We have answered the call to starting a small group with a group of people from Zimbabwe.

After much prayer, and the decision to get started, we finally answered the call to starting a Bible study with the Zim group. Wednesday night was our first meeting and we had 12 people show up, 9 men and 3 women. We talked about the guidelines and the expectations and asked them how many more might join us next week. They said maybe 3 or 4 more. The truth of it is it could be a lot more than that. We asked them if we should close the class once we get started and one of the guys said, “No, God’s house should be open to everyone.” We must be prepared to take on that challenge. We have a small building on the Living Way campus that we have named our Chapel and intend to use it every Wednesday at 11:00 for prayer and service and in the evenings for our Bible Study. It will hold about 50 people but we don’t have that many chairs yet! Our first study will be from a book that we got from Brentwood Baptist titled, The Call to Follow Christ.” It will give them something tangible to work from and it guides them through an everyday commitment to memorizing scripture and praying. We also asked them how many didn’t have Bibles and 4 people raised their hands. We have the awesome opportunity to give 4 gifts of Bibles next week. I also praised them for having 9 men to show up for the group. I told them it is the men who are to be the leaders for their families and they were setting a good example. They were encouraged. Please join us in praying for this group of people only one out of the 12 has some sort of steady work and she only has 3 days. The rest are desperate to have jobs. They moved here from Zimbabwe to get away from the horrible conditions but there just isn’t enough work to go around. We hope they will go through our training classes at Living Way to give them a head start into the work place.

A Visit from President Bush’s Press Secretary

We have been told for about 8mths that Dana Perino, President Bush’s Press Secretary and Assistant, would be visiting us here at Living Hope to see all the things we have going on and to write an article for one of the major magazines. Well Saturday evening during our Valentine’s dinner, John Thomas calls us to say, “Dana and her husband Peter will be arriving on Sunday evening could you please make a plan for them for the next 2 weeks and give them the VIP tour on Monday.” Well first off everyone gets the VIP tour when Mike does it, but we told him we would do it. It turned out to be a tour for 9 people. They specifically wanted to come and visit as “Dana and Peter” and didn’t want to be considered as anything more than that! It always amazes me when I see people on TV, I think wow, they have it all together or wow, I could never be like that person. The truth of it is we all can be anything we want to be if we set our heart and mind to it and seek the Lord for His wisdom and guidance. Dana told us a story about how she got to where she is now. Starting at the age of 8, her Dad made her read 2 political articles in the newspaper every day after she got home from school. When he arrived home from work and they all sat down for dinner, she would tell him the 2 articles that she read and this would be their topic of conversation around the dinner table. Now to me that sounds “boring” but for her it helped to put her in the White House. They have had a great time so far and plan to stay for 2 weeks total. We have many opportunities to spend time with them during the work day at Living Hope but they invited us to go out to dinner tonight and we are looking forward to it!

Living Way Campus is coming alive

A lot of us have worked like crazy to get the campus to a place that is presentable for our community open house in a couple of weeks. Richard, the general manager, and John Thomas the visionary, have been in the states fundraising for us like crazy. We had a college team here from Delaware that spent lots of hours moving everything imaginable and cleaning about 6mths worth of neglect. We have had 10 locals’ to work alongside of us for the last couple of weeks and it has been great being able to pay them when most of the time they are sitting along the side of the road looking for work or at home in their shacks because there aren’t enough jobs available. Unfortunately all that must come to an end. We have shot our “wad” as they say in the states. We want to ask you to pray with us to find the provisions needed to keep up the site and the right people for the jobs. We need to be able to have a couple of people full time to keep the grounds maintained and a cleaning person so that we don’t have to go back in a few months and start all over. Maintenance is so much easier!! We have a couple of individual volunteers one from Georgia and one from the UK. Jeremy, from Dalton Ga., has felt called to be the site manager for the time he is here that is a big help to us right now. They have been awesome in working with us to be mentors to these guys and girls and sharing the love of Christ through prayer and just spending time working with them. I am always amazed at how God provides for all of our needs and I have faith that He will do so once again. Thanks for your prayers and support.
I added a photo of our computer classroom because I found it so amazing that the colors already painted in the room were the Living Way colors. God has team spirit! That was one room we didn’t have to paint inside!!

Hat’s off to the Ladies at Steeplechase

Hat’s off to the ladies who have spent many hours making toboggans for the poverty stricken people of South Africa. Hat’s on to the people of South Africa who will be sporting a new toboggan come winter time. Mike’s mom lives in a retirement facility in Tennessee and she was telling the ladies about her trip to Cape Town last October. One of the ladies, Jackie Ogilvie, had an idea to make toboggans for the folks here who can’t afford warm things especially for their heads. They have been working hard to make them just in time for the winter season coming up. We are excited that they have partnered with us to show the love of Christ through the works of their hands. May God bless all the ladies and continue to give them the gifts and abilities to serve Him in all they do. Thanks to Monna, Mike’s mom, for sharing the need to all your friends.

A New Twist in Our Schedule

The new twist is only for a day. We are having a party at our place that doesn’t begin until 10:30pm. Yes, it is Super Bowl Sunday, but we will be watching the game live at 1:00am on Monday morning. We have 4 individual volunteers here now and we are going to make chili and have chips and dips just like we would do in America. We are able to get similar foods here; however, rotel and ranch dressing (Hidden Valley of course) were brought over from the states. Danielle is bringing the rotel and the Ranch dressing she is obviously in charge of the comfort foods. Of course, one of the main reasons everyone looks forward to the Super Bowl is the commercials! We are not sure we will be getting them but we hope to. Some of our South African friends, co workers, are over for the conference at Brentwood Baptist and they are going to get to see what all the hype is about. They will be telling us about the commercials if we don’t get to see them. We had planned to take a short nap but that didn’t work out so we will have to make it for the duration. Mike and I are rooting for the underdog! Hope everyone enjoys Super Bowl Sunday.