South Africa Three Week Summary

Our two weeks in South Africa past very quickly but we accomplished a lot.  

In the first week Judy, Mark, Melissa, and I worked with Clement and his wife Thuli to team teach with a new team that Clement trained.  It was in a town called Mandeni about an hour north of Durban.  We taught two schools for a total of about 100 students.  While we were in Mandeni, one of the staff members at or lodging place confided in Judy and Melissa that he was HIV +.  We prayed with him for healing and also for courage and strength to deal with the challenges he is now facing in his life.  We learned the following week from a book at our new lodging place that Mandeni is the town that has the dubious distinction of the worst HIV problem in South Africa.  We already know that South Africa is the worst affected country,  and Kwa Zulu Natal is the worst affected province. For the first week we were working in the worst of the worst of the worst affected area in the world.  Is it any wonder that God has us working there.

We wrapped up the first week after one day in the game park, (see a previous blog, Hluhlue and Umfolozi Game Park) and then a meeting with the new board of Beacon of Hope South Africa and all of the local Smart Choices team leaders. We also had the local TV station present at our meeting and they recorded some interviews with Kenny and Glynn. These clips were used in one of there news casts the following week.  They also recorded the clips during the second week with Derrick and one of the students from the class that he has been teaching. The entire program about Beacon of Hope should have aired on Tuesday evening on DSTV channel 261.  We didn't get to see it but we did ask several people to record it for us so hopefully we will get to see it.

Second week

After Bryan and Julie joined us, we taught another two classes (about 100 students) both at one school in a very rural area about 45 minutes south of Richards Bay. We had a BBQ (Braai Vleis) at Tempelhoff's on Friday night on our way through Durban to Zimbabwe.  There were several of the Durban Campus Crusade Smart Choices team members there and also Margaret & Jon Jacobson from Denver who have spent a lot of time in South Africa over the last eight years. They were all totally amazed by what God has done through Beacon of Hope and Jon J. wants to get me in contact with the CRU Crossroads leaders to let then know how successful he Smart Choices program has been.  Mark and Melissa went home on Saturday at the end of the second week.  We were discouraged at the low number students that made the abstinence pledge compared to the number that claim to be Christians.

Third week

We have just completed the marathon three day program at Victoria Falls in which we trained about 170 students in three classes, teaching 6-hours a day.  We were amazed at the number of students that claimed to already be Christians, about 95% and most of the remainder made new commitments for Christ.  The are only about 3 or 4 students from all three classes that have not yet made a commitment to  for Christ. We were equally astonished at the number of students that all made commitments to abstain form sex until marriage and then to be faithful to a single partner. About 90% made the abstinence commitment.

After comparing the abstinence pledges from Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa it it quite clear why the KZN province of South Africa continues to be the AIDS capital of the world.

R&R

Lynn came up to Victoria Fall on the bus from Bulawayo this evening to join us for some R&R. We will be taking some well deserved R&R tomorrow to see the Falls and then head out to the Hwange Game Reserve on our way back to Bulawayo.

This Saturday Bryan and Lynn head back to the USA and Judy, Julie, and Glynn take the bus from Bulawayo to Harare  to spend a few days with one of our other team leaders before moving on to visit the Mundemba's Kitwe, Zambia.

Glynn 6/19/2013

PS

Don't forget to go visit the African Safari raffle web site and buy you raffle ticket before all 500 tickets are sold.  Go to hopesafari.com for your Safari raffle ticket.