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
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