Red Rocks Soccer Camp

Today the Red Rocks team did a soccer camp in Tlhabane, a neighborhood of Rustenburg. Martin, our youth pastor, and 11 of his youth did an awesome job organizing the whole event. The youth group did some dances, sang some songs, and presented the gospel message. About 50 chldren showed up. Martin broke them up into smaller groups to do some soccer drills and exercises. The Red Rocks girls were "coaches" for these small groups of kids for the soccer camp. Our youth group kids also helped coach the children. Soccer is such a huge sport in South Africa, that all of the children had a blast, and the Red Rocks girls loved it too.

 

Red Rocks Team

On Wednesday a group from Red Rocks Church in Colorado arrived. It is 5 women: Cindy, Jill, Jen S., Jen T., and Simone. It has been great having so many people from Colorado visit lately, but it is making us really miss Colorado. Yesterday (Thursday) Cindy and Jill spend much of the day in the almost 100 degree weather weeding the vegetable garden Maury and Taylor planted a couple of weeks ago. Both Jens and Simone went to Freedom Park to hand out food and water with Lincoln. The rest of the day they spend playing with the kids, and Jen S. (who we hear is the queen of organization) tackled the very unorganized storage room and school room. Today they have been doing play ball with the older kids. These are pictures of the team playing with the kids.
They are hard workers and have gotten a lot done already. They have also fallen in love with all of the children. We will have to make sure all of the babies are still here when they leave next week!

 

6 months

Here I am at 6 months pregnant. I went to the doctor last Thursday, and everything is going very well with the pregnancy. He is now 100% sure it is a baby girl. He told me that my blood pressure is pretty low, which explains why I am completely exhausted all of the time. Other than that I feel really good, and the baby is growing and developing just as she should. We still have not picked out a name yet! I don't know why we are having such a difficult time choosing a name this time. We are taking suggestions if you have any!

Maury and Taylor's Week

Maury and Taylor are Firefighters/EMT’s from the Denver, Colorado area. They spent last week working here at the shelter with us. We are so very thankful for their time here. They had such great attitudes and worked very, very hard.
Their first project was to plant a vegetable garden so that our children in the shelter can have fresh, organic vegetables to eat. They spent the whole first day turning the soil and pulling weeds. (No one in Rustenburg rents roto-tillers.) This was a very hard day of work which they did whole heartedly.
Their second project was to install cabinets and countertops to separate the kitchen area from the babies in the baby shelter. This is a requirement from the health department. Maury and Taylor had the difficult task of making do with mismatched pieces of donated cabinets and countertops. (As always, money is tight, so we had to do what we could without spending a lot of money.) It was not an easy project, but they put their minds to it and came up with a pretty functional room divider and countertop. We have another team coming in a week that will paint it.
During their time here they also spent time in Phokeng feeding a group of 80 orphans, they visited Freedom Park (a local shanty town) to bring food and water and pray with people in extreme poverty, and they spent the day with Dr. Neil as he visited three local AIDS clinics in some outlying villages.
 

Lion Park

We took Maury and Taylor to the Lion Park last weekend. Here's a picture of the kids petting a baby lion.

Maury and Taylor

Wow. Time flies. Sorry again for the lack of updates lately. We just got done having a visiting team from Fort Collins, Colorado. It was really cool to spend time with people from back home. Colorado people are the best. We were so thankful to have them working here. They did an awesome job and worked very hard.
They are going straight from here to climb Kilimanjaro. Those of you that know me know how envious I am of them right now.

Feeding Children in Phokeng

We have started going with Derek and Rebecca (the YWAM missionaries) to a town called Phokeng to serve a meal to about 80 children on Tuesday afternoons. Most of the children live in child-led homes, and this is most likely the only meal they get that day. Lincoln and I just started going with Derek and Rebecca, so we don't know very many of their stories, but a lot of the children have lost their parents and adult family members to AIDS. These children have no one else to take care of them, so they take care of each other. Each day they gather outside of a lady named Martha’s house and wait for food. Some days there a meal and they eat, some days there is no food and they go with out. Derek and Rebecca met Martha who reaches out to the children, and also wanted to do something to help her and the kids out. So, they committed to bringing a meal once a week. In addition to providing love and care for these children, Martha helps get grant money for the kids (all of the money goes to them directly, or into accounts for them) and uniforms for school. Schooling here is free, and open to anyone, but a child must have a uniform in order to attend school. A school uniform for one year cost about $100 US dollars, which may as well be a million dollars for these kids who have nothing.