sow generously and you shall reap generously!

In our last meeting here (we have one every monday morning) it was requested that each of us write down and email when we have felt God working in our lives, when we have felt his presence. We nickname this "God moments". I think WCF requested it (they provide me with funding). I think they want to put them on their website. Heres mine...

Weekly we go to the hospital to sing and chat to the patients. Last week when we were singing there was one lady who had her eyes closed and was praising god as a result of hearing us sing. Straight away i thought that its amazing how God uses people, here he was using us volunteers as a team and using our voices to sing zulu songs that we had learnt over here and as a result others were praising him, they were spiritually uplifted. But from seeing this i realised that i wasn't feeling spiritually uplifted by what i was doing. Even though i could see God working through us it wasn't through the song i was feeling uplifted. and i wish i could have been. I guess its because we sing these songs so regularly on a day to day basis. But thats awful because we were meant to be singing praises to god!

Straight after the hospital visit we had to drive to the other side of town to mariannhill bible class. After the class in true mariannhill style there was a blasting out of songs. The third or fourth one was "Jerusalem". It goes something like this:

"Jerusalem is the city, the city in the name of the lord

Oh lord i want to be there

i want to be there, i want to be there

to be there for evermore"

Its such a powerful song, we all felt it and we proceeded to walking round the table whilst singing and pointing up into the air "i want to be there". Whilst singing i could see on everybodys face the exprssions of "i want to be there" as they sang it. Everybody sang it with their whole heart. The energy in the room was so great! I did want to be there and i do want to be there, and i want to be there with all the brothers and sisters in mariannhill. That was a kingdom vision. a vision of happiness. 3 years ago there was no such thing as mariannhill ecclesia and for that crowd of people to be meeting up in that room singing that song was so awesome! They have found God.

On the way to bible class i told God that i didn't want to sing to him and me not feel it, i wanted to feel it just like the lady did in the hospital. God answered my prayer in a matter of an hour!

Then when i was lying in bed thinking about what happened the verse "Whoever sows generously shall also reap generously" (2 Cor 9v6) popped into my head. The effect that sowing had in the hospital i also reaped in Mariannhill.

Donations for happys

Thanks to the generous members of Westville who had a clear out of clothes and toys we were able to donate these to the happy's children. A fair few of them were in need of some clothes! We managed it into a jumble sale sort of affair letting a handful of children in at a time. It was quite funny, they ALL wanted a teddy bear. even the boys. One of the older girls i took in who was maybe about 16 wasn't bothered about the clothes, she had seen 2 of the boys with a squeaky dice sort of thing ( a bit like a dogs toy) and she wanted one of those, straight in and straight out and happy with a squeaky dice. It was so good to be able to see the children's ecstatic faces as they were let inside the room and were allowed to pick something for free.

We are told to be like children. We should be so thankful for all our blessings, ALL of them, because some people have nothing that they are so happy when they receive a second hand teddy bear for free!

The queue under shelter as it started raining

Cleremont good news centre

Our good news centre in Cleremont is growing! After having a couple of hard days labour work clearing the grounds of the place of rubbish and levelling out an area at the front we had a bbq for the community as an opening ceremony. The good news centre now offers, sunday school, gogo's coffee morning, after school club, mum's and tots coffee mornings and english classes. Once we establish some relationships we pray that there will be enough interest to start a church.

The bbq was incredible! We had about 50 kids singing songs they had been taught in sunday school to attract attention and we wandered up and down the streets handing out leaflets inviting everyone we met to the bbq. We fed around 300 people! It was so awesome to see everybody working together, brothers and sisters from marianhill, westville and lamontville.

An appeal for donations

This is my friend and sister Nozipho. She showed me a picture of her when she was 9, before she was disabled. She has rhumatoid artharitus. Shes at the front on the right.

Im trying to fundraise to get her an electric wheelchair because at the moment she has to be pushed everywhere. An electric wheelchair would give her so much more freedom. She is 28 years old.

If you would like to donate please email me at naomi_midgley@hotmail.co.uk

Classroom signs

Finally finished the wooden signs for the wooden shed classrooms and put them up the other day. Unfortunately i made it out of wood that pretty much disintigrates in the rain so i couldnt put them on the outside of the classroom so i had to put them on the doors instead which stay open so it worked out ok. they just have to shut them when it rains! Londiwe was a babe and held the signs up for me while i put them up. Shes the girl in the second picture.

Ndwedwe

There is a couple we met through the BEC called Jabu and Vincent. They believe and are taking the courses we offer through the BEC and want to be baptised. They also set up a feeding scheme in a rural place called ndwedwe for the children there that are very poor. Our time spent with Vincent and Jabu has been us teaching them about the bible, but this day it was them teaching us, it was just so awesome to see relationships developing!

We had asked for donations of staple food and clothes to take up to ndwedwe that month. Ndwedwe is not close and not easy to get to, so we had to take enough to last the whole month. Durban and westville ecclesia had donated generously, we managed to fill the whole of the bakkie with supplies!

With the new bakkie it only took 2 hours to get there as opposed to 3 last time.

The next step is to build mud houses out of the natural materials around. At the moment there is no space! The kitchen used to cook is currently the gogo's home and opposite is a very small mud hut in which the 45 children eat in.

A mud hut will be built for cooking, a hut for eating and a hut for sleeping.

Jabu and Vincent are hoping to stay here on a more permenant basis helping out. The gogo needs help as she can't walk. She lives all alone and sleeps on a matress next to the fire on which she cooks.

This is Russels mother, they have an avocado tree on route to where the orphanage is which phil climbs and gets avos. enough to feed us all for a month

The road

The donations

The gogo

Getting to the land in which they are to build

A brighter corridor

So basically, the corridors at Happy's are sooo dull!! The school used to be a hospital, but thats no excuse. It looks more like a prison. I noticed that above each classroom it had a tiny piece of paper "Grade 5", "Grade 8" that no one could read anyway it was so faded and tiny (and in times new roman). I decided it deffinately needed some colour and some fun font which the kids just love. Dani and i have done the 4 indoor ones. 3 of the classrooms are outdoors and are wooden sheds, so iv made some wooden signs which im going to screw onto the doors. They just need painting...

Here's the first 2

working in the sun :-)

This guy is a dude...

Grade 11, we did the one next to it too but i dont seem to have a picture of the two for some reason...