A Taste of Heaven

We have had a busy and blessed week since arriving in South Africa on Sunday. It has been great having Sandra and Douglas Shuff here with us this week from Northview Bible Church in Spokane. Sandra has been a part of two short-term mission teams that have served here with Two Tunics in 2008 and 2009, while it is Douglas's first time visiting.

Some highlights of the week for me:

• Worshipping at the tin shack church of Pastor Amos in the Mkholmbe shanty town
• Sweet reunions with the staff at Genesis Care Centre and many other dear friends
• Sandra's "Jesus Loves Me" presentations at 3 of our community creche (preschool) partners
• Home based care visits with Amos and Busi - humbling, disturbing and uplifting at once
• Seeing the "investment" in projects like Nokukhanya and Sinothando Creches bearing fruit (especially Lindiwe's teaching of the children and Pas's garden in a bag)
• Oh, and let's not forget lunch at the Waffle House and dinner at Edelweiss (it hasn't been all work and no play)
  

One of the words or themes that stands out for me this week is "progress". When one is here full time working in the community, frustration over lack of progress can become an everyday experience. The positive changes that do occur is so slow and incremental that it is easy to overlook them. Now returning after nearly 6 months away (our longest absence in 5 years) and with Sandra return 18 months after here last visit, it has been encouraging to see much evidence of positive changes around several of our partners.

I've already mentioned Nokukhanya Creche with Lindiwe's teaching of the children ( Two Tunics is providing her training through TREE) and Pas's incredible bag garden (Two Tunics provided "seed money" and training through Tim Barratt a local farmer). There are also many children Sandra remembered by names and faces who were sick, dull and full of rashes before who are healthy and vibrant now (thanks largely to good nutrition Two Tunics supplies through Food4Africa and Feed the Babies). And a man with TB lying dying on the dirt I saw during home based care visits in March is now sitting up, eating and interacting with his family (thanks to support given to family to consistently administer his medications and much prayer).

Yesterday I was reading in 2 Corinthians 5 and was struck by verse 4 which speaks of the mortal or dying being "swallowed up by life" (NIV). Paul was speaking about how through Christ, although our mortal bodies are dying we have future heavenly living bodies. But I was struck by the evidence I had seen this week that even while in these mortal bodies awaiting our desired heavenly dwellings, we can experience little pockets of life swallowing up death and hopelessness. This happens as each of us follows and serves Christ in the way he has been called. And I believe God is glorified whenever and however death is "swallowed up by life".

I thank God for the foretaste of heaven He has given me this week.

Delivery Day

Monday was a long, hot and dusty day. It was delivery day for Two Tunics. Through our partnernship with Food4Africa and Feed the Babies we receive monthly supplies of a nutritional porridge to distribute to our Two Tunics supported creches and other projects. Currently this program is supplying nutritional support to over 950 children in 6 communities.

Normally the deliveries are done over two days at the beginning of each month utlizing Pastor Amos and his van. But since Robin and I are here this month wanting t see all the projects in a short time and we have the use of our vehicle again, we elected to do all of the deliveries in one day. The day started at 8am by sorting the large bags and boxes of porridge into piles on the floor of the office so that each of the 13 projects will receive the needed numbr of packets for the month. Then the separated bags and boxes were loaded into Amos's van and my Subaru in the right order - first in, last out according to the delivery schedule for the day.

Porridge sorting (top)

Debbie stacking porridge in the store room (left)

By a little after 9am Amos, Onnie, Debbie, Robin and I were on the Road to Murchison community with a quick stop at Norwegian Church to pick up Marco. He is a volunteer from Holland working with the Ugu AIDS Alliance who wanted to come along to see what Two Tunics was all about. We made deliveries to our 5 creches in Murchison with the last stop being Sunnyside Creche(Nokukhanya in Zulu). This is the site of one fo the 3 creche classroom buildings provided by Two Tunics last year. It was gratifying to see the creche thriving and the faclity being so well used. It was also encouraging to see a sign posted announcing that the Department of Health was going to utilize the crech in April as a site to provide polio and measles immunizations to children in the community. It has been a vision of Two Tunics Community for Kids program from the beginning to see the creches become projects in the communities that other services could be built around. It was very rewarding to see this becoming a reality in Murchison. As we were leaving "Good by tin house" written with red pain on the door of the tin shack formerly used to house the creche.

New Sunnyside Creche Building; Department of Health Notice at the Creche

Then it was off for deliveries to 6 more creches in Bhobhoyi, Bhomela and Gamalakhe communities. At the Lutheran Church Creche one of the facilitators from TREE was there doing a site visit to the creche.TREE is an organization that trains creche (pre-school) teachers on early childhood education. Two Tunics has sponsored several of our creche teachers to complete level one training. This includes onsite follow-up visits to see how the training is being implemented in the classroom. Again it was gratifying to see the educational material from the curriculum posted on the wall of the creche and the TREE staff person keeping the teachers accountable for using what they are learning to benefit the children.

Finishing up in Gamalakhe we said goodbye to Amos and headed down the coast about 30km and then inland to the final two delivery sites, Masakhane Community project and Khandandlovu Baptisit Church. At Khandandlovu iIt was great to see Pastor Eric's wife Bonisile and her 4 month old son (he looks just like his brothers). This is the site of another of the Two Tunics provideed classtooms. Unfortunately there had been a freak windstorm a couple weeks before that caused sever damage to a small area around the church. The portion of the roof of the church and the new creche classroom was damaged. We will have some discussions with the project next week to see how we can help with some of the repairs needed.

Having completed our deliveries it was back to the office in Port Shepstone, dropping Marco on the way. Delivery day was a full day, a good day, a blessed day.

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Back In The Office

Well, at about 11:30 pm on Tuesday night, and about 33 hours after we left for the Seattle airport we arrived at the flat we are renting for this week in Uvongo, near Port Shepstone South Africa. Thankfully all our bags arrived intact as well. Overall the trip went very smoothly and we both were able to sleep about 5 hours on the 15 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg. Thank you to those who were praying for our travel. God is faithful and gracious.

It is now 1:45 am on Thursday “morning” and I am sitting here typing because I am unable to sleep even after taking a sleeping pill, drinking some rooibos tea and having a snack, hoping that one or more of these will assist me in getting back to sleep for a couple more hours. The jet lag is always hard on me as in recent years I have become a bit of a fitful sleeper. Thankfully the weather has cooled considerably from recent weeks. Although still quite sticky, there are some cooler ocean breezes and gentle rains that are refreshing. With the low dark clouds and drizzle it does feel a bit like we brought Seattle weather with us as many here had asked us to do.

But as I said in the previous post this trip is not about the hard travel, the jet lag or the weather. We have much to accomplish and so we jumped right in with a busy day yesterday (Wednesday 3March). Most of the day was filled with things we needed to do to get settled here for the next 3 weeks. Buying groceries, water and other supplies, getting our old car back, sorting through stuff in our storage room at the old house to find what we need for this trip. Then it was off to the Two Tunics office in Port Shepstone to hook up to the internet, catch up on emails from the last 2 days and to meet with our staff to go over the continually evolving schedule for the next 3 weeks.

When we arrived at the office, there was our staff, Onnie and Debbie greeting us with smiling faces and warm hugs. It was hard to believe we were back with them so soon and it felt a little like we had only been away a few days. They both look well and despite the additional stresses they have had to deal with since our departure last November it quickly became obvious that their attitudes remain positive.

Onnie and Debbie

As we talked through our plans and schedule – receiving the Food4Africa and Feed the Babies porridge deliveries at the office, setting up the deliveries and visits to all the projects, arranging Pastor Amos and his vehicle to help with them, preparing for the building dedication event in Eastern Cape, arranging meetings with the management committees of our 8 key community partners, meeting with Give A Child A Family about the orphan issues we are struggling with, and more – I was struck by the tremendous volume of work these two women and this small office are doing and what a huge service and ministry they are providing.

They continue to have a great commitment to the work Two Tunics is doing in the lives of people affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty in the Ugu district. Onnie is the incredibly competent and detail oriented Programs Manager that we depend on to run the operations. Onnie accurately tracks and documents a large amount of information about donations received and distributed, progress of training and other activities for each project supported, as well as the needs and support of the orphans in the communities. And Debbie is the right hand Office Assistant that Onnie depends on. Even as the four of us met together, Debbie popped up several times to answer the phone or the door, to sign for a package or to print a few copies of a document.

Please continue to pray for Onnie and Debbie. Some of the changes we are asking them to implement will not be easy. Dealing with people and getting them to change their thinking never is. Pray that God would protect them and strengthen them. Pray for their health and for their families, especially Onnie’s son and Debbie’s two daughters. Pray that God would use them in a way that allows others to see Jesus in them. It is a privilege to be here with them doing this work. Our community partners and the children they serve are depending on them. They are depending on us and we are depending on God’s people.

1,000,000,000 People

During our recent trip to Franschhoek (see my last post "The Winelands") Robin and I enjoyed some of the best meals we have had in a long time. Franschhoek is considered the gourmet capital of South Africa and 8 0r 10 of the 100 best restaurants in the country are in this one small village and the surrounding wineries.

Robin and I have always enjoyed good food and one nice thing about living in South Africa is that eating out is quite reasonable. Even at the best restaurants the prices are a lot cheaper than equivalent restaurants in the US or Europe. And now with the dollar-Rand exchange rate at something over 10 it is a great deal. So we were able to enjoy some wonderful meals at several excellent restaurants during our 3 days in Franschhoek.

Part of the purpose of our trip was to get away from the realities and seemingly never ending needs associated with the work we are doing here in South Africa. Getting away from time to time is quite necessary if one is going to be able to sustain this type of work. In this regard the trip was a success as we were able to get away from phone, internet, emails, people begging at the gate and all the other daily demands that are a regular part of our life here.

However, even as we were enjoying our escape and especially several wonderful restaurants there was one thing I couldn't seem to get away from. It was the title of this post which was also the headline on the second section of the Sunday Independent newspaper on January 4th this year. I couldn't seem to get the number one billion out of my mind. You see as the article explained, that is the number of people that will go hungry in 2009. And this has nothing, or at least very little to do with the worlds current economic crisis.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organizations makes annual estimates of the number of people who will go hungry and is predicting the number to go over one billion for the first time in history. This is despite a second record worldwide harvest in as many years and contradicts the undertaking of world leaders in 2000 to cut in half the number of hungry by the year 2015. The biggest factor in the increasing rates of hunger is the increase in food prices so that more and more of the worlds poor are unable to afford adequate nutrition even if it is available. The Sunday Independent article points out that although "At a special summit in June last year, rich governments pledged $12.3 billion to tackle the food crisis, but so far they have handed over only $1 billion of it, as they have scrambled to provide trillions to bail out failing banks."

I am thankful that I am one of the privileged and becoming few that can afford food. Certainly I am among the privileged elite who can afford to eat in a restaurant. I am not saying that I should have to give up eating as much or even eating out (as I said it is not really a food shortage). But I am convicted that I need to be more intentional about helping in some way to meet the growing hunger in the world.

Robin serving meals to children after school

Two Tunics name comes from Luke 3:11 where John the baptist says "let him who has two tunics share with him who has none and let him who has food do likewise". One of the things we are doing as Two Tunics is giving nutritional support to vulnerable and hungry children. We have established a partnership with Food 4 Africa through which we are providing a nutritional porridge food supplement daily to over 500 children at community based day care and after school feeding projects. We also provide healthy daily snacks (peanut butter, brown bread, milk, fruit etc.) to children at several of the creches (pre-schools) we support. Two Tunics is about sharing and I am proud to a part of this work that is doing something small in the area of the world's hungry children.

Robin feeding Food 4 Africa porridge at a creche

999,999,500 to go. Can any of you take on a few more?