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