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

2011 Mission Trip Report Event

The 2011 Beacon of Hope Mission Teams are very grateful to all of our friends and supporters who made it possible for us to take the 2011 mission trip. We would like to invite our prayer warriors, supporters and everyone who has any interests in our mission activities to come and be part of our trip report gathering.

Why: We will serve Malva pudding and other delicious desserts.

When: Saturday October 1 at 6:00 pm.

Where: Smiths' House, 24851 Costeau St, Laguna Hills, CA 92653.

We had two mission trips that happened this summer.

1. One was to Entebbe and Jinja, Uganda.
2. The other was to our normal destinations in South Africa, and also a new destination of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
3. Besides this one of the pastors we work with in South Africa is from Nigeria. He went to Nigeria this year to visit his mom and taught the AIDS prevention education program to thirty High School seniors and three pastors. Now the pastors want to continue teaching the program in Nigeria.

Come and hear from the teams, see some videos, consider how you might be part of our program which is now starting to expand beyond the boundaries of South Africa.

Zimbabwe Part Two

Youth for Christ Zimbabwe.

We finished out Smart Choices program with the Youth for Christ team on Monday. We had them prepare and teach all of lesson four and part of lesson five back to us. They are enthusiastic about the program and did a great job of teaching their sections. We are presenting the program to thirty-three students at an orphanage/private school called SOS. It is financed by a European organization, I think from Germany. It is a secular organization but the administration welcome Christian content programs.

Tammy and others from the Baptist Church go out there weekly to do activities with the kids at SOS and at least two other orphan care facilities. The Youth for Christ team that we trained are doing the whole program and we are just filling in a few spots for one of the team members that didn't show up. They are doing a great job of teaching and are all very enthusiastic about the impact that it will have on the community. It is now Friday morning and we have completed the whole program at the SOS school.

During our downtime in the morning we have visited several orphan care facilities. One lady who is originally from Australia has adopted four girls that live with her at her home in town and she is also responsible for another 96 children who are living at a Youth for Christ campground about 18 Km out of town. They are required to vacate the camp site by the end of this year so they are frantically searching for a location to move them to. They have found a hotel that is available and would be an ideal property but the owner wants $800,000 for it. The caretakers are hopeful that the owners would accept $500,000 and are prayerfully seeking financial support to come up with the money. All of the children that are cared for by this organization have been victims of some kind of sexual or physical abuse.

One family that we have met that also attends Jeff and Tammy's church have adopted fourteen children and are currently living in a three-bedroom house. He is English and she is Matabele and their place is spotless. Considering the children's backgrounds they are all extremely well behaved with wonderful manners and so friendly and welcoming to visitors. As soon as we arrived one of them grabbed each of us by the hand to show us all the shrubs and trees growing in the garden, then a tour of the vegetable garden, and than a visit to the chicken coop before getting a tour of their bedrooms.

It is time to start packing up and getting ready to head to the Bulawayo Airport for the long journey home. I will add some pictures to these posts when I we get back to California so come back and visit this blog in a few days time. Also plan on coming to be part of our trip feedback evening soon. We will let you now the exact date and time shortly.

Glynn Smith

Bulawayo Zimbabwe

After taking about two hours to get through customs at Bulawayo it was great to see Jeff and Tammy again. The departure and arrival terminal at Bulawayo is an old barn type building that has been acting as the temporary terminal for about 20 years. There is a nice new terminal building (well seventeen-year-old building) that has never been equipped and completed to serve as the new terminal. In spite of our two-hour encounter with customs because of 14 team shirts that I bought in South Africa for our Zimbabwe Smart Choices team and having to pay $84 tax and customs duty on the shirts it still feels great to be back in Zim. after thirty-six years.

We started immediately on Friday, August 26 to train the Zimbabwe team who were all recruited by Youth for Christ. Some of them are also from the Bulawayo Christian Bible League. We also had one Pastor who I mentioned in my last blog that we met at Zodwa's church in Soshanguve who is from Harare. After returning home from South Africa he immediately returned back to Bulawayo so that he could be trained. I provided him all the material that he needs to build a kit to teach the Smart Choices program, so we will see how successful he is at getting the program running in Harare.

On Sunday we attended three services at Jeff and Tammy's church, Bulawayo Baptist Church. Jeff preached all three sermons. The 8am service uses all hymns and one piano player for worship and is mostly attended by the older crowed. We all loved singing the old hymns and based on their gusto the rest of the congregation did to. The 10am service used more contemporary worship very similar to VCI's worship. TK is a very gifted worship leader and they made use of a keyboard, two guitars, drums, and four vocalists. I guess the church was about 80% full and I estimate about two hundred people. They have a great racially balanced congregation. The majority is African but there are a lot of Caucasians as well as coloreds (mixed blood) and even a handful of Indian families. Needless to say everyone we have spoke to just love Jeff and Tammy.

In case anyone should think that Jeff and Tammy are deprived or in danger or living under any kind of hardship in Zimbabwe, I want to put your mind at rest. They absolutely love being here in Zimabawe. Their church is thriving, vibrant and vital in the Bulawayo community. Their members are having such a huge impact on the community and the difficult aspects of their life which we in America might consider to be real hardships are nothing more than inconveniences to them. They simply love living in Bulawayo.

I will end this post here but will try and post one more tomorrow about the progress of the Smart Choices program before we start heading home on Friday.

--

Glynn Smith

Beacon of Hope International

Phone: 949-305-1922

Cell: 949-795-0042

Web: http://www.beaconint.org/

Blog: blog.beaconint.org

Skype: africanson3