Summer with a Kick!

Just as the summer fades away for you all in the Northern Hemisphere, it comes with a kick here for us in South Africa. There’s no fading or easing in for us, especially in Tugela Ferry. Spring simply means big shocks between cool and hot from one day to the next. Perhaps it’s the nights that are the nicest around spring – the night air is cool and refreshing after days that top 90°F.

We are eagerly awaiting and desperately needing the summer’s rains and grateful that the temperatures haven’t yet reached their summer scorching level yet. Unfortunately I don’t know if the new little man in our lives, Joshua, agrees. We are official foster parents to little Joshua Nkhanyiso now (we scratched the earlier name idea of Moses), and he has a birth certificate as well, both exciting achievements. The adoption process is also underway, as we have decided that he is much too precious for anyone else to raise up.

Joshua is now eight and a half months old and is a very contented, happy baby who has made leaps and bounds in his development since we took him over three months ago. We have really enjoyed watching him through the milestones he’s already made – lifting his head, smiling, laughing, sitting, rolling over, cutting through his first two teeth, with crawling still to come. With the suddenness of becoming parents without the standard nine months preparation, we’re both still getting used to the title of Mom and Dad – they both seem strange concepts still, but we certainly enjoy the new roles. The fun thing is that I now have a new name in addition to my other two Zulu names (Nomangwe and Thembalethu), it’s MakaNkhanyiso or MakaJoshua, depending on which name people call our little son by.

Ambulance-Driver

While balancing the addition of motherhood, I continue to get out in the community and support patients, orphaned and vulnerable children as well as doing lots of office work from home. Repeatedly over the past two years, I have played 'ambulance driver' to patients needing a step-down care centre.

The first patient I transported recently was during the public service strikes, which was a horribly traumatic time to be sick. This patient had been in the local hospital as it closed down, and discharged without her HIV or TB medications. The family put her on traditional medicines, which we thought sedated her heavily. Coordinating with Philanjalo’s step-down unit doctor, I brought her to Philanjalo for care as the hospital was closed at the time. Because of the severity of her condition, she was transferred to COSH (the hospital where we live) and died shortly thereafter of some kind of swelling in the brain. We'll never know what, as the referral hospitals were closed and she couldn't get a CAT scan or the correct treatment in time. We can just pray that public service strikes like this are not allowed to cause such suffering in future years and the definition of ‘emergency services’ includes hospital services.

The second patient I brought over was also a Thembalethu patient I visited, in this case one who had been discharged from the hospital and looking suspiciously like a MDR (multiple drug-resistant) TB case.  She was very very very thin and very sick. Through a local doctor friend, she was admitted to COSH for investigations and treatment. Unfortunately, she passed away just three days after being admitted. This sweet lady was my age and has a baby girl Joshua's age, as well as a four year old abandoned child she'd taken in. Her mother has now lost both of her children, and widowed daughter-in-law is also one of our sicker patients.  She has just started treatment for TB, but not yet ARVs and has four children of her own. My heart and prayers go out to her family in this difficult time, and we will continue to provided support and assistance to the children left behind, as well as the other sick widow. Aagh. I think I'll leave being an ambulance driver for a while now... While it offers tremendous opportunities for some patients to receive reliable, conscientious care, for some it’s just too late. I’ve nearly had to become a hearse driver on two different occasions now. I am very grateful other solutions came available for the families instead.

Thembalethu Expands!

Our new building is nearly finished, with a generous donation from a South African organization! It is a beautiful addition to our new piece of land, and we are very blessed to have so much space and possibility. We are planning to utilize the old building (orange/grey) as the community resource centre which we’ve started doing already on a small scale. The physical, occupational and speech therapists are already coming once monthly as an outreach for the disabled. We are striving to bring all the disabled children ‘out of the woodwork’ from the midst of the rural area so that they can get the therapy, support, care and schooling they need to thrive. Next month the mobile clinic should also start using our premises, moving over from functioning from the back of their converted-pickup truck and under the awning of the local store. We hope the new space will improve the primary health care service provision to the community and that we can also provide them with support and even HIV/AIDS testing and counseling for interested community members.

Thembalethu is currently offering the following services to the Amangwe Community:

• Home-Based Care to the sick
• Nursing supervision to local home-based caregivers
• Food parcels and support for orphaned and vulnerable children
• Preventative education about HIV/AIDS and TB
• Community resource centre

o           Special Needs Day once monthly

o           Mobile Clinic starting in November.

Funding Update:

Great news came in this week –we have been approved for small bit of funding from the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria. This will be our first real funding coming in on this level, and I am both excited and a bit daunted by the prospect of moving to the next level. The funding will cover some stipends for our caregivers as well as other costs for running some of our home-based care as well as orphaned and vulnerable children care. We are very grateful for this new input of funds, thankful to God for His perfect timing in providing for funding for us to continue loving and serving the community. We have nearly come to the end of previous financial gifts, and the timing for additional funding is perfect! 

Our caregivers have been solely volunteers up until now, and these stipends will be a great help to them, but can greatly change the dynamic of the work. Please pray for our wisdom as we move forward with this, and also for wisdom in our decision of which caregivers to offer stipends to. Please also ask God that the caregivers we select will be able to continue to serve their neighbors from hearts of love, care and compassion and not let the new financial dynamic ruin their beautiful gifts to others.

I continually give God thanks for the generous gifts that I have received to support my work and living expenses here over the past 6 ½ years! So far in 2010, these funds have been limited (just over $6,000, while my annual budget is $15,000) and while they cover my first priority – Thembalethu ministry expenses, they have not covered much beyond this. I would be very grateful for any additional funds to support this.

There are two primary ways that you can support this work:

	Support Thembalethu Directly	Support Betsy’s Living Expenses
Direct Funds to:	University Presbyterian Church – 4540 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Online Giving	upc.org  - following links to ‘give’ and ‘online giving’ or Click here to go straight to UPC's online giving page
Online Specifications	Fund: Missions - Global Sub Fund: Thembalethu	Fund: Missions – Global Sub Fund: – Meyer (Elfers), Betsy - South Africa
Check Specifications	Make out to UPC “Thembalethu” in memo line	Make out to UPC  “Betsy Meyer” in memo line

It has been over six and a half years since I first came to South Africa. It's hard to believe that so much time has gone by, but I am very grateful for the way that God has guided and provided for me in so many ways along the years and the journey. We are thinking in spring 2011 to spend some time on ‘furlough’ in the USA to spend a some time (3-6 months, depending on how I can leave work here) reconnecting with friends and family after so much time away. We also look forward to introduce Joshua to everyone! Please keep us in our prayers as we look to how to coordinate this, both in South Africa, and the Seattle area.

Unkulunkhulu akubusiso,

Betsy (Eugene & Joshua) Meyer

People often ask me what there is to do in a place as remote as Tugela Ferry (or the Berg, when I was living there). I used to wonder the same thing when I first landed in rural South Africa, thinking optimistically that with all the free time on my hands evenings and weekends, I could catch up on years of must-read books, teach myself to play the mandolin, and plant a phenomenal vegetable garden. How very wrong I was. After the first few weeks and then months, all that ‘extra’ time disappeared.

We live without a TV, without so much as radio signal, and entertainment options are, well, let’s just say very limited out here where we live. I must admit it’s been months since I last even took my mandolin out of its case, so my progress has been dismal. Since getting married, moving to Tugela Ferry, I rarely have even time enough to finish one of the three books I’m reading simultaneously. Yesterday I laughed outloud when I got a call from a salesperson trying to sell me a discount card for various commercial services. She asked if I was a member of a gym, if I went to the movies, etc. I had to explain to her that I lived in a remote Zulu Tribal Area and there wasn’t so much as a gym, mall or movie theatre anywhere around us and she wouldn’t get far with her sales pitch on me.

Yet, there is something beautiful and precious in living in relationship with people, and not in the rush of urbanized life. We meet together with our friends here regularly and have all developed such delicious recipe repertoires that our menus are almost as good as eating out every night. My vegetable garden, well, let’s just say I tried – it’s not easy to garden in the desert. I can’t seem to get anything to grow past the seedling size. Doesn’t help that the past few months of summer Tugela Ferry has had extremely high temps up to 120°F with limited rain.   

But mostly, living here has taught me a lot about relationships. From here it’s easy to see how much we Americans are about efficiency. The Zulu people, on the other hand, are all about relationships. In my push for efficiency, I sometimes rushed to bypass the customary greeting culture that takes about 90 seconds or so prior to every personal contact. It goes something like this:

A: Sawubona                         (Hello)

B: Yebo. Sawubona.               (Yes, Hello)

A: Kunjani?                           (How’s it?)

B: Siyaphila, kunjani wena?      (We’re fine/alive/healthy, and how’s it with you?)

A: Ngiyaphila nami.                (I’m also fine.)

Even after all these years (just had my sixth year anniversary of coming to South Africa!!) I still default back to the efficiency over relationship, forgetting to greet each time I see someone for the first time that day. By bypassing this cultural requirement, I have occasionally ruffled feathers thoughtlessly and in fact so offended even the friendliest relationship that efficiency itself was disrupted.

I like to think that we lead a simple life out here, but somehow in ‘simple’ there should be more time for relaxation, reflection, quiet. In the midst of all this ‘busyness’ that has somehow taken over our lives here, we strive to slow down and re-center our lives again on God’s plans and purposes for our lives. How very quickly and easily we can fill our lives with things and miss out on the important purposes God has for our lives. And then I’m reminded of this common human condition as expressed in the Book of Isaiah (30:15)

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:                     "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”

Last week, in this spirit, we took a few days off to go camping with fellow missionary friends. It went much too quickly, but gave us a great chance to slow down again, enjoy God’s beautiful creation in the Northern Drakensberg. It was great to slow down and have some time to spend with God and in fellowship with other believers.

Let me give a few highlights of what I’ve been up to lately:

o       Thembalethu Care Organization’s community centre building is up and ready for use!  We now have our own offices and are in the process of expanding our work to allow for our expansion from our pick-up (bakkie) and people’s houses to a place where we can meet broader needs from a central place. So far we’ve had meetings and trainings there as we work up to expand our work to include more community awareness and support groups for our various vulnerable populations. Because of the remote nature of our centre, making ourselves available as a community resource centre has tremendous potential for making resources more available for the deep rural community. Injesuthi Clinic, the single primary health care centre covering the area run by the Department of Health, is the most crowded clinic in the area with long queues and waiting times. Because of the vast distances up the Injesuthi Valley, vast numbers of the population struggle to access health service there because of the cost of transport to get there (R14 or $2) and so the mobile clinic is thinking to utilize our facilities for their monthly mobile clinics. That’s the first of many community resources that we are opening our doors to as we seek to help improve access to basic services to our deep rural community.

o       Last week we held a community awareness event, the first of many others to come, with the goal of raising awareness of HIV/AIDS in the community. The community could really use many more of these in the future, as the limited amount of HIV information available to people is shockingly poor. We’ve been working on a house to house basis, and I’m excited to have something more than a pick-up to work out of from now on, as the possibilities of working from a physical office space opens up a lot of possibilities. We are working toward starting support groups for our HIV patients, Orphaned and Vulnerable youth and the elderly caregivers of orphaned families. Many new developments in our program are underway. So, it’s a very exciting time here!

o       Back to the books! In late October, under a full scholarship, I started a ten-month course in Advanced HIV/AIDS Management which has been picking-up greatly in its workload and requirements. Since I am already involved so heavily in management activities, it has been hugely practical and many of the assignments have already helped me to put better management practices into use. Xoli has also enrolled in a course in Social Auxiliary Work which has already provided her with a great amount of context and practical skills to help her in her day to day work.

An update from South Africa at this point in history would be incomplete without mention of the FIFA Soccer World Cup that is coming in just two months. The countdown has been going on for over a year, and the time is almost here and the excitement and trumpeting of the vuvuzelas is ever-expanding. From 11 June to 11 July, the world’s largest sporting event will take place on African soil for the first time, and South Africa is thrilled to be hosting! Although the nearest stadium is in Durban, the excitement stretches from coast to coast.

Please pray also for the Mighty Men's Conference that is coming to our church (farm) this weekend. They are expecting somewhere around 400,000 men from around South Africa and beyond to come and camp for a weekend of preaching by South African Evangelist Angus Buchan. Please join me in praying for the continued revival in this nation, and for God to continue to move powerfully amongst the men in particular.

Grateful thanks for your generous prayers and support to make this work possible. Praying that God would bless you greatly!

Noluthando kaJesu,

Betsy (& Eugene)