Victoria Falls trip, Zimbabwe August 15

After a slow start on Monday getting our rental car, we finlly got on the road to Victoria Falls by about 10:00am. We had an uneventful trip that took about 5 hours.  After we met our laison guy (Derrick), checked into our accommodation, and dropped Derrick at the store to do some grocery shopping for our meals, we headed down to the Falls.  This is the driest time of the year and last year was a poor rainy season so there is not as much water flowing over the falls as there normally is.  It is still an impressive sight.  The river spreads out to a mile wide before it goes over the edge into  the gorge.  Dr David Livingstone a scottish missionary was the first white man ever to witness this magnificent site in 1813.  His African luggage bearers told him that the Africans call it Mosi-ao-tunya (The smoke that thunders). There is a statue of Livingstone on the Zimbabwe side of the falls looking down the length of the gorge.  It is 73 meters or 230 feet at the Livingstone statue end and about 108 meters or 324 feet at the Zambia end. We got some great pictures and I have a few included in this blog report.  We saw some warthogs and some monkeys on our walk down the gorge and back.  The Zambezi river which flows over the falls is the boundary between Zimabwe and Zambia.

"Dr David Livingstone I Presume"

Vu and Mark

We ate dinner on Monday night in the dining room of the Victoria Falls hotel which is where Judy and I stayed 37 years ago, which was the last time we were here.  This is where and when I asked Judy to marry me.  She should have been here to share the occasion.  The Maitre d' in the dining room has been working here at the hotel for 44 years so he was here when we were here all those years ago.

Our mission here is to train about ten students to present the Smart Choices program so that they can continue teaching it after we are gone.  It is Pastor Vusumusi Lusinga who arranged  our program last week at Lupane who also made the arrangements for this weeks program.  We got through the first three lessons of training before lunch.  The students/instructors had an opportunity in the afternoon to teach the first three lessons to another small group of new students.  On Wednesday we repeated the same process using the lessons 4 to 6.

Victoria Falls Class held at Mosi-oa-Tunya High School

Pastor Vu is also the director in Zimbabwe for the True Love Waits program.  This program ancourages young folks to wait until they meet their life partner and get married before engaging in any sexual activity.  Abstinence is the central message of the Smart Choices program also, so these two programs will complement each other nicely.  Pastor Vu intends to keep teaching both programs.  The students that we are teaching are people that Pastor Vu has already trained for the True Love Waits program.

Pastor Vusumusi (Vu) Lusinga

The students are all very enthusiastic and excited about the program so we will see what kind of fruit God grows from the seeds that Mark, Vu, and I planted this week.

On our way back to Bulowayo tomorrow we will be visiting the Hwange Game Park to reconnect with Gods beautiful creation.

--

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Web: www.beaconint.org

Blog: blog.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3

Lupane Zimbabwe Sunday August 11

Arrived in Zimbabwe

We arrived in Zimbabwe on Wednesday at about noon.  

The Farm Orphan Project.

Jeff met us at the airport and took us by the 30 acre farm that Jeffs church has purchased.  The plan is to convert it into a self sustaining productive farm that will provide a home for orphans.  There is a large five bedroomed house, a guest cottage, a large workshop, a reservoir, pig pens, chicken coupes, and a few boreholes for water.  There are also several buildings for housing farm helpers.

There is place for at least ten orphan homes which will house about 8 to 10 kids per house.  There is a school about 3 km away.  Farmers that have tractors and implements  will help to prepare the areas that go under crops.  They also have an offer from a nearby brick factory that will grade the dirt road going to the farm.  It is only about 1 or 2 kms from the paved road.

Pastor Vu and the Lupane training

On Thursday morning we met pastor Vusumusi (or Vu for short).  Vu told us about the plan for the next eight days.  Vu has a church near Bulawayo and has planted a few churches in more rural areas. After lunch on Thursday we dove out to Lupane, it is the location of one of Vu's church plants and is about two hours north of Bulowayo on the Victoria Falls road.  On Friday we trained 8 young volunteers from Vu's church and a few other churches in the area.  On Saturday the newly trained team taught just a handful of additional kids the churches But at least it gave them the opportunity of presenting the program for themselves.  It also gave us the opportunity of observing them do it and satisfy ourselves that they did a good job.

Back in Bulawayo for a day

We saw about a dozen monkeys at different locations on the way up and back.  We also saw two buck just at dusk on the way back to BYO.  We arrived back in Bulawayo Saturday night, went to Bulawayo Baptist this morning (Jeff & Tammy's church).  They are away this weekend for a Couples retreat in Harare.  We are leaving in the morning (Monday Aug 13) to go back past Lupane and on to Victoria Falls to repeat our Smart Choices Training activity with another group of volunteers.  We will be gone by the time Jeff and Tammy back get from their retreat.  We will only get to spend one more night with them on Friday night before getting our flights home on Saturday August 18.

Victoria Falls here we come.

--

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Web: www.beaconint.org

Blog: blog.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3

Snowed in Tuesday August 7

An exciting way to spend my birthday.  We were traveling from Richards Bay back to Johannesburg to catch our flight to Zimbabwe.  We had come through a little snow down country and as we started to go over a mountain pass we encountered some heavy rain which very soon turned into snow flurries and then into heavy snow.

We encountered trucks comming down that were just starting to slide and jackknife. 

When we got to the next gas station near the top we stopped to get gas and I decided to stay there for a while to see what the snow would do.  We ended up staying there for about 5 hours before the authorities cleared the roads to the extent that we were able to get out.

They are not equipped to handle snow conditions and the only equipment they have to clear the roads in graders.  As we were driving out 5 hours lter we followed a grader at 20 km/hr for about 10 or 12 kms  before we were free to drive on our own.  

There ended up being about  a foot of snow on the ground.  Here is picture taken from the window of the restaurant where we were hold up for 5 hours.

--

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Web: www.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3

Richards Bay Monday August 6, 2012

We were expecting this to be  different trip because of only having two participants this year.  I sensed that the reason for for God only calling two people to go on this trip was because there were things that need to be accomplished that can't get done when there is a larger team to manage.  

We did participate in the class room with Derrick's team for two of the three days they were teaching and we also participated with Kenny teaching one of the six lessons at his school.  Kenny's school is not allowing him to teach 2 lessons a day for three consectutive days the way we normally do it.  They are only giving him one lesson a week during the Life Orientation period.

Not having to plan for or manage a larger team gave us more free time to meet with various people to try and promote the program to make life easier for the Richards Bay teams.  On Tuesday last week we met with the Zulu Chief who is responsible for managing the tribal affairs of the community that live in the area that we opperate in.  The Zulus still have a tribal governing system that that operates in harmony with the political government.

There is a Zulu king, King Zwelinthini, who still owns about 46% of the land in the Kwa Zulu Natal Province.  He has a number of Chiefs called Inkosi's (Lord) that are designated an area of the province to manage.  Each Chief has a number of Induna's (Captains). The Chief for the Richards Bay area has 23 Indunas.  The Indunas represent the interests of the people that live in the area under his control when making requestes to the chief for land grants, dispute settlements, and so on.  Clement's Induna was very instrumantal in getting the land grant across the street from his church for building the school.  All this explanation to say that we were given an audince with the chief to make hime aware of the AIDS program that we have been teaching in his area and to thank him for his land grant for the school.  We also took him a small gift of a wall clock, which Clemets said would be appreciated because most of the audiences that preside over are requests or disputes or gripes.

Mark also mentioned in our earlier blog that we had a TV interview recorded that is going to be viewed on August 20.  The TV crew also came out to the school where we were doing certificate presentations on the day after the recording to tape some local interest footage to go along with the broadcast.  The chairman of the Director board of 1KZN TV, who we met with was also enthusiastic about presenting out entire training corriculum on TV.  This would be a great way of getting out messsage our to a wider audience. It will naturally require some funding and permision of Campus Cusade to air the training program. We will have to see what becomes of that suggestion.  

Our most notable achievement happend on tha last day in Richards Bay when we held a meeting with accountants and a group of potential board members for a Beacon of Hope South Africa NPO.  We finally have six people that will be on the board for at least the first year.  This is something that we have been trying to accomplish for a two years.

We were also able to meet with an education department inspector, local business, men and the pastor of a large infliential indian church, to promote the interests of beacon of hope.

Last Sunday we attended the church of Thulani Dumisa who the most recent pastor to get a team trained by Clement to teach the AIDS program in the school district surrounding his church.  Thulani's church is about 40 Km south of Richards Bay near a small farming town called  Mtunzini.

We wrapped our program with the Richards Bay team with joint meeting at Clement's house of all three team leaders.  I think it ended on an enthusiastic note after discussing and explaining some thorny issues with them.

--

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Phone: 949-305-1922

Cell:     949-795-0042

Web: www.beaconint.org

Blog: blog.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3

Richards Bay Thursday August 2, 2012

Today we find ourselves in Richards Bay, and are every day making contacts with a variety of folks for a variety of reasons. One of our reasons is to attempt to find persons who might be willing to sit on a board to form a nonprofit organization to enable our team leaders to help acquire resources to continue the program on an on going basis.
We also have been helping to teach the classes with our brothers and teammates. The students have been very receptive and enthusiastic about participating in the various activities that the sessions include.
Today both Glynn and myself (Mark), were interviewed by a local television station, 1KZN and were not only asked about the HIV program, but also how it relates to women and their daughters, since this is women's month in South Africa. This TV station has coverage all over the country. It is our hope that this may be a springboard to not only spread our message, but also to give our mission greater exposure, thus giving us greater acceptance nationwide and even make greater inroads to other African countries.
We were also able to have a session of training in one of the local community colleges in a town called Eskeweni. That school,s name is Umfolozi College, although they call it FEM.
Our days are full, and some of our efforts seem very successful, and some not so much, but only what God considers successful really matters anyway.
Keep checking the blog, there will be more to come. Mark

Soshanguve Thursday July 26

We wrapped up the Smart Choices programs at two schools on Wednesday the two teams taught a total of 117 students. The programs went well and the student responded to the program in a very positive way as normal. 106 of the students made commitments to abstinence, 60 were already Christians and 28 made new commitments to Christianity.  The schools were very cooperative and appreciative of the program.  

Group picture of the both teams

We showed the second Louis Giglio video on Wednesday night.  There were a few people in the audience who were just totally destroyed and couldn't stop sobbing for several minutes after the video was over and a saw a lot of discreet wiping of tears.  It is extremely impactful to realize the vastness of creation and our relative insignificance in the grand scheme of creation.

The AIDS testing and counselling event was conducted at Ebenezer Church today.  About 156 people came to be tested which was a great turnout. We had a reporter from the Daily Sun national news paper come and interview Zodwa, myself and the two ladies that were organizing the Testing and Counselling activity.  We also went to visit a children's home that we had that we visited two years ago.  They have four nice new little family cottages build now.  When we visited two years ago they were all dormitory style accommodation for the kids.

The picture below is group picture that we took of all the kids currently staying with Zodwa alter we had given them each a little clothing gift.

Zodwa's Adopted family

Nthethelelo and Winnie where particularly excited about there gifts.

Ntethelelo

Winnie

Soshanguve Tuesday July 24

On Sunday evening we showed the "Indescribable" video at Zodwa's church. This video is produced by Louis Giglio and if you havent seen it you can see it on youtube.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewKtSKbWZUI

We have been working with Zodwa's two Smart Choices teams now for two days.  We will complete the programs at both schools tomorrow Wednesday 7/25.

This picture is of the team that Glynn is working with at the Winterveldt Secondary School about 20 minutes drive North of Zodwa's church location .

Students in the class  at Winterveldt Secondary School.

The following is the Mark's team on Monday afternoon preparing for Tuesday's lesson.

Zodwa has established a partnership for her church with a clinic from Pretoria (Now called Tswane).  They do AIDS testing and counselling clinics and also coordinate the administering of ARV drugs for people tho are found to be HIV+.  They have planned one of these clinic For Thursday afternoon after school.  We had an opportunity today to go to the local radio station Soshanguve Community Radio FM 93.0 for a 20 minute interview promoting the the Smart Choices program on the air and also advertising the Thursday afternoon Clinic at Ebeneezer Community Church.

The last two days have been hectic but the next two are probably going to get busier as wrap up our four-day stay with Zodwa.  On Wednesday night we are going to show a second Louis Giglio video "How Great is Our God".  This also visible on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAzCP8SEKwc

Falling asleep.  Must go to bed. More later.

-- 

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Phone: 949-305-1922

Cell:     949-795-0042

Web: www.beaconint.org

Blog: blog.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3

2012 Beacon of Hope Team

Small but might team this heading to South Africa and Zimbabwe. Don't under estimate us, we have a lot of experience in Dog Years.

Left LAX at 07:00am On Thursday July 19, 2012.  

We arrived in Johannesburg on Friday evening, had a great curry dinner with my brother Darrell and his family.  We will be spending the day with them tomorrow also getting to know our new little great niece who was born since we were here last year

We will start our mission activities on Sunday by preaching at a church in Johannesburg.  This church was started by a friend from Swaziland who we met two years ago in Richards Bay.  At that time he was one of the volunteers that was working with us on the Smart Choices AIDS prevention program.

On Sunday afternoon we drive up to Pretoria where we will be staying for the first week.  On Sunday night we will be showing Louis Giglio's Video named "Indescribable" at Zodwa's Church in Soshanguve. If you haven't seen this video yet find it on YouTube and watch it.  It describes how indescribable God truly is.  Our program for the remainder of the first week is teaching the Smart Choices program at two schools with Zodwa's teams on Monday through Wednesday is:

1. Teach the Smart Choices program at two Schools with Zodwa's teams on Monday through Wednesday.
2. On Wednesday evening Zodwa has scheduled a meeting for us with Campus Crusade representatives and other interested parties including hopefully a government representative from either the education department or the health department. 
3. On Wednesday evening we have a possible interview with a radio station that will be broadcasting from a sporting activity in Soshanguve.
4. Thursday is still an open or as yet unplanned day and is our last day with Zodwa and her team in Soshanguve.
5. On Friday we will be driving about 400 miles down to a farming town called Greytown. We started a Smart Choices program here 3 Years ago but it has been inactive since then.  We will be meeting with interested parties and potential financial supporters of that team to try and revitalize the program.
6. The next week and a half will be with our old and faithful friends in Richards Bay, Clement, Derrick, and Kenny.
7. The last week and a half will be in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe with Jeff and Tammy.

Keep checking the blog for more details as we go.  Signing off from South Africa for now.

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Web: www.beaconint.org

Blog: blog.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3

2012 Mission trip information meeting

January 2012 Activities

This has been quite an incredible year for Beacon of Hope. As this year comes to an end we have much to be thankful for. Nineteen thousand students have been through our program. After concentrating all of our effort on South Africa for the past eight years the Lord has opened up new doors for us to Zimbabwe, Uganda and Nigeria. Our job is to encourage our partners in Africa and enable them to keep doing what they are doing and find new partners to expand the program into new areas.

Planning for this year's trip
It is only a little over six months before the our summer mission teams will leave for this years trips. We will definitely have a two week trip going to South Africa and a there will also be a two week trip to Zimbabwe. Dates are not fixed yet. It is likely that the South Africa trip will be the last two weeks of July and the Zimbabwe trip will be the first two weeks of August.

The important thing right now is to start getting a list of people who might be interested in participating in one of the trips. We will be having a team information meeting after church on Sunday January 22, 2012. I know a lot of people might not be able to make a firm commitment to go on the trip this early but I would at least like to get a list of people who might be interested and to learn which trip you would like to participate in.

Maintenance and Construction opportunity tripThere are some people that would like to go with us some time but would rather do construction rather than AIDS education. There is a lot of maintenance that needs to be done on Clement's orphanage. He also has a school building that is being built, there is bound to be some touch up to do on the the school building.

Exciting plans from Zimbabwe
You will be excited to learn what Sharkey is planning to get the Smart Choices program going in Zimbabwe. Please be there if you have interest in going with us this year or sometime in the future. We need help with fundraising ideas and help carrying them out even if you end up not going with us.
Trip Information Meeting When: Sunday Jan 22, 2012 at 12:00 pm.
Where: Village Church, 77 Post, Irvine,CA 92614.

Garage Sale
We have a lot of stuff in our garage and I will picking up a whole truck load on Saturday so we will be having a Garage sale at the end of the month. If anyone has anything to contribute to the sale I will be happy to plan to come and pick it up some time before Jan 28. Let your friends know about the sale and inquire if they have anything to contribute.
When: Saturday Jan 28, 2012 at 7:00 am.
Where: Smith's house. 24851 Costeau St, Laguna Hills