You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you—
John Bunyan
October 2013 Majakeneng Village Outreach
How these words ring true! How I hope your feeling the blessing I pray on your life! I pray the blessing comes back to YOU because of how and what YOU gave in prayer, support and resources to God’s little ones. These little ones will never be able to repay you and may never ever see you-but what you have done will last forever. We pray you feel the lasting blessing that springs from their hope!
We started our outreach on Friday Oct 18th with an all night prayer. The youth of Flames Church gathered for their monthly all-night prayer and we were able to be a part. Imagine this if you will, 100 or more teens-on a Friday night, beckoning the heavens for His Presence! How remarkable! All night long till early morning they prayed, worshipped and get this, I never saw one cell phone! That was a miracle in itself. I was blown away by! I believe our week’s success was birthed from your prayers at home and followed up from here!
Saturday, Sister Sharon met with the Sunday School Teachers/Leaders to empower their teaching of the Flames Church youth! Flames church is exploding with youth, coming from everywhere! Sister Sharon engraved the heart of a child’s most important spiritual needs onto these leaders/teachers. She followed it up with offerings of tools and ideas they can use through this next year: 2014. It was then/there right in that place I sensed God was going to move big in the youth coming from all ends of every village to be nurtured and given hope. Oh! How it is so necessary to fill these leaders with tools and the ‘mind workings’ of a child to foster this coming-up generation! A generation, we pray that just might be angry enough and hungry enough to change the junk that has been handed down to them!
Revival! That was the word I was left with in my Spirit after the afternoon workshop. Unknown to me then, those Spirit spoken words—came alive. I can’t even sit right now, its that exciting!
Sunday, we had a gogo event and teen event. (Now, a gogo is anyone who is a grandmaJ.) Sister Sharon gave those sweet precious ladies an empowering message on not ‘stopping’ until you’re dead and then they all enjoyed a big feast (from you) along with a gift of a beautiful purse from one of our committed donor’s!
I took the teens and we had a message on forgiveness and getting ‘unstuck’. They were given books and solar radios with messages from Charles Stanley. It was a great turnout and as a surprise to both of us, Sister Sharon and I were ‘dressed’ by our African family. It was such a grand privilege, my eyes water talking about it…..
Can I add that our outfits are from Martin’s tribe: Tsonga?
Yes, of course I cried. What a privilege to be dressed in his tribe! I plan on walking into heaven and meeting Jesus and my Pastor Martin with his outfit on!
Monday, was quite the surprise! !! You know how it is. You plan and plan but reality doesn’t always look like the best thought–out plan. As Pastor Bruce always say’s “TIA” that is African for: This is Africa! We had planned to visit every classroom everyday with a single message that followed the 1600+ bracelets message with certain colored beads made by some awesome volunteers in Indiana!
The first color: black-meaning we all sinned. The second color: red-meaning those sins were taken care of by Jesus blood. The third color: white-meaning we are made clean. The fourth color: green– meaning we need to grow in our love for Jesus. The fifth color: yellow-meaning we will get to see the gold of heaven!
However, on Monday, it soon became obvious that Sister Sharon, Lorraine, Fatima and a few other Flames volunteers could not share a lesson with every group of kids… We quickly learned the new ‘teaching math’… we multiplied the minutes spent with each group by the number of groups and tried to divide it into the minutes of the day! IMPOSSIBLE.
So we improvised … and by week’s end we were so organized it was scary. PLEASE pray that we continue to have access to our kids, because without it, the orphan’s needs cannot be reached!!! (I will tell you why, later)
As Sister Sharon, Lorraine, Fatima met with the childrens groups, I went to seek the little orphans we are targeting to assist. The ones without any relatives but are just living as sibling families. My goal was to get to know each one and start a deeper level of care. There are about 20 such sibling raised families among the 300 orphans who live with a granny or auntie or uncle. Thanks to you, we are feeding the 300+ but desire to do even more for the 20!
If I shared the stories I heard that week, surely your heart would break at the evil and slimy predators that are surrounding our kids, daily. As the week ended I didn’t want to hear anymore stories; I didn’t want to see any more shacks. I became more overwhelmed and felt like I was sinking in the absolute valley of impossibleness (if you will). How do you come against such horrible things; including witchcraft? How do we keep these kids safely cared for outside of their sheltered school day? If you let me be human for a moment, I wanted to slice and dice every evil thing coming against the innocent little ones!!!
Those precious eyes look up at you so expectant, so alive and so wanting to be loved, held, mentored, given attention and respected. What I saw and heard was that the children really do fend for themselves; regardless if there is an auntie or granny or sibling there. They are coerced to bring money home in obvious evil ways; they are not encouraged to do homework; they are manipulated and not given attention to. Health needs go unmet; referrals to clinics/doctors never get done and things we give them-get taken away.
For example, little Aida… she lives with her granny who is part of a ZedC cult. She was forced to take off her bracelet and was hiding her bible we gave her otherwise it would get burned. She hung on me all week; just wanting to be near me. She was so proud when she took me to her shack! However, I was met by a irrate granny who yelled and screamed at us and so we had to leave. I had Aida in the car with me and she just started crying. Here is a picture (un-posed I might add) of her reading her bible before putting it in hiding.
On a positive note; however…… I met with a white-South African nurse who came to the school for immunizations and she shared all her concerns with me and what does/doesn’t get done for the kids she has an ‘eye’ on health-wise. She mentioned that there are fewer and fewer children who are falling off the curve of the national weight graph! So, this is a big credit-due you! Feeding these children for almost a year has been more than fruitful! When a child’s brain has proper protein life begins to make sense and they can think and reason as God had designed !!
On Thursday, of our week-it was very exciting. The truck hauled in over 1400+ bibles for the kids. We had the lesson with the green bead: growing in love with Jesus, going to church, and learning about Him in His Word. After every child got the lesson and they received their very own bible!! What fantastic fun it was to pass them out! You cannot describe the privilege or the fun, we as children of the living God have when participating in a work like this! To everyone ‘out there’ it’s the farthest idea of a good time! But to us ‘in’ here YOU know, it is fun- a fun that lasts forever. It’s the only thing that will remain standing and alive after the dust settles here on our earth! That, what we did together here with these three: Faith…Hope…Love.
The greatest of all these three is the Love!
because
IT LASTS FOREVER
Where do we go from here? In light of what we discovered this week .. …. What’s the plan? The plan has always been and will never change: to love, nurture, feed and give proper attention to these precious children forgotten by everyone else. That stays the same. But, three weeks after we left our week in Majakaneng a text I received from Pastor Alcy reads like this:
Hi my dear sister. I love you. We are fine but it’s just a bit hectic from my side. The kids are coming in huge numbers to church and now the challenge is transport because I have to now add a bus and buy more bread. But praise God we manage to assist. I love you more, sister.
As God leads us and provides we will trump the evil with good in Majakaneng. We will raise the children with proper love, food, mentoring and seek to tutor them when possible. There is some concern now that those who are living with ‘our’ kids may resist what we are doing as we are becoming more involved. They may choose to not let the children come to functions. But, they can’t stop us feeding and loving them. Please pray with us that our Father will restrain all evil and He will allow us to continue ministering to all our children.
We feel the need to build a proper kitchen for our kids and that will help the cooks. We want to bless our kids; bless the faithful cooking staff and keep an ever-present outpouring to the future children of Majakaneng Village. There are a few different directions we could pursue… so pray that we be given wisdom to do what is best for the kids on a sustainable basis.
Our long range goal: to set up a safe house for the emergencies that our children experience on a daily basis–that we are missing. I have a letter from such a little one, right now. I will share at a later time. Then, the possibility to further the dream of Pastor Martin—He wanted to birth a church centered right here in this village-one of the least in South Africa NW Brits.
We are a long way off from such things… but, right before us are hungry, attention-starved and un-nurtured children. We are slowly making a start, God-willing. How do we make the group smaller that we are serving? It’s impossible as the stories continue to speak to the need of the 40 most vulnerable, of the 300 orphans, of the 1500 village children. I don’t know. And, this will hopefully pave our path, somehow…someway.
WE will have our Christmas Party December 7th! Every child (300+) will receive an outfit and a bag to carry it home with, from you . There will be cards from you. And, a feast of food! Flames Youth will provide the Christmas Story and that will complete a very busy but fruitful year 2013.
I humbly thank each and everyone who has prayed, supported and resourced ‘our’ kids… God’s least.
If I was a rich girl, I would bless you back 100000% more than you gave. But, since I am not a rich girl I am asking God to do the 10000000% blessing each morning and each time I pray of ‘our’ kids.
I love you-each one,
Sally Herman
Original Link: October 2013 Zoe News
FB Album: October 2013 Facebook Album