Departure Date to return to S. Africa

We are departing to return to South Africa on January 23, 2012, to again minister in the GAP Youth Mentoring Program.  We have had a great time visiting family and friends but looking forward to the new class of students which begins on February 1st. 

Back Home

We left S. Africa on July 28th and was able to spend some time with our son in Washington DC prior to his deployment to Iraq.  We returned to McKinney on Aug. 9th and has been good to be with family and friends.  We will be sharing about our mission experiences in several venues at First McKinney including BFG's, Ignite, and Baptist Women on Mission during the months of October and November.  We are preparing to return to South Africa to work in the GAP Youth Mentorship Program in January. 
Prayer Requests:  Remember the GAP students in your prayers that they will feel God's leadership as they graduate from the program in early December, and that they will continue a close walk with Jesus as they step out into the secular world in jobs or further education.
Pray for us as we prepare to return to minister in South Africa in January.
We also ask for prayer for Leo O'Connor, GAP director, for divine healing of his cancer and restoration of his health. 

While our GAP students were on holiday, God provided us an opportunity to minister at First City Baptist in East London.  A group of 20 from The Journey Church of New York City came to minister to children here in South Africa.  We joined this group in providing a Holiday Club for 100+ children, ages 3 through second grade.  The children either have AIDS/HIV or affected by the disease.  Some are orphans and are up for adoption.  It was a wonderful time of sharing God's love to the children through Bible stories, music, crafts, and games.  We also fed them breakfast, lunch, and snack and lots of love.  They loved to sing about Jesus and our prayer is that when the hard times come they will remember how much Jesus loves them.
Our GAP students returned this week from Holiday, and we will be having a teaching and emphasis on missions.  The students will be ministering along side us in a orphanage and school this next week.
As we prepare to depart South Africa on July 25, we are thankful for the opportunity God has given us to be here and share Jesus and His love with young people here. 

GAP Youth Mentoring Programme update

Praise for a busy but good week with the GAP students.  Our main duty here is to be camp parents but we are also teachers, mentors, and spend lots of time with discipleship of the student.  They are half way through their 10 month program so our days and evenings have been spent in reviewing, testing, and evaluating the progress of the students.  We had 157 essays to grade on topics the student’s have studied since February.  As the essays were to incorporate their life experiences, it was very eye opening as to what all these students have endured in their short lives as they wrote about topics on Wisdom, Family, Love, Self-Esteem, Health Addiction, Friendships, Sex and AIDS, Keys to Success, and Facing the Future.

Pray for our students as they have a two week vacation from GAP.  All have accepted Christ since coming to GAP and have left an unhealthy life style and made big changes in their lives.  They most likely will be faced with temptations and find it difficult back in their home environments.  Pray for their strength and they made wise choices while back in the townships. 

While the students are gone, we will spend the two weeks with a one week Vacation Bible School for about 100 elementary students, as well as some other ministries in the area.  We also will start sorting and packing for our departure July 27^th.

Activities this past week

Lawrence taught Bible lessons all last week on forgiveness.  On Friday we had one on one sessions with the students praying God would grant them ability to forgive others and be released from bitterness.  Most of these students were dealing with issues of abuse from family members, parents (especially fathers) who deserted them at an early age, and murders of family members.  We praise God for the results seen from these prayers and ask you to join us in prayer for the future that the students can now put these issues behind them and look forward to God’s great plan for their lives.  This week the Bible lessons center on seeing God as the perfect Father.  Pray with us that the fatherless students will see that God is the example of the perfect Father.   

We are thankful that our cabin renovation is mostly complete.  It has given us a little more space to meet with students.  This week we are having 3-4 students in our cabin each evening for cookies and refreshment to assist us in getting to know each of them better and building meaningful relationships. 

Life at GAP Youth Mentoring Program

Greetings from sunny South Africa,

We are doing well and have settled in at the GAP Youth Mentoring Program.   We had 7 of the students for a cooking lesson this morning in our little cabin.  They enjoyed eating the muffins as much as baking them.  We also just had a great time of fellowship lasting about 3 hours of talking and sharing and getting to know each other better.

Appreciate all of you and your prayers are felt.  Below is our list of Prayer and Praises:

1.        Praise that the students are receptive to us and willing to share with us.  After we shared our testimonies and our story with them last Monday, there were lots of questions and discussion about life in the U.S. and living as a Christ follower.  We’ve had several come to the cabin in the evenings  to share and pray with us.

2.       Praise that our son-in-law Ryan made it back to Okinawa on Wednesday after his 6 month deployment to Qatar.

3.       Praise for safety this week as Lawrence spends a lot of time driving to E. London and various places with students and picking up and taking home staff from the Camp.

Prayer:

1.       Pray for safe travel for the students who went home this weekend and will return on Monday morning.

2.       Pray for two students who went home for specific reasons this week-end.  Bonginkosi is the only Christian in his family.  He shared with us that he felt the Holy Spirit prompting him to go home and share the plan of salvation with his whole family.  Pray for courage and clarity for him.  Pray for Akona as he was to meet his father this week-end for the very first time. 

3.   Pray that the addition to the cabin will be completed this next week.  There was no one available to work on it last week.  The area is roughed in and sheetrocked but needs to be finished with flooring and getting the kitchenette fixed up.  A door needs to be put in and due to structural issues has been a problem.

4.   Pray for Louise as she drives on Monday to Debenek School (in a village close to Ft. White) to deliver uniforms that were purchased for the students.  Our friend Dawn from E. London will accompany her.

5.   Pray for employment for our S. African friends Siyanda and Nosiphiwo and wisdom for us as we try to advise them on housing.

6.       Pray for Lawrence as he teaches daily and pray for Louise as she prepares menus and does purchasing of the food for the whole camp (about 24 people).  Most of the food comes from donations from grocery stores that comes in 2x a week.  From that a menu is made and then purchasing has to be done for any food that is needed to supplement. 

New ministry opportunities

Beginning the first part of April, God changed our focus in ministry.  We feel blessed to have worked at Ft. White for the first part of our stay in S. Africa.  We accomplished starting a preschool at Ft. White which is continuing to work with village children.  Lawrence enjoyed working in the village schools and sharing God’s love with his students.  It is hard to leave both groups but find ourselves ready to focus on a different aspect of ministry.  We are finishing up some ministry in the villages and will soon begin working with a program for 18-24 yr. olds called the GAP Youth Mentorship Program.  It is a wonderful program helping the village youth who are so poor find focus and purpose in their lives through Jesus Christ, and assist them with finding work opportunities or higher education.  We will be Camp Managers and Camp parents for the remainder of our time here. 

The camp is in a mountainous,  jungle  region about 18 kilometers from E. London.  There are monkeys swinging through the trees which are rather pesky, but guess we will get used to it.  We will live in a 2 room cabin.  The students are in sturdy tents. 

While we wait for the cabin to be prepared for us to live in, we are staying in E. London with a missionary single lady who is here from Burleson TX.   We praise God for his leading and guidance as we follow His will.  Please pray for us and the students with whom we will be ministering.

Update on ongoing ministries

We have completed two weeks of our Creche (pre-school) here at Ft. White and God’s blessings have been evident.  We have 11 students, mostly 4-5 year olds, and one who is two years old who is one of the teacher’s sons.  The children are quite well behaved and learning rapidly.  Besides the basic teaching, we include a Bible story each day and prayer.  Louise was wondering how much the two year old was learning but found out rapidly one day last week.  The story had been completed and Louise went right into the singing instead of having prayer first.  She realized the mistake when the 2 year old stayed on the rug with his hands folded and kept looking at her.  They learn a routine so fast. 

Lawrence is teaching at two village schools two days a week.  He is teaching English and Geography.  He has 7^th graders who, even though they have had English in school since 3^rd grade, are really struggling with the English language.  His teaching purpose is two-fold, one to improve their English so they can succeed in higher education and share God’s love through Jesus Christ.  Without a good grasp of English they will never get out of poverty in S. Africa and without Jesus there is no eternal hope and future.

We were blessed to have our church in McKinney send a group of 12 here last week working in the continued remodeling of the facilities here on Ft. White.  They also brought many items for the pre-school from church members and Lawrence’s friends from Allen school.  Everything received was greatly needed and appreciated.  It was great to have the group here last week and they were big encouragers to the Fudges and us.

Continue to pray for our ministry here at Ft. White and discernment on God’s will for the use of the facilities and resources here. 

Thoughts from S. Africa

It is a beautiful day at Ft. White today with lots of sunshine.  As we drove to church this morning, the view of the mountains was beautiful and we couldn’t help but marvel at God’s beautiful creation.   God has blessed the Ft. White area with rain in the recent months and everything is so green.  As we picked green beans in the garden last night, the Fudge’s shared with us that the rocky cliff in our view from the garden is where, in the past, people were sacrificed.   They were unsure of the reason but most likely was a tribal sacrifice to the gods.  The beans we picked will be sold at market to help with costs a Ft. White, given away as we did this morning at church, and used to feed children in our soon to be started pre-school and the local village schools.  Last week we were at a school of about 70 elementary children grades K-7, and the government subsidized food supply had run out and there had been no lunch for the last two days.   The Fudges bought beans and corn to make the local menu of samp and beans, bought bread, and provided vegetables we had in the garden to the school the next morning which was enough to feed the little ones for 2 to 3 days.  They say this happens often here and the children take it as a way of life as most would not have lunch at home either. 

Last Wednesday we were honored to have the village chief (mayor), the Administrator of the AIDS clinic, and other representatives from the village areas come to Ft. White.  They came to share with those here how much the ministry of Ft. White and First Baptist McKinney has meant to them and expressed deep gratitude for all that had been done for the area.  Was quite a humbling experience and Dr. Kettles and the Fudges stated a real first in the years they have been here. 

We appreciate and covet your continued prayers as this week we begin intensive preparation for the preschool (a crèche in S. Africa terms)  to start March 1^st.  The S. African lady who will be the administrator is enrolling students this week.  Pray for the finances to be available and God’s guidance as we proceed in faith. 

We have arrived

We arrived in East London at 11:35 am on Tuesday Feb 8^th  and was met by Philip and Becky Fudge and Dr. Alf Kettles and his wife.  We drove directly to Ft. White, got here about 2:30, and moved into the house.  We have now been here a week and getting somewhat settled and acquainted with other people who live here at Ft. White and minister in the surrounding villages.  It has been hot but cools down of an evening.  We are finally adjusted to the change of time and sleeping better.

We have been working on the house we will call home for the next 6 months, needed some tender loving care.  Don’t think we are ready for doing home improvement TV shows as yet!  We have met several times with the Fudge’s and the Kettles regarding the Creche (preschool) that is to start early March.  Lot to be done before this can begin.  Have been to the village elementary schools twice working with the children K-7^th.  This is lots of fun; the children are so receptive with lots of hugs.  One day we traveled with the Fudge’s to a Camp where Philip was speaking for a couple of hours.  It is called the GAP program which another Christian group here has founded.  It is for young people post high school  18-20 yrs old who need direction and help in finding their way in life.  There is training in English speaking, life skills, learning to work in a group, bible classes, classes in computer, job shadowing in businesses in East London, etc.  It is quite an exciting program for these young people who are in these remote villages with no hope for a way out of the village poverty without training.  This is a program that is a real possibility for Ft. White and one we will work with the Fudges and Kettles in getting started along with the preschool for 3-5 yr olds. 

Pray for us as we determine what ministries God would have us involved, that relationships can be developed with the local villagers and in the schools, safety as we learn to drive here on the opposite side of the road with stick shifts, and good health and energy.