Winning and Losing

I must say, it still feels strange to have reached the beginning of September and not be thinking about a new term, new class etc. I guess that comes from a life-time of teaching and working on a September to July school year. The kids here went back to school on the 11th but their year ends in December. We are still hopeful of starting the Early Child Development Centre in January and are pressing ahead with the application and meeting with local ministers.

Our immediate concern is for the church children on a Sunday, as they have to meet out in the open at the moment and the rains will start in October. (we actually had some drizzle last night!). We have had an increasing number of kids on a Sunday, since we started Kidz Klub and would really like to split them into different age groups. The material they are doing at the moment isn't suitable for all of the children and means basically they sit and listen for about an hour or more in the blazing sun! So the plan is to put up a simple structure that will give them shelter from sun and rain but won't cost the earth. (quite a challenge as materials are so expensive here). This building will be started as soon as the house for Taurai is finished

The house at 1 BD

The house now has a roof and this week the men will start the plumbing. It will be so lovely for Tendai and Taurai to be able to turn taps to get water instead of having to fill large containers from the bore hole and to have hot water and a shower. That is assuming there is water in the taps! The cuts continue and it can be very frustrating as you can't plan showers/hair washing or even clothes washing. I will definitely appreciate these things a lot more when we get home! We are so spoilt in England...


Ears to be proud of!

I have been spending more time at home recently so am pleased to have Izzy for company, although we are having to discipline her a lot at the moment as she has completely made herself at home and thinks she's the boss! She has been waking us up several times in the night knocking at the door to come in and crying most pathetically.. As she is still only 10 months, she is still chewing things and has eaten one cushion from the veranda sofa already, so she is not always too popular with her master and is often compared to Toffee. I try to cover her ears so that her self-image isn't destroyed by these comparisons, but as you can see that's a challenge too as they are the biggest ears I've ever seen on a dog!!

Being at home, has meant that I can also spend time doing some admin. for Taps which I hope will be helpful to him and also the church as a whole. We are counting numbers on Sundays to monitor growth and have devised follow up forms for visitors. We are also asking Life group leaders to fill in attendance forms so that the Elders can see who is and who is not attending, as commitment can be a problem here. Next Sunday is Vision Sunday when we will be joined at Trenance by the Hamara congregation. This will be the first combined service since they planted out last September and we hope we all fit into the building!

Wayne and Wonderman playing with cars

Although the congregation at Trenance is growing and we had 5 people respond to the gospel on Sunday, we are also loosing quite a few families over the next few weeks, as World Vision are re-housing the squatters from the shacks. They are to be re-housed to the West of Bulawayo so most won't be able to afford to travel back on a Sunday.

You may remember Anna with the 9 children, who had a baby a few months ago. She is one of the families to go, but is determined to start a Life group as soon as possible and is praying for a church plant to start there. We will miss her. While Gary and Jess were here we visited her and gave two of her boys (Wayne and Wonderman) some cars that Jake had sent with his sister to give away. They were really happy to have some toys as the weather at the time was too windy for them to play out as it's so dusty here.

Well I'd better sign off here for now. More news soon. Please keep praying for us as we try to serve these lovely people, we appreciate yuor prayers so much. We are now counting off the weeks until Christmas!