Amazing...

As Christina said we have not been able to blog or communicate because of where we have been staying.  So we will do our best to catch everyone up to date :)

 

This trip has been amazing!  It is more than I imagined it would be.  The Lord gave me unrest and I found peace...He made me uncomfortable in order to bring me comfort.  As always I am amazed by His goodness, love and grace.

 

Our flights here were seamless.  We had one minor hiccup with the luggage.  We had to take Virgin America from LAX to Dulles, then transfer to South African Air for our flight to South Africa.  Virgin is partners with South African Air.  They charged us a fee for two extra bags we were taking with items for the orphanage.  This fee was supposed to carry us through all the way to South Africa.  However, when we arrived at Dulles the lady (who was not kind at all) insisted we had to pay again.  She refused to work with us or the Virgin Air representative who walked all the way over to our terminal to talk to her.  Thankfully we have the Lord on our side and even stubborn ladies can't get past Him :)  We found favor with the man from Virgin America and he refunded our money for the extra bags so that we would not be charged twice.  Go Virgin America!  :)

We arrived at the orphanage after 32 hours of travel...phew!  The orphanage is on a long, bumpy, dirt road.  When we pulled in it was 10:30 at night so everyone was asleep.  We parked in the dirt lot and went to our quarters.  It is a quaint house with a modest kitchen (no running water, no sink, plug in counter top burners), a dining room, living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom without running water...that's right it is washcloth bath time and no flushing toilets :0

The beauty of it all was that it was done up quite well.  The beds were all made with extra blankets for us and the rooms were nice and it was very clean.  Even though they have so little they worked so hard to make us comfortable. 

The next morning we woke up to a rooster...at 3 am.  He is obviously not the smartest rooster since he does not realize he is supposed to wait for the sunrise.  Every morning I have wished Doug Horn was there to put it out of our misery ;)-  We have had a lot of nice quiet time in the mornings thanks to being woken up so early :) 

When we were dressed we walked out of our room to find the most beautiful smiling faces staring back at us.  Christina gave a big smile to them and the kids all lit up, then started giggling and ran away.  No worries though, right away they came back with more friends and we were quickly mobbed by at least 25 children, hugging us and wanting to touch our hair.  I have heard it said "For beautiful hair let a child run their hands through it" well our hair is gorgious now!  :)

The first day Clemet (the man who runs the orphanage and school) asked Christina and I to teach at the school.  It was kind of funny, they just told us to teach...I asked them, "Teach what?" "Anything" was their reply.  We have quickly come to realize that this is much of the South African attitude towards things :) So I asked them for at least some direction and they asked us to teach social science.  We said no problem and got to teaching.  Now the funny thing is, in social science they are learning about maps...of South Africa.  Needless to say Christina and I are well versed in the terrain and provinces of South Africa :)  We had a wonderful time with the children.  After, we cleaned up some glass and rusty nails from the yard (the orphange is built on a space used as a garbage dump in the past).  The children were so ready and willing to help.  Without a word of complaint.  Amazing. 

The next day Christina and I taught at the school while the team went to give the Right Choices course to their various schools.  I will let them tell you more about what happened there :)  Christina and I have been so blessed to spend this time with these kids.  Some of them call us momma and every morning the whole team is greeted with hugs and love.  Life does not get much better than this.  One night we had a girl, Sima, who came to talk with us.  She asked us if we liked it in South Africa.  We told her we loved it.  She found it hard to believe since we were from America.  She looked at me and asked if I felt comfortable here.  Without skipping a beat I said yes.  Then I realized that I trully had felt comfortable since the moment I had arrived.  The Lord has given our entire team comfort and a spirit of peace about the entire trip.  It is trully amazing! 

On our third night here we were able to give out some of the wonderful clothes, shoes and toys we had collected to give them.  I can't tell you the light it brings to your heart when you see a child turning in their only pair of worn-out shoes that are too small for a new pair of shoes that fit them just right.  No whining over color or style, just happy to have shoes.  Oh the joy!  I saw kids take the stuffed animals we gave them and just hold it to their faces...again, oh the joy!  Putting on used clothes, that are new to them, and modeling it for us with huge smiles on their faces...OH THE JOY! 

The next day Christina and I had the priveledge to watch the kids perform.  These children are some of the most talented people I have ever met.  Their voices lift the spirit! Christina said that she imagined Zulu's would be singing in heaven and I must say that I agree with her! These children have joy.  Even in their humble and strained lives they find joy. 

Today we were able to go to a wild game reserve to see some of Africa's wildlife.  We had room in our van so we were able to take 5 of the older kids from the orphanage with us.  Oh, what an incedible day we had.  Seeing the wildlife we saw not only through our eyes for the first time, but also through the eyes of a child...I can't even explain the elation.  We saw giraffes, wart hogs, elephants, wildabeasts and more!  We also had a close encounter with a Rhino! (Imagine my Australian accent)  We look out the back of our van, and there, walking up behind us is a white rhino.  He gets so close we could have reached out and touched him.  He decided he did not like us.  He backed up a bit and stomped his foot on the ground and shook his head, as if to charge.  The children were freaked out, our hearts stopped, we all froze...then thanks be to God the rhino changed his mind and went trotting off into the bush.  Whew!

On our way through the reserve one of the girls asked me why I smiled and laughed so much.  I was caught a little off guard, not realizing that I did. Then when I thought about it I realized that I have been genuinely filled with joy from the moment I arrived here. These children make my heart sing.  This land shows God's majesty in a way I could never have imagined.  I have joy overflowing, so much so that my cheeks hurt!  The girls decided to give me a Zulu name that means "ever smiling" :) I have no idea how to pronounce that name in Zulu much less write it but that is what it means :)  The Lord has done this for me...given me a chance to be ever smiling in His glory with joy overflowing, oh, I pray that I may keep this feeling with me for always!  :)  :)  :)   

 

 

hello

We apologize for the lack of communication to you all! The orphanage we're staying at does not have internet, so no texting, emailing, or blogging. Until tonight...we just arrived in Richard's Bay at a beautiful bed and breakfast run by friends of Glynn. This home is filled with eucalyptus stairways, ceilings, a gorgeous backyard that has a large deck overlooking a coi pond, pool, and bright green grass. The three of us, Anjuli, Branyn, and myself, were overjoyed at the flushing toilets, shower, and yummy smelling soap. We may each take three showers before leaving in the morning for church. tee hee

I can't possibly condense the last five days into one blog...but I'll do my best to express just a smidgen of it tonight. The over arching theme that characterizes my time here is joy and obedience. We've been, for the most part until tonight, with folks that have nothing in the world's standards. Yet they bubble over with joy and generosity that doesn't seem to have an end to it. The couple running the orphanage and school, Clement and Thuli, get up at sunrise and cook, clean, wash clothes, repair the buildings the children live in, raise their own children and do more than I know. There's not much rest for them. The work has to get done, so they do it with joyful hearts.

Thursday, after teaching in their 7-9th graders, Anjuli suggested we pick up trash scattered every where. (At the time we didn't know the orphanage was built on an old trash dump.) So we took some bags and began to pick up glass, rusty nails, and random objects stuck in the dirt. Without a word to the kids, they came over, took the bags from us, and helped clean up their home. We stayed at it for at least 35 minutes with no complaining, whining, or arguing from any of the children! With smiles and laughter, we served each other...yes, four, five, and six year olds served me as I to them.

That's the funny thing about going a trip like this, or any missions focused trip. John Piper says this, Jesus asks us to give up a good thing for a great thing. This is the great thing. God wants hearts willing to obey and then He showers that obedience with abundant joy in the serving. Why do we as Children of God find this so difficult and inconvenient? Have we forgotten Christ's body broken for the trespasses we committed, not His? If we can only have the clarity that a trip like this gives to remain once we're home and back into routine....serving should be like breathing, what else are we to do for whom we call our King, our Abba, our Savior? He doesn't require "pay back", but certainly from the body He's redeemed and soul saved, the heart wells up with gratitude for the new life and the desire for all to share in the everlasting hope of knowing Jesus.

--Christina

 

Two teams are leaving on August 8 for the USA to go to South Africa. A team of seven people are from Canada and Boston and they will be working with the Campus Crusade staff in Durban to Present the Smart Choices program to schools in Durban and the surrounding areas.



A team is leaving from California to go to Richards Bay, Soshanguve, and Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. The allards are probably ringing right now to get the team members up so we can be at LAX airport by 4:40 for 7:50 flight.

Here is our California team:

Please watch our Blog for the next four weeks.

Uganda Team Trip Report

God is opening up new opportunities fo Beacon of Hope this year. We are finaly being drawn to destinations other than South Africa. New doors have opern to Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Curtis and Rhonda who have been on the South African mission trip twice in 2006 and 2007 went to Ugande this an just returned on Wednesday August 3.

Curtis wrote the following On July 23 after being in Uganda a few days:
"Everything here is going great. I am so impressed with what Moses has done. One reason we are doing so much is because he got the program approved by the inspector of education.
The inspector helped plan the program with Moses. Basically we are piloting the program for Uganda. We are going into a variety of schools,primary, secondary, same sex, private and public. The youth conference is 5 youth from 12 parishes from 16 to 26 years old and they will go back home to share the material there."

As Curtis stated Smart Choices is being evaluated as a pilot program with the intention making it part of the school curriculum throughout Uganda. They first had to do a presentation for the Mayor of Entebe and then were taken to Kampala to meet the Secretary of Education and I believe were also introduced to the Speaker of the Parlement. The program started out by Curtis and Rhonda taking a day to training four people to be Smart Choices instructors. Then they took one more day to have the new instructors present the program back to them and they provided feed back and critique. Next is they started teaching the program to the assortment of schools mentionad in Curis' coments above.

Results:
A total of 667 students were trained.
111 Made new commetments to follow Jesus.
512 Are already Christians and wanted help to grow spiritually stronger.
612 Made to aabstain from sex until married.
540 Pledged to be faithful to one partner in marriage.

The schools that were taught the Smart Choices curriculum in this pilot program were:

1. Entebbe Junior, private school: Students – 72 Ages – 11-14


2. Mary Reparatrix S.S., All girls private school: Students – 115 Ages – 13-21


3. Saint John’s School, private school : Students – 39 Ages – 13-19


4. Entebbe Comprehensive, public school: Students – 58 Ages – 9-17


5. Jinja Youth Conference: Students – 59 Ages – 11-43


6. Chadwick, public school, teachers were on strike Students – 237 Ages – 10-6


7. Sacred Heart Bugonga, public school: Student – 87 Ages – 9-18

Here are some comment provided by students and teachers.
Nugabe Ben Kalisa
“I have loved this workshop because it taught us about abstaining from sex up to when you are married. And we have also learnt to ask our heavenly father whatever we need.”
Ilhan Au (Iuy)
“You guys have taught me a lot. I wish we could teach the future generation about HIV/AIDS.”
Ariyo Roselyn
“I have really loved this workshop very much and I would request God to bless this people who took us through this workshop abundantly because I have learnt so many things from this workshop of smart choices and I believe it will help me in future.”
Tobach Linda Chantal Violet
“I appreciate the advice and I promise to keep my word. So God help me.”
Education Inspector Ndagga Daniel
“This curriculum is recommended for use in our schools, a good program.”
Nakato Juliet
“Jesus film was so nice I have ever watched it. It has taught me a lot like forgiveness, courage, sacrification, loving others, helping the poor. I would like the Smart Choice group to come back because they are really nice and teach well.”
Kabashinga Jane
“I have really learnt to abstain from sex, trust in one God and to have self-control.”

Tim Andrew, teacher
"The workshop is very interesting and educative to the pupils and teachers. It would save many people if done all around the country. "
Anenu Charlotte
"I really thank you for the wonderful empowerment you’ve changed my life and I’ll always remember you. You are always welcome. God bless you all."

Great job Curtis, Rhonda and Pastor Moses. You have made a great start in Uganda.

Call in to the Frank Pastore Radio show

I had the opportunity today July 21, 2011 to call in to the Frank Pastore show The Intersection of Faith and reason to weigh in on a topic that I have something to talk about. The following is an email that I sent him as a follow up.

Listen to the interview

Frank, I love your show and listen to it all the time. Finally you had a topic that I could address in a meaningful way. It was great talking to you today on the air. Thanks for doing this program on promiscuity, and sexually transmitted diseases linked to the release of the new movie coming out “Friends with Benefits.” It is such a critically important topic. The schools will never address this subject in an effective way so I think it is essential that the churches do. Even my own church is very supportive of me taking mission trips to Africa to address the HIV/AIDS problem but so far have been reluctant to do something like this with our own teenagers.
I went back and listened to the pod cast and I was speaking so fast because I had so much to share and I knew I only had five or six minutes to get my message out. I would so love to have a more in-depth conversation with you about this topic and in particular about the Campus Crusade material (Better Choices) that we use in our training. It is amazing as I listened to your callers giving advice as to what they would say to a teenager to dissuade them from becoming sexually active at a young age and it sounded like some of them were reading from our training manual. This is such an awesome program and it hits all the points that your callers were talking about:

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  What are your dreams? What can prevent you from reaching your dreams? Well, AIDS duh! What is HIV, what is AIDS? How do you get it? How do you prevent getting it?
  
  



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  How do you deal with it if you get it? How do you deal with others that have it without making them feel like a leper?
  
  



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  Why should I honor God and honor the body he gave me? Because I am “wonderfully made,” I am “amazingly and uniquely made,” I am created in God’s image. He knew me while he was knitting me together in my mother’s womb. He has a perfect plan for me. Anything that is unique and one-of-a-kind is always more valuable than anything mass-produced.
  
  



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  How do I make life’s tough choices? You learn to love Jesus more than yourself, more than your own life and He will help you make the right choices.
  
  



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  We are not animals that act on impulse. We are human beings that have critical thinking capability and can weigh the consequences of our actions.
  
  



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  Life is not an event, it is a series of choices and each choice has its consequences.
  
  



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  We show the Jesus film and give them the opportunity to start to follow Jesus. We also challenge them to make a commitment to abstain from sex until marriage.
  

To date we have had more than fifteen thousand student go through our program and on average 30% claim to already be Christians, 50% make new commitments to follow Jesus and typically 60%-80% make a commitment to abstinence. We are leaving on our annual mission trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe in two weeks and I will be gone for from August 8 through September 3.
Please don’t forget about this topic. I think it would be a great program to ask Pastors to call in and comment on whether they are doing anything like this and if not, what is the opposition?
Frank, one last thing. We are doing a Hymn Sing Concert fundraiser concert at our church on Saturday July 30. The proceeds go towards our mission trip. If there is any way you can work in a SHOUT OUT for us on the air about this, it would be greatly appreciated. The details are on this Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=105459749550179 . We are also going to be doing a raffle of various items that have been contributed. If KKLA or Frank Pastore have any items of value to contribute to the raffle, that would be awesome.

Glynn Smith
Beacon of Hope International

2011 Uganda team

Hear is an email message from Curis and Rhonda after a few days in Uganda .

Friday Rhonda and I taught the 6 sessions to our trainees, and this morning they practiced them back to us. We made it through the first 4 sessions before we had to break for lunch. They did an excellent job. After lunch we went to Entebbe city hall and met with the education inspector and then as a group presented Smart Choices to the mayor for his approval to teach in the schools, which we received. We start in the first two of the six schools tomorrrow. They are viewing this as a pilot project that will expand to many other schools if it is successful, as it meets the requirements that the government has specified for HIV/AIDS education.

My carryon bag with projector, dvd player, laptop, malaria pills, etc. was not allowed on board in Brussels as it was to big they said. Then it did not arrive in Entebbe on our flight. It is still missing. Please pray for it's intact, undamaged recovery.

More news soon.

Finally! The whole team is home

On Thursday September 2 at about 2:00pm the stragglers arrived at LAX. Travel weary after three weeks of being away from home and a flight home that took a total of twenty eight hours including a one hour stop in Dakar, Senegal and a four hour stop in New York.

Third Generation Smat Choices team in training.

We spent the last two days participating in the training of the third generation of Smart Choices team trainers in Soshangove. They consisted of on of the pastors in training from Ebenezer Christian Fellowship Church, two students from schools that have received Smart Choices training in the past year and other members of the youth group of Ebenezer Christian Fellowship Church.

Second generation Smart Choice trainers.

On Tuesday afternoon we had a meeting with the second generation Smart Choices trainers lead by Thomas Mphara to let know of some of their needs to be able to continue doing the Smart Choices and school discipleship programs in the schools. These included a request for new uniforms, a camera to record their activities, help with transport to get them to the schools, and a small stipend for the trainers to sustain them while not working but still participating in the ministry.

All of the orphans living with Zodwa and Pastor Elias Gomba.

All told we had a very enjoyable last two days with the Soshanguve team but we were definitely in the wind down mode. Thanks again to all who have supported us financial to enable this mission trip to take place, to all those who have been praying for safety and success, and to those been following our activities on this blog. There will be a report back celebration held in both Prescott, Arizona and Orange County, California. Dates and times of these activities will be advertised shortly.