Indali Yengubo

Indali yengubo, zulu for jumble sale. Everyone needs to experience a jumble sale at Lamontville. We hold it at our good news centre, this was our 3rd and all three times they have had the same reaction. We didnt need to advertise this one. We told the 20 kids at cyc about it the night before and the word spread round the neighbourhood like wild fire that night. The lamontville ladies were waiting eagerly at the gate from 7:30am. By 8am they had let themselves in and had their faces pressed against the windows sussing out which table to go to first. Liberty was nominated to open the door for them - a dangerous job. Just watch her make a run for her life...

The ladies dying to be let in

A day out with the Mariannhill girls

latest Ndwedwe trip

GPFTF

Incase your wondering GPFTF stands for "Gods plan for the future". Its a class been set up in recognition that there isnt any support for the newly baptised or interested contacts. Its every saturday morning. It was run by David white and Ben topham - wise brothers. They have both now left as have all the other volunteers so this week i volunteered to lead it. I had been the previous week and led the first 20 mins as cam wasnt around, and it was really enjoyable! I arrived this week to see 3 new faces, bongani, pilile and bekka, of whom had come as a result of being drawn into the bible education centre because a bunch of us were singing zulu songs outside the shop. Kwanda had told them about the class on saturday morning and they came! So that was awesome to see. We sit in a group around a table and this week we looked at a bunch of verses about the ressurection of the dead and the idea that christ is coming TO the earth and the dead shall be raised, which then gives a good basis for not believing in heaven when we die. To be honest it was quite intimidating at first, there were 5 people older than me by a good few years and from a different culture and every sentence i said i just hoped that they would agree and come to the same understanding from what we had just read, and didnt have any wierd traditional or cultural views on the matter! Im 23, i hardly have a wealth of experience in teaching! But my strength isn't my own, my strength comes from Christ who fills me up and helps me, its from him i was able to teach!

Mariannhill skills course

Phil, Adam and i are running a skills course in the church in Mariannhill township. The idea of it is to provide the unemployed will skills so that they can be self employed. Its a 4 week course, one day a week. Phil is teaching a group how to screen print, Adam is teaching how to make earrings and im teaching them how to make greetings cards. At the end of the 4 weeks we are taking the products they have made (along with them) to the craft market to sell what they have made. This then we hopefully show them how its done and how easy it is! They must then go out themselves and find shops to sell their products etc and we will do a follow up after 2 weeks to see how they are getting on or any problems they might be having. Its quite exciting!

Choir

Phils main project over the past 8 months has been recording a choir to create a CD. Its an incredible story in itself how the choir all came together but thats phils story to tell. All the choir members are FANTASTIC people! they are very fun...here are some photos of them in action...

This is Tammy, listening to her sing makes you want to give her a hug

Buhle, the babe. She can sing

Arrival of new wheelchairs

Friday 22nd October, finally we see the result of months of hard work and effort of fundraising as we arrive at Happys to meet thula, our wheelchair supplier. God had also helped organise the day for us too, when we arrived the entire school were together in an organised assembly sort of way (a very rare thing) and there was a company there (im not really sure what they were promoting) with an entire PA system which gave us a platform for presenting the wheelchairs and turned it into a ceremony. It couldnt have worked out any better! thankyou God!

The state of some of the wheelchairs were just not worth thinking about, ripped seats, ripped back rests which meant thy had no back support, broken wheels, no foot plates so they had no where to rest their feet, they really were disgusting! But there was nothing more joyful to see them lifting themselves out of these wheelchairs and into a brand new one whilst the urban beats were pumping out the speakers and the other students were cheering at the joy of their friends.

Nozipho also recieved her electric wheelchair and almost lost her hearing at the same time through the amount of screaming and clapping. Thula lifted her out her chair and into her new one and showed her how to work her new chair. Understandably she was incredibly nervous at using it for the first time as she was centre of attention in front of the entire school including the teachers "Hamba, hamba" they were all screaming at her (which means go). For the first time since she was 15 (shes now 29) she was able to move for herself, to get to where she wanted to on her own, what an incredible thing! She also has leg rests, before people would accidently knock her legs and she couldn't do anything about it.

It was such a beautiful day and i feel very blessed to have been a part of it and witnessing their joy as they received their new chairs. I know that they are very thankful! 15 chairs were delivered in total and there is still more money coming in to buy a couple more!

Tomorrow Thula is coming back to start and fix the 18 chairs that can be fixed...