The Ups and Downs of the Week

This week has been filled with ups and downs and we have been grateful that none of these things are left up to us, but to the Lord to handle. I have been battling with planters fasciitis for at least a year and I finally got some relief. I kept thinking it would get better on its own, but I finally saw a doctor a couple of weeks ago for a cortisone shot in my heal to help with the inflammation of the ligament. It helped about 97%, but I went back last Friday for another one to take care of the other 3%. It worked!!! The only issue left was that I had changed the way I walked for so long that my knee was messed up. After lots of prayer and retraining my walk, these last few days have been great. Praise God for needles!!
We have asked for prayer for our friend Khumi because she has been so sick the last couple of months. We found out she had gone off of her medications and developed lots of other problems. It is too soon to ask her why, but if she had not agreed to Mike forcing her to go back to the Healthcare Centre on Tuesday she could have died. She lives in a tin shack with cold damp floors and air that comes through like she has a window open all the time. She has lost close to 50lbs and can’t eat anything. She was diagnosed with Tuberculosis of the stomach. I spent some time with her on Friday and she is doing much better. Please continue to pray for her!
We have 2 teams here this week working in the communities and spreading the love of Jesus. One through a Sports Ministry and the other is helping out at Living Way and the Children’s afternoon kids clubs. The sports ministry has a net ball game planned for this afternoon against some of friends who are in our Bible Study. This should be an exciting afternoon. The Zimbabwe girls invited us to come on Wednesday night, so we will have a tough time deciding who to pull for!
Unfortunately, for our individual volunteers it has not been such a great week. One of the guys got mugged, at knife point, walking home for lunch. Mike and I had not agreed with them wanting to walk but they insisted it would be ok. We have been suggesting that they move to a new location because it just is too close to the township that we work in. Yesterday we got everyone moved and they are much happier. This goes back to young people who come with their own ideas and agenda’s then get taught hard lessons by God. We had another issue with a new volunteer whose expectations were way over the top. She was ready to get on a plane and go home but Mike and I spent about 1 ½ hrs talking to her yesterday to suggest to her to allow God to work in her life to see what He might be up to. She called us last night apologizing and telling us she would give it another try next week.
Ending a positive note, we went to the grocery store yesterday and one of our local volunteers, who started at the Healthcare Centre yesterday, had a wonderful experience and was so encouraged and excited to see how God had used her nursing abilities to take care of the ladies. We never know how people will respond in tough situations and we just seek the Lord’s guidance for each one and are grateful for His hand on their lives.

The Calm before the Storm

Last week was supposed to be a time for us to prepare ourselves for the next 7 months of Volunteers. Unfortunately, time to prepare rarely happens around here. There is so much to do and things just creep in on us. This past week, we finished our entrepreneur training at Living Way. We now have to mentor these folks to help them write their business plans etc. so they can get capital to start their businesses. Next week starts the “storm.” We will have two teams here at the same time involving 33 people arriving on Monday evening. We also have an individual volunteer arriving with them. They are all from the Nashville area, so we are excited to hear some good southern slang. One group is a sports ministry and the other is an Academic Study Abroad group. This will keep us very busy for the next 13 days. From this time forward we have 25 teams coming to do volunteer work and 26 individuals that will be here anywhere from 30 days to a year. We are excited to have them come but it can be tricky in getting everyone organized where they feel the most useful in the ministry. Please pray with us as we seek to place each one where they are the best fit. Also, pray for them to be content. We have a lot of college age students that are quite set in their ways and we know God wants them to be obedient and content in whatever job they are doing. This can be difficult when you have 3 or 16 people here at the same time all doing different duties thinking they have it tough and want to do something different. This was one of the main reasons we had to keep their stay to a minimum of 30 days. It usually takes 2 weeks for them to adjust.
I hope the “storm” isn’t like the storms that rolled through here last night. We had wind gusts up to 35 miles an hour and about 6am this morning we heard this crash of glass, and of course our first thought someone has broken in, but after we got ourselves awake we realized it came from next door. We proceeded to put on our rain gear and check it out. Turned out our neighbor had left his window open and the wind blew the window off. We are expecting more rain today, so this has turned out be a good day to stay indoors get prayed up (this is a joke of course we stay prayed up) and catch up on work. We are beginning to get into winter here but it is usually rain with wind instead of freezing and snow. It is quite different from Tennessee. Thanks for your prayers and support because we couldn’t do this without you!

Where did the last 2 weeks go?

We have begun another entrepreneur class with 5 people attending not as many as we would have liked but the percent of entrepreneurs here is about 3%. There are a lot of people that think they want to be their own boss, but they soon realize they don’t like all the hard work that goes along with it. We will have 3 more days next week and that will complete the class.
We also had to take our car in for service, which seems like a monthly event lately, and they were going to charge us R6000.00 to fix it. Mike asked the guy is there any way this can be fixed without having to order a whole new shifter and the mechanic said “no”. Well we sometimes don’t like to take no for an answer, so we prayed about where we could take the car and we have a friend that recommended someone. We called him, took the car over to his house and he fixed it in a couple of hours for R400.00. We obviously won’t be taking our car back to the dealership for service as we realized last month we probably got ripped off for R4900.00. It always pays to have a second opinion but being in another part of the world you have to be careful.
We completed our 1st home cell group (Bible Study) course last week and had a celebration dinner for everyone last night. Mike made homemade potato soup and I made the main course, heavenly hamburger. We set everything out and had bread and soup for starter, then salad and casserole for main course and doughnuts for pudding (dessert). They were all talking in Shona, their native language, and we could tell they were talking about the food. Mike said to them, hey, we have an agreement that you all are going to speak English so we can understand what you are saying, so they told us what they were saying. One of the guys said, “I have never had this much food in one meal. I might get some bread in the morning and a small dish for lunch and then something small for dinner, but never have I had this much at one time! He then proceeded to ask, is eating this much a sin? We explained the difference and told him he was ok to be able to eat all of his meal at once. They loved every bit of it. We have really been blessed to be able to give them food and provide a meal for 13 of them. Thank you for supporting us so that we can give to others!
I completed my last presentation for the Life Skill Educators today in Ocean view and it is such a delight to be able to teach them the proper ways of brushing and flossing so they can teach the children that they reach each week. Next week is hygiene week for them and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Please pray for me to be able to secure some products from the Colgate representative so we will have items that we can give to the very poor and needy folks in the communities.