Sorry its been so long!

I know it has been a long time since I have posted and I apologize. I do plan on writing an update soon! In the meantime, here is a short video that a friend (Thanks Jesse!) put together for me with some highlights of my ministry.

Quick Update

My mom reminded me yesterday that my blog has been very quiet lately. I am sorry about that. I won't get to a full update tonight but I did want to share a few things. It has been a long two weeks. We found out that my new worker in Katlehong had stolen from us. It was very sad and very disheartening. We (I) had high hopes for him. Please pray that God would lead us to the right person to take his position.

I also wanted to let you know that I will be in the states for about 5 weeks right after Christmas. I will be in PA visiting family from December 27th until January 2nd and then in Los Angeles from January 2nd until January 31st. I will be spending a week in the middle of this time with some dear friends in Napa. I leave LA January 31st and will spend a few days in Atlanta before heading home. I would love to see as many of you as possible and catch up! I'm also available and willing to share in any groups or Bible Studies about the ministry here.

I'm looking forward to a long weekend in Cape Town this weekend. This will be my first time there and I am looking forward to seeing an other part of this country.

Funny Sign

Ok, I saw a funny sign at the stores the other day. It said: Christmas Sale on Beach Towels.... There's just something about a warm Christmas that still feels weird to me.

Speaking of the beach, I am off to Durban to meet up with Josh and family for a few days. I am looking forward to coming back a few shades darker (I know... its dangerous.) and a little more rested.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I have wonderful memories of times spent with family and friends. And once again I am reminded of all that I have to be thankful for. We serve an amazing God who treats me much better then I ever deserve and with much grace and mercy! I am grateful for all of you who so faithfully support my ministry and make it possible for me to be here and I am thankful for my faithful friends and family who love me and care for me! What a blessing to be part of the family of God.

Todays Thanksgiving was a little different then most. I celebrated with Josh and Marda and the girls. Marda had ordered a turkey that was suppose to be delivered to the store yesterday. When she went, it hadn't come in and she was told it might come in Thursday or Friday late morning.... A little bit a problem. There wasn't another turkey in the store. So, we had chicken. Welcome to Thanksgiving in Africa :) The girls were afraid Thanksgiving would be ruined but it wasn't because when it gets down to it- its really not about the food.

Oh, and due to the fact that there is no such thing as pumpkin in a can, I made my first pumpkin pie completely from scratch and it was pretty good and pretty easy. I still need to figure out how to make my crusts look pretty though. Any suggestions???

Fun Pictures

Summer is here and the kids are really enjoying their pools!

Random thoughts from yesterday

I'm not sure how best to describe yesterday. I started out the day by taking our doctor to work at the government clinic in Katlehong. She works there every other week with the ECHO team which is a team that is suppose to be helping to make changes to how the hospital is run. Problem is she has shown up and they don't. As we got to the hospital you have to drive through security. I've done that before but yesterday they asked if I had a camera with me. I did and they wanted to keep it until I left the hospital. Hmmm... don't think so. Since, I knew I wanted to have my camera at the end of the day I said I would drop the doctor off and leave without coming in. But it does make you wonder. What are they afraid I will take pictures of? The high level of care going on in the hospital????? Another, hmm... don't think so.


From there I went with our two community workers to do some home visits. When someone asks to be fed by us, we visit them and make sure that they are needy and fit our criteria. As I walked into these homes and sat with the flys swirling around my head, I thought of God's sense of humor that He would have such a germaphobic person ( I mean I don't even like to shop in Walmart because I think its too dirty and I certainly won't use the restrooms there.) doing these kinds of things and being in these kinds of places.

One home (and by home I mean a 10ft x 12ft tin shack) we were going to we planned on telling the woman that if she had enough money to buy alchohol, she had enough money to buy food. When we arrived, she was gone but her 12 year old daughter was there and the grandmother. The shack was filthy and there were clothes lying in a pile outside it in the dirt. (This is very unusual. Most keep their shacks cleaner then we keep our houses.) The daughter hadn't been to school because the mother is using the daughter's grant to buy alchohol instead of things like school shoes. Because she didn't have shoes, she couldn't go to school.

We asked where the mother was. It seems that she has gone to stay with her new boyfriend and left her daughter to stay with the old one. It still shocks me that a mother could do that. It is like she is asking for her daughter to be raped. I asked the grandmother if she could have her granddaughter stay with her but the mother is so abusive she is scared to. My heart was very sore as we stood there. I thought about bringing her back to Lambano to stay and figured I'd ask Lyn for forgiveness when we got there :). I knew though that we need to get Social Services involved. So, I gave our community worker money to buy her shoes and took them to the Social Servicies office. They should remove her from the home. I'll find out this afternoon what happened and if they didn't I might be bringing her back here. We then picked up a 14 year old at the hospital who ius very sick and possibly about to die. We brought her back to Lambano and will care for her here. We are praying that we got her soon enough and can nurse her back to health.

Well, that was the heavy part of the day. That night I went to the Christmas program at the school our kids attend. I know it seems early but schools here close in November for the 'summer' break which seems very strange to me but it is summer here. I was absolutely amazed at the program. You'll see a picture below of something I don't think you'll see happen at any public school in the states or that has happened in maybe 30 years. Yes, that boy is reading the Christmas story from the Bible...... Wow! A Christmas concert were they sang about Jesus. I think they only sang one song about Santa.




They had kids acting out the story as they sang. Kamo below was a angel.



Timmy was Jospeh. I don't have a picture of her but one of his twelve girlfriends was Mary. We are working on the girlfriend thing :) but school has been great for Timmy. He really has excelled and is quite the man on campus it seems.

Seiya was in the chorus that sat in the back.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable concert and all the kids did a great job! It was a good way to end the day. I love Christmas!

Charity Mile

I spent yesterday at a charity event for Lambano. Each charity was represented in a competition and we came in second- winning R60,000 (about $10,000). God was good!

It was a little funny because each charity was represented by a celebrity and being American I had no idea who most of them were. And I have to tell you besides the money given to Lambano the best part of the day was that some of the Springboks were there. For those of you in America, the Springboks are the South African rugby team and we just won the World Cup. Its kind of fun to have a team that represents the whole country instead of a state or a city. It really brings people together. Anyway, I did what I never do and in an effort to make some of my South African friends jealous had my picture taken with some of them there. To fully understand these pictures, you have to understand what a big, huge things Springbok rugby is here. I have to say they were very nice guys and were very gracious with the people at the event.

With Jake White the coach

With Juan De Viliers

With Schalk Burger

Update

The little girl who was pictured below died this morning at 9:10am. We are grateful that she passed away peacefully and quickly. Please pray that God would comfort the family at this time. Please pray for the funeral. One of our pastors, Vuyo, will be holding and will share the hope of the gospel. Pray that people will hear and respond. Thanks!

Very Funny....

Ok, this You Tube clip is so funny..... Sadly its what many people think Biblical Counseling is but it isn't... Anyway, enjoy!

Here are some pictures of the little girl I mentioned below. Please continue to pray for her!

Sorry for the lack of updates. Its not that I don't have things to post because I do. My home phone has been down for about 5 weeks and my internet stopped working last Saturday..... I feel very disconnected to the world right now. I'm connected right now but it is costing me a small fortune to do so which means you will only get a few quick highlights.

1. This past Tuesday marked the end of my second year in Africa. Wow, time flies!

2. Please pray a new child we got on Thursday. She is 10 and weighs 22 lbs......Needless to say she is very sick.

3. And in less sobering news South Africa won the World Cup in Rugby for the first time since 1995.

Concert Update

A few weeks back I ask you to pray for a concert a youth group was hosting in Washington to raise money for our hospice. Sam Neylan posted a report on it on her blog today. (If you click on her name, it will take you to it.) You'll be encouraged by what you wrote. It is pretty cool to see how God can use even the internet to bring people together.

Bayley Jordan Mack

Introducing the first African- American Mack! Bayley Jordan was born on Monday at 7:50am. She weighed 7.05 lbs and was 18.9 centimeters and is very cute!

Much to McKenna's delight (as you can see below), she was born with red hair!

Christmas in October

Today was a very fun day. It started off by having an encouraging time with our new worker. How refreshing it is to work with someone who on their own prays with parents about their sick children and who willingly volunteers to help wherever he can even when it isn't in his job description. WOW! What a difference!

Then in the afternoon I got to play Santa. Someone had sent money to help buy school uniforms for some of the children in Katlehong. (Actually two people have.) They specifically wanted to help two children I have mentioned in the past who are living with their grandfather. Now I work with people who have nothing but honestly these kids have less then nothing. I think they have one set of clothes. Its pretty sad.

Anyway, I took them to the shops today to buy school uniforms. I think they were a little overwhelmed with it all. I had some money left over when we were done and took them to a clothing store and let them choose some new clothes. I asked the woman who was with me if this was the first time they had been able to buy new clothing and she thought it was. It was really fun to show love to them in this way. How fun to think that they are going to school tomorrow for the first time with a school uniform on and that when they get home they have some clean, new clothes that aren't torn and needing to be thrown out to put on!

One neat thing was the attitude of the woman with me. Its not like she has much. She has three children and lives in a shack in a squatter camp. I wondered what she would think about the money being spent on these kids and if she would feel bad I wasn't buying for her children. But she wasn't. She was genuinely excited about the good being done for them without a hint of jealousy. What a great example she was!

Its Fixed... I Think....

I think my e-mail is fixed..... Its been a long couple of weeks without it. My e-mail address has changed in the process. It is now beth@gracechurch.co.za. Thanks!

A Couple Of Things To Pray For

Just thought I would pass on a couple of things to pray for. About two months ago, I got an e-mail from a Master's College grad that had heard of the work here through a mutual friend (Thanks Courtney and Sam!). Her church youth group wanted to do a concert fundraiser to raise money for the ministry here. Was there anything specifically that they could raise money for. Well, while I was dying to say money for a new school, I know the larger priority right now is the money needed to finish the hospice we are building. It was so encouraging to see Christians that I don't know desire to be involved in the work here! WOW! Really, I can't tell you what an encouragement it was to me to get that e-mail. The concert is this weekend so please pray God lays it on people's hearts to give! Pray too for any who come to the concert who don't know Christ and that this might be used to soften their hearts to the gospel.

Please also be in prayer for my dad. He came back from the states with a bad case of bronchitis. (Those of you who are familiar with how long a bad cough stays with me can rest assured that it is a genetic thing :)and his will last even longer.) He teaches class this coming week for about 7 hours a day for 6 days straight. Please pray that he is sufficiently well enough to survive the week. I'd ask you to pray that if he isn't that he would ask someone else to step in but if you know anything about my dad- you know that will never happen :).

Sani Pass

When you live in Johannesburg, sometimes its good to get out and see that all of South Africa is not a major city. Last weekend I went with a couple from church to the Sani Pass which is a road up the Drakensberg mountains into Lesotho.




Above is the view from the top. The front part of the picture (the stones) is what the road looked like we drove up.

Here are Alan, Nicolene and Emma at the bottom of the mountains.

Another view from the top.

Just a quick note to let you know that my e-mail has been down for about two weeks now. I have had it here and there during these last two weeks but nothing consistent. And now I can't get it at all.... So, if you have e-mailed me and I haven't responded, chances are I didn't get it. Wait a couple days to send it again.... Right now its going to somewhere in cyberspace and not anywhere near my e-mail in-box.

Backwards is really forwards.......

When we found out about Meise and what she had been doing, it felt like our project had taken a hundred steps backwards. In fact at one point Lyn even said to me that maybe we should shut it down for awhile to regroup. The more we heard and the more we saw of what she had done the more discouraging it was. But you just keep reminding yourself of the truth. God hasn't made a mistake yet. This isn't and accident. Somehow and someway he is going to work through this. And He has.

What seemed like a hundred steps back has really become a hundred steps forward. For me, it has been good to have to be more hands on in Katlehong. There are a lot of things Meise has done for us that I have done in the last few weeks. Last Friday, I spent a large portion of the day taking one of the 80 year old grandmothers to the doctor and helping her do somethings at the bank. As a result, I had some great conversations with the woman who went with me to translate about spiritual things. I've also had the chance to meet with most of those we are helping up there and begin to build deeper relationships with them. Because Meise tried to keep them away from us for fear that she would be caught out, her not being part of our project has freed them to share with me in new ways.

We also have hired two new workers. Both who claim to be Christians and one I am fairly certain is. The Christian is actually a man who is a widower and has three small children that he is looking after and raising. Not a big deal to many of us but you have to understand in their culture the men typically have children and leave. He's really the first one I have met who is actively involved in his children's lives in the Katlehing area. Men there just don't do that. He also has been involved in going into schools and teaching about purity and abstenice (another unheard of idea here). I'm looking forward to capitalizing on some of his contacts at the school!

We also found out why we have met with such resistance from the clinics in Katlehong. We had had a great meeting with one and they had agreed to give us the names of children they think are HIV positive for us to follow up on. When Meise went to get the names, they refused and all of a sudden started talking about privacy issues. Doreen (the other person we have hired) went and spoke to the clinic this week and they told her that they were afraid to give Meise the information because they were afraid of how shoe would use it against people. They would be more then willing to give us that information now for us to follow up.

It has been an encouraging few days. I've prayed (and I know many of you have) for this project and that God would give us inroads into the community and make us effective there. It has been exciting this week to see how He used what seemed like a hundred steps backwards to accomplish this! Thank you so much for praying. Your prayers are such an important part of the ministry here!

On a different note, I am very excited that my parents return home from three months in the states this Sunday! Yahoo! I really am serious about hiding their passports next year so they can't go. :-)

I'm also looking forward to going away this weekend with some people from church. We are going to Lesotho which is a small country in the middle of South Africa. It should be a lot of fun!

Prayer Letter

I recently sent out an updated prayer letter to people. If you didn't receive it but would like to, please let me know and I would be glad to forward it on to you. Or if you received it and would like to be taken off of the list, let me know that. You can either leave me a comment with your e-mail or send me a quick note at beth@grace.org.za.

Thanks!