A New Volunteer

Today we met and welcomed a new addition to the volunteer family. Tammy is a school teacher from the UK (mind you she was born and raised South African) and has taken leave for the next 6 months to volunteer at Living Hope, joining the team of Life Skills Educators. God’s timing is perfect, as the team needed another person to help fill gaps in certain areas. We know that she will do this and more!

Volunteer Braai

We invited all the international volunteers over to a BBQ – known as a ‘braai’ here. We are excited to start using our home as a ministry itself. It’s one of the main reasons we know we’ve been blessed with a house, and one larger than we need as a couple. I was personally excited to test out the built-in braai grill for the first time. It was a great time of getting to know each other better outside of daytime work hours – and the first of many to come, I’ll be sure of that!

Returnee

We are privileged to welcome back a dear Living Hope friend. Myrtle lives in Canada but will be living here for the next 6 months to volunteer in multiple areas including Living Grace (Living Hope’s ministry to the homeless) and CCFM, the local Christian radio station. Welcome back Myrtle!

Saying Farewell

We say farewell to the team from Tennessee today who has been working in all of our 6 communities to facilitate Holiday Clubs this past week. They did a phenomenal job at not only teaching the kids about God’s plan and love for their lives and by encouraging the Life Skills Educators. The most memorable part of this week was the parents night on Thursday – the Life Skills Educators invited the parents to come and see what their kids have been upto during the week. A few emotions from that: 1) I wanted to cry to see the sadness in some the kids faces when their parents didn’t show up – out of the 80 or so kids there, only about 25 parents came; 2) The pride in the parents who did come’s faces when they saw their kids performing these songs and dances also moved me to a tear; and 3) and then seeing the way the Life Skills Educators were encouraged and inspired this past week made me want to do this all over again! Thank you guys for what you did for us here this past week!

The Background Info

This past month has been nothing short of hectic. We literally jumped into the deep-end. But we made a commitment to each other to take this time until December to not only do our job, but to also observe and learn as much as possible. Already we’ve been given some amazing opportunities to watch, learn and meet a variety of people that we will be working with closely over the next few years. We quickly came to the realization that we are the only two people in the organization that have to interact with every aspect of the organization – we not only work with all the volunteers (international and local), but we also have to have a close relationship with the different General Managers, staff and local community pastors to keep a finger on the pulse of the ministry and the communities. How humbling? Amazingly we’ve already had opportunities to meet with the different managers and hear what their visions for their respective branches are. Then we also had the privilege of meeting a number of local pastors at different events we were invited to. So God is giving us what we need to complete this task.

Holiday Club Memories

Tim with the Kiddos in Masi!

We are excited to receive a team from Tennessee, US that will be with us over the next several days. Next week they will work alongside the Life Skills Educators to put on ‘Holiday Club’/ Vacation Bible School for children and teenagers in all of Living Hope’s communities in which it ministers. Today was the beginning of training and prep for the week. It was great for us to sit in and be a part of it for a while. This is an area of ministry near and dear to our hearts as it was essentially what we brought teams to do here for nearly all of the past five years. It was weird to be on the other side of it all this time. This team really knows what it’s doing, and the LSE’s love them for coming and building into them each year. We know that Holiday Club is going to be fantastic!

The Journey to Tim's SA Residency Begins!

We met with an immigration advisor in the city today to discuss the options for my residency in South Africa. My current visa is the standard 90-day tourist visa given to most visitors upon arrival. Today we discovered that because of Natasha’s South African permanent residency by birth, and because we’ve been married for more than 5 years – I can apply for permanent residency straightaway. Now we have a decision to make: whether to apply on our own (cheaper) and do all the work ourselves and risk getting it wrong or even lost in the system, or to apply through an immigration firm (more expensive) and essentially guarantee that all will happen appropriately.