encouragement to orphaned youth and orphan-head-of-households.
  
• To increase our support of orphaned and vulnerable children in the community through a soup kitchen that they can access before and after school, as well as help with homework and washing school uniforms.
• To provide a meeting and training centre for our own and other training and support needs.
  

We're at the point at Thembalethu where we have our Non-Profit registration number and we can apply for outside funding. I've applied to the Department of Social Development and have a couple of other applications I'll be applying for in the next couple of weeks. Yet, we are trusting that God will continue to provide for us to assist in the community and we l have big funding needs to get our community centre up and running, to furnish and equip it so that it can provide support for the community. Please let me know if you'd like to give a financial gift to support our centre.

Prayer Requests:

• Praise God that Xoli's death threat instigator was a stalker who, after suggesting a meeting with her husband, has stopped phoning. Please continue to pray for Xoli that she would recover fully from this traumatic month of calls as well as challenges in her own extended family with HIV illness and orphans.
• Praise God for our board member John Grant (and his business partner Leon) who continue to provide invaluable assistance in getting ourselves a community centre built. Pray that God would continue to encourage, strengthen and bless them as the rainy season nears and their farm support business gets busier.
  
• For God's continued provision of our work, that the needed resources would continue to be available to us as we build the centre and provide greater care for the community.
  
• Encouragement for our Home-Based Care volunteers as there have been upstart groups of young HBC who are now receiving stipends while they do not. When we started, they were the only HBC in the area who were active, and after as many as 10 years supporting the sick and orphans as volunteers, and it is these new upstarts that have been able to grab up government stipends for their work.
  
• For continued encouragement and support for my mom as she gets used to life without Bud. Also for my brother John's safety in Afghanistan.
  

May God fill you with His joy and peace,

Betsy

June Update & Prayer Requests

Yesterday morning I had a lovely Saturday run in the Tugela Ferry community gardens. It was just my second time walking there with our dogs – quite a big treat that Eugene introduced me to just a week or so before. Crazy that I’ve lived there for almost nine months and just discovered the paths literally outside our front fence. Instead of greeting somebody every 10 feet, having children chasing after and being attacked by violent dogs, the community gardens maybe the closest to a ‘park’ setting that Tugela Ferry has to offer. Many of the large garden spaces in the community gardens sit fallow this time of year leaving it a wild ‘veld’ experience with the sound of the roaring Tugela River and the birds in the grass and trees. There are a few women there working in their fields, sometimes with men helping from on-top a tractor. This time of year there are lush rows of reddening tomatoes, row after row of bright green spinach and other leafy greens, onions, as well as a few sweet potatoes and pumpkins still remaining to be harvested. So nice to get out there and see some of the most industrious areas in Tugela Ferry and yet peace and beauty of nature as well. Beauty and quiet have been in short supply since moving to Tugela, and it’s such a blessing to have found such a lovely space!

Speaking of lovely spaces, our new land in Mandabeni for our community support centre is nearing closer and closer to becoming reality. Xoli and I are very excited about having our own ‘stake in the ground’ in the Amangwe community and to be able to get closer to the community with our own offices, not just our own pick-up truck (bakkie). We will begin by building a 6x6 block with a large L-shaped room with an outside stoop to expand our working space, as that’s what we feel comfortable we can afford at this point. As God provides more, we hope to add on more buildings – especially a training area. Our vision of the land is to be able to provide a more centralized space for assisting our HBC patients, their families as well as the orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) we support. To be able to have a base from which we can meet together regularly to host HIV and TB support groups for our patients as well as for the OVC we support. Hopefully to open a community soup kitchen for the very vulnerable young and sick, while integrating economic strengthening activities.

I really love working out in the community! I spent the other day meeting with Xoli and the HBC volunteers living close to our land where we will be building the centre soon. (Pictured, right). Because of Xoli's vulnerabilities in the community right now, I was able to step back in to do some home visits to some patients and OVC families. I realized how much I LOVE being outside and connecting with people, and how much I've been stuck doing the much more dry office work instead. Please join me in praying how I can get back out in the community more, being in closer relationship to those in need instead of serving a more distant administrative role.

In the last week during a visit to our Thembalethu project in the Drakensberg, I returned to Tugela Ferry feeling a bit like an ambulance service. After helping Mpume obtain the much-needed documents towards getting her identity documents and loading up for a round of food-drops to the orphaned families we support, my plans suddenly changed. Mpume (mentioned below in Prayer Requests) becoming very sick with the symptoms of meningitis as well as general body chills and fever. I had to leave Xoli to finish the food deliveries, and left with Mpume as soon as possible to get her to medical attention at Church of Scotland Hospital (COSH) where I live, and where she’s taken up temporary residence. We ended up with two other patients in tow as well: one was the son of a former Home-Based Caregiver who needed daily TB injections as well as to start ARVs ASAP but was too distant from the clinic to make it possible from his home. The other was a very sick baby named Ayanda who is eleven months old and yet weighed only 6kg (13.2lbs) and has been sick pretty much from birth. His first HIV test (which takes 6 weeks for a result) had come back negative, and the second hadn’t yet returned and yet his situation was deteriorating. So I ended up transporting a car full of sick people – a young gal with meningitis and pneumonia, a young man with pneumonia and TB, and a baby with a malnourished condition and severe diarrhea common with full blown AIDS.

At last report, the baby was re-initiated on TB treatment and the HIV test had come back positive, so initiating ARV treatment was just a few days away and his condition had improved. Mpume’s meningitis had been caught early, and her pneumonia was responding well. The young TB injection guy had been started on his treatment and the road to accessing ARVs had been started. So glad to be able to assist these folks, especially as the resources in Tugela Ferry are often in high demand (but unavailable) in the Berg – care centre (hospice) for adults and babies/mothers, as well as very dedicated, knowledgeable and proactive doctors at the hospital.

Prior to all of this, Eugene and I had a couple of tough couple of weeks. And yet so many exciting moments as well. Let me see if I can go back over the last couple of weeks and include prayer requests:

• After playing social worker for weeks, Mpume and Aphiwa (a homeless, orphaned 18 year old and her 9 month old baby, both HIV+ and not then on treatment) moved in with Eugene and I, supposedly for two days until they could get transferred to the local mother-and-baby-care centre. It ended up being 1.5 weeks full-on instead, as both mom and baby took turns getting very sick and admitted to the hospital. While Aphiwa was in the pediatric ward (the first time, when her mom was admitted, just prior to her initial transfer to the care centre) I was the only one feeding her regularly, as the hospital nurses didn’t get to it. Both are now on treatment and stabilized, staying at Khayelisha Care while they pray and wait to see if anyone from the local church will make available a place for them to stay here. They have been admitted to a HIV+ women’s home in Johannesberg, but the loving people at Khayelisha really feel for her rootless state and connection here in Tugela Ferry. In the meantime, I will give my all (again) to get the required documents (a death certificate for her mother who never had a birth certificate and then both mom and baby’s birth certificates) to make it possible for her to access some welfare assistance. Please pray for these two sweet girls, favor in working with Home Affairs to get Mpume her identity documents, as well as a healthy future in a place they can call their own.

• In response to all of this, Eugene and I are for the first time having to look closer at our lifestyle assumptions after having lived and served here in KwaZulu-Natal both on our own for so long. We have suddenly seen that we need to adjust our single living styles and callings to fit a picture of our calling as a married couple. He is accustomed to assisting the caregivers in caring for the sick and orphaned, while I’ve been more on the grassroots level of individuals. Please pray for us as we grow more into each other and into our God-given calling here in South Africa.

• My step-Dad Bud passed away unexpectedly, but peacefully in his sleep on Sunday afternoon. He and my Mom were married almost 23 years, if my calculations are correct. His memorial service is on Saturday. It’s been difficult grieving alone, but am glad that I’ll be able to spend some extra time in the Seattle area supporting my Mom. I’ll be arriving 2.5 weeks earlier than planned (24 June), and continuing with my previously-planned visit tagged-on. Please pray for comfort for my Mom and family in the midst of this loss.

• The same day that I heard about Bud’s passing, I got a very upset phone call from, the manager of our project in the Loskop/Amangwe Tribal Area. She had received an anonymous phone call on her work number telling her that someone had been hired to kill her (a disturbingly inexpensive and common thing here – as cheap as $25). She got safely away to her family home away from the area and has been really digging into God’s word and in prayer and is calm and at peace now. She decided to go back to Loskop the next week, but very understandably is hesitant to get back into the full swing of things. Not sure who to trust, where this threat came from. We really feel like this is a spiritual battle that we’re involved in, perhaps something to do with jealousy as well (?); as we continue to assist and share God’s hope and love with the sick and orphaned in the area we must be stirring up the spiritually dark forces in the community. Please pray for God to intervene and turn the hearts of the evil ones here, to continue to give Xoli peace, and to bring a clear end to this so that Xoli can go back and continue the work that God’s called us to do – assisting orphans and the sick in their distress.
• On an exciting note, building on our little piece of land for our Thembalethu Care Centre looks to be a closer reality! We staked it out (50x80 metres at the end - land pictured here) and are hoping to break ground in the next couple of weeks. We don’t have the full funding to put up much, but we’ll start with a 6x6 metre building and hope to put up a training centre and kitchen to feed orphans as funding becomes available. John Grant, one of our very dedicated board members has generously offered to help us with building experience, and has already organized a donated fence and its installation for us. It looks very promising for us to get funding from the Department of Social Welfare as well to be able to set up a program of orphan and community support there as well. We hope to feed the local orphans and vulnerable children with a healthy morning meal as well as an after-school meal and provide them with assistance accessing social grants. Thank God for all that’s been going on, and pray that we will have the funds necessary to continue our community work and put up buildings we need to expand!

• I’ll be in the Seattle area now from the 24^th of June through the end of July, with some extra time to support my mom. Should anyone have a car available I could borrow for some or all of this time, please let me know. Please pray for God’s continued provision of my work with Thembalethu in the Amangwe community as my funds are running low.

Blessings,

Betsy

Small Victories

Some days you just have to celebrate the little things. Like yesterday - such a lovely, productive day. May seem like little things, but it's no minor feat in South Africa to be able to achieve so much in a day. So grateful for the successes, and thanking God for moving things along so encouragingly! Thanks for your prayers and support!

Let me share with you yesterday's small victories:

Opening a new Thembalethu bank account in less than 2.5 hours .
We managed to get the five signatories for our bank account all to the bank at the same time with all required personal and organizational documents in hand (a stack over an inch high) AND were able to open the account. Hooray!!! We've been paying $20-30 per month in bank fees, and switched to a bank that promises we should pay less than $5 per month.


Getting our Permission to Occupy the land at our new community site!
After being passed between the municipal council (local government) and the Amangwe Traditional authority (traditional government, a parallel structure), we managed to get permission to occupy our new land in the Mandabeni area of Loskop. We hope to put some structures up soon and start caring for the community there, especially orphaned and vulnerable children!

Completing and handing in the last of the accompanying documents required for a Department of Social Development funding proposal, and just in the nick of time.
This 40-page funding proposal plus 20 pages of accompanying documentation was no minor feat to complete - especially with the last-minute notice I received to turn it in. The Department says they can't find enough NGOs to be funded to support the orphans and sick in the community, so we're praying that our application will be accepted so we can get going at our new site.

Finding a quaint lunch joint where Xoli and I could grab something to eat and two drinks for the two of us for just R25 ($2.50)! (And it was good - Indian pea and potato curry with two rotis, yum!)

Enjoying a newly tarred road on one of my favorite shortcuts from Winterton/Loskop back to Tugela Ferry.
Thanks to the upcoming elections, approximately half of the 20km rough gravel road, a nice shortcut to Tugela Ferry, was tarred just in time for the elections on Wednesday next week (22 April). It felt so luxurious to be able to enjoy a nice, smooth road instead of its rough, bumpy, hugely rutted former state!


Writing of elections... please pray for South Africa. That a man of integrity and truth would be elected. Politics and the whole political system seem to be at a big turning point here, and with the history of violence around political rivals, we need a LOT of prayer.

Also, in two weeks our church in Greytown, Shalom Fellowship is hosting the Mighty Men's Conference (www.mmc2009.co.za). Last year they had approximately 60,000 men attending the conference on the farm, most of them camping there. This year they're anticipating an unprecedented whopping 200,000 men to attend the weekend-long camping conference. The famous Christian evangelist, Angus Buchan, on whose farm our church is, will be leading the Conference. Please pray for this weekend (24-27 April) as well - for God's hand and movement amongst the men, and for Uncle Angus.

Please also mark your calendars for the evening of Tuesday 21 July, as I'll be giving an update of my work here in South Africa, and of Thembalethu at the Africa Interest Group at University Presbyterian Church, Seattle. It'll be a very brief visit, and my (our) time in limited so I hope to see you there! If anyone is interested in hearing more about what's happening here, please let me know, and I'll try to squeeze it in.

Being a Neighbor

Jesus replied: "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:37-40

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers.…”
Luke 10:29-30


Bridging Program
We are so grateful for the funds we received as a grant from the UPC Caring Community for an extension of our HIV/AIDS outreach in what we call the ‘bridging program.’ Through the funding we are able to work together with local doctor and chairman of our board, Dr. Johan Düring, to provide access to the much more efficient private channels of anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, and then ‘bridge’ patients over to the government ARV program. This program is envisioned to save valuable time in accessing treatment for the patients, who otherwise wait up to six or eight weeks in accessing the life-saving treatment. As this is a new initiative, we continue to learn more about how to make this happen.

Also to discuss the level of support required to make this happen: from Xoli and myself, to the Home-Based Caregivers, and the patients and their family.

In the process of figuring all this out, the key question has arisen in my mind of how far an individual, a community would be willing to go to care for their neighbor. How far would you be willing to go? How far would I be willing to go in caring for my neighbor? I can’t help but think of Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, and how far he went out of his way to ‘help his neighbor’ and how Jesus demonstrates not just what loving your neighbor means, but who is included in the neighbor bit. Individuals, home-based caregivers do this every day. For them it’s a way of life. But given the vast extent of HIV/AIDS illness and orphans in the Zulu community, how far can local individual action be taken? Just how much sickness, and desperate need can a community provide assistance to?

The reality is there is not a family untouched by HIV/AIDS. Not an individual in KwaZulu-Natal who has not lost someone they love.

I am really beginning to believe that, despite the Zulu people’s broad definition of family and family responsibility, the vast level of need that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has brought on demands beyond the absolute maximum of what a people can give. When their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and children are getting sick and needing their care, how can they be expected to be free to help their neighbor in his moment of need? I have gone through seasons with one wedding every weekend, but that was only a brief period, an exceptional summer. Here people have become accustomed to attending a funeral monthly, or in some seasons, weekly. It’s unbelievably sad to see the reality of what AIDS has done to this community.

Yet, the Home-Based Caregivers are an exception to the norm of giving to not only their immediate and extended family, but also to their entire neighborhood. But how much can we expect of them? The hardships of poverty are difficult enough already: fetching water at the pump, fetching wood in the forest or up the mountain, running a business for extra cash, walking, walking everywhere; looking after grandchildren… the list could go on. And then there’s the emotional and spiritual resources required to keep going, to continue to help others amidst the deaths, the desperation, the destitution of the children and families left behind after their breadwinner has passed away.

How much, how far can a community be expected to give? This question has been rolling around in my mind in recent weeks, I have come to the realization that despite the best efforts of people like the Home-Based Caregivers in the community, the need is too great for them to cope on their own. To be able to deal with the level of need in the community, they really need help. From people like me and you. Thank you for your support of them, of the Amangwe community.

I pray that God will give us all increasing amounts of strength to continue to love our neighbors, wherever they may be.

Blessings and love to you,

Betsy

Qedi & Lindo's House Back Like New!

BEFORE & AFTER


Qedi and Lindo have their house back! We found a very efficient, highly competent builder who rebuilt the walls of their house and reattached the roof. This time the girls tell me that the roof doesn't lift or make excessive noise when winds come, and it keeps the rain out. Thanks to those of you who gave to help fix up their house! If anyone else is interested in helping, we could still use some funds to reimburse the expenses of housing for these two girls.

Becoming a Social Worker

I never expected to become a social worker. But it’s such an integral part of serving in the community here. And there is a desperate shortage of social workers, and an even more desperate situation affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty. While starting to write this, I have two young kids (13 and 5 years) from the Winterton area sitting at my kitchen table, doing ‘school work’ I’ve given them.
I transported their mother about a month ago to the Philanjalo hospice because of her health and lack of care at home. She has meningitis TB and a recent CAT scan indicates she has severe swelling in her brain and therefore her outlook is very poor. Please pray for this patient, and her young kids, Nondethelelo and Lindokuhle (girl 13, boy 5) who, on the doctor’s recommendation, are staying with Eugene and I while they pay one last visit to their dying mother. Meanwhile, colleagues in Winterton are helping to sort out the children’s living situation, which will be with the families of the children’s fathers.

Another case came up about two weeks ago as I was driving to Loskop/Winterton for a meeting, I got a call from a colleague with the municipality about a young girl that needed help. Her name is Mpume, she’s 17 or 18 years old (no birth certificate, so a lack of consensus about this), orphaned and has a six month old baby. Her older brother fetched her April last year from the orphanage where she had been living since 2003 and she never went back. Then she ‘fell pregnant’ as they say here, and since defaulted on her ARV treatment. And, even worst, was kicked out of her brother’s house because of a fight with her sister-in-law. We found her a temporary place to live, but as they continue to remind us, it is only a temporary situation. While the social workers committed to help us initially, their supervisor reneged this commitment, and now it’s only us looking out for Mpume. It looks like she’ll be able to move into a three-month temporary Christian haven where she’ll be loved, Hope will be conveyed, and she’ll get some skills training. At that point, we’ll have to see where she goes next, though it might be a place up in Johannesberg for HIV positive mothers and their children. Prayers for her and her baby Aphiwe would be greatly appreciated as well.

While on the issue of social workers, a God provided a GREAT answer to prayers not long ago in the answering of Xoli’s prayers and the saving of the Loskop social work office. Social workers in Loskop work primarily with orphaned and vulnerable children, the majority of whom are helped to access foster care documents and birth certificates through their appeals in the office. Their office was located at the Department of Agriculture complex (Xoli lives next door) and when she arrived home one evening, she saw a great column of smoke. As she realized that it was the DoA complex, she started praying for the saving of the Social work office since so much of the assistance to the community’s most vulnerable rests upon the files in that office. She and her husband proceeded to remove all they could save from the social work office, while she continued praying that nothing would be lost. And GOD is GOOD! When I went to see the DoA office a week after the fires, I was impressed by how marvelously God answered. The entire building is a burnt wreck, but the social work offices, while undoubtedly damaged some by smoke and water, were untouched by fire. The fire brigade arrived from Estcourt just in time to save the office. The social workers confirmed that not a single file was lost. Thank God for this protection of the interest of the community’s most vulnerable!

Update in Brief

Hi guys,

I’ve been working on an update for you for quite a while now, and haven’t managed to pull it together. Yet there are SO SO SO many things that have been going on lately, so many stories to tell, exciting news to share, praise reports to give... I could go on and on! I just sent an update/questionnaire up to the UPC Urban and Global Missions Department that I thought I’d use as a preface to the other update I hope to send out soon.

I just got back from an amazing Christian conference for missionaries put on by a church in Durban that assists ministries around the KZN province. I’m so grateful for the encouragement, vision, and wisdom that God gave at the conference, and all so much more thankful for the many things that have been happening in my life and work in the last couple weeks and months. I’m so grateful for your partnership, prayers and participation to make my being here possible, this work possible. Thanks and blessings to you.

More to come soon.

Love and gratitude to you all!

Betsy



UPC Missionary Questionnaire


1. Share your current vision in three fairly brief sentences or less.

To share God’s love with those infected with HIV/AIDS as well as orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) affected by the pandemic in practical ways, sharing God’s Hope and pointing people to God. To support and show God’s light to the women giving of themselves in Home-Based Care and support the work of Thembalethu Care Organization, bringing it to a point where it can run well locally. To assist and advocate for the sick in their access to health services, to assist OVCs with food and advocacy to access their foster care grants.

2. What is/are your most immediate project(s) that consume(s) your time?

I am very involved in the management and oversight of Thembalethu Care Organization, a project initiated with support from the local church. At this point, since getting married and moving, this has taken on a more administrative role in which much of my time is spent in the bookkeeping, networking, resourcing, reporting and general office support. Every week or two I drive back to Loskop to be involved in the day-to-day running of the project (home visits, orphan food deliveries, etc) and for meetings to move things forward. I am also involved part-time with Philanjalo, a Christian NGO here in Tugela Ferry where I’ve moved, which has a 32 bed hospice and a large home-based care program. I am largely assisting administratively at this point, trying to create systems and structures that will help the outreach be more effective.

Over the last month or so, I’ve also been very involved in some social-work cases that God has brought into my life. An 18 year old HIV+ orphaned girl with a four month old baby that needs a place to stay has had me on the phone, making lots of phone calls, and having multiple meetings trying to find her a place to stay, get her a death certificate for her mother (who didn’t have an identity document, and thus no death certificate), a birth certificate for herself and her baby, as well as getting her back on her ARV treatment which she defaulted on since becoming homeless. All while trying to meet her daily needs (baby diapers, formula, etc). I’ve also been assisting patients from the Winterton area to get support from the Philanjalo hospice where I’m involved. There have been two patients that I have transported to the hospice here (there’s none in the Winterton area) for stabilization and care of their health status, and for time to sort out their home situations, both of which led to their need for admission into the care centre in the first place.

3. Share your top 3-4 goals for the coming year.

We have just been granted land by the local council, and prayerfully hope to be able to establish a centre there from which our ministry to the community can be more effective. Our desire is to have the facilities from which to be able to feed and care for orphans and vulnerable children (before and after school food, help with homework, accessing identity documents and grants, etc), to be a centre from which those in need can receive assistance, and a centre of support for those most affected by the epidemic – the orphaned youth and aging grandparents.

God has put it on our hearts over the past months to expand our evangelistic work, meeting people’s spiritual hungers, not only their physical ones and their tangible needs. We are looking for ways to partner with a solid Christian pastor whose heart is in the area to more effectively bring God’s hope and love to the people who we are in relationship with. Just recently, 15 of our Home-Based Care mommas committed themselves to Christ!

We have been feeding and assisting orphaned youth, primarily households where a youth is acting as head, to access identity documents and government foster care grants. We would like to expand the support we’re providing to these youth through Christian counseling and support groups, leadership and life-skills training. Many have gone through such hardships in the deaths of their parents, in taking on the responsibility of caring for themselves and their siblings at such young ages, that they really need support and encouragement beyond what we’ve been providing to date.

We plan to find ways to get our new Anti-Retroviral (ARV – that is the treatment for AIDS) bridging program up and running, assisting the sick and poor to access life-saving treatment privately and then bridging them over to the public program which would save valuable time and potentially prove life-saving.

4. Briefly describe the top need in your work for the coming year.

God has provided for the funding of our work in amazing ways since we started this project in November 2006. Currently, our funding is budgeted to run through the end of 2009, although this does not allow for our vision to build and run the centre mentioned above, nor much work with the OVC as listed above.

We also need a lot of prayer support as we embark on these new projects, that God would give His vision, his provision for this expansion to our work. That we would stay close to Him, seeking his wisdom, leading and heart for the community.

5. Note briefly 1-5 notable results of your investment of time and energy in your area of focus, whatever that may be (people, projects, vision, etc.)

As mentioned above, 15 of our Home-Based Care ladies recently gave their lives to Christ! This took place in a training session we organized for them to learn about testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS. We’re excited to see the ways God will continue to work in and through their lives to bring Hope to the community.

Through Thembalethu, we have been able to provide support to 375 orphaned and vulnerable children through monthly food parcels, assistance with obtaining identity documents and/or foster care grants, and school uniforms. Many of these children were able to attend school, or prevented from dropping out of school due to the poor/non-existent state of their school uniforms. We have also cared for 190 patients over the course of 2008 in the home based care program, supporting the sick at their homes, helping them access medical attention and medical attention, training their families how to care for them and protect themselves, providing counseling and prayer support and other tangible assistance. We were also to educate 290 people in our deep rural community on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. We’ve also done multiple trainings for our HBC volunteers: TB treatment support, Adherence to ARV medications, Christian Listeners’ Courses (Learning to Listen, Listening to Pain in Hope HIV/AIDS, Listening to Children), as well as the latest training in counseling and testing for HIV/AIDS.

Through God’s grace, Xoli Msimanga came into my life, and after over a year of working alongside her, she is now running the project with me a 2 hour drive away. It’s been a privilege to get to know her, to be able to share with her about God and watch her faith and love grow, and her passion to see others know God. She’s been a godsend, a provision to allow the project to continue without me close by.

It’s been a big encouragement also to see many of the patients we’ve known over the years recover to full health after accessing their ARV treatments. Patients who had been sick on their beds are now walking around, looking healthy and adhering to their treatment. Also, orphaned families that we have been supporting for a few years have finally received their government foster care grants, and are able to care for themselves with the money they are now receiving. In one particular family I just helped Phakamile, the eldest of a family of seven, to apply for nursing school after she successfully passed her matriculation (senior year exams).