Monica's Rehoboth Update

Hi,

I hope you are doing well and having a great summer. We had a great trip and George and Anne-Marie are still working on the garden and having success with it. Last year, people drove from Windhoek to buy their corn! One issue with the garden is that in the winter there is not much that will grow. In order to balance that out, they have expanded to include chickens, a few pigs, and orange trees. Also, they are starting a bakery at the same site as the garden. A huge praise is that George has made a contact with an organization that has agreed to buy all of the crops and bakery items they produce. In addition, the organization will help fund some of the raw materials they need upfront.

The Children at the Ark were doing Ok. They have about 23 there now as some like Anita, Chico and Dumpty (we saw them on Thursday)

have gone to live with their families and the others are with George and Anne Marie. CHI has struggled to get house parents at the Ark since October. You can tell this has had a huge impact on the children! The older kids especially were having a hard time. Please pray that CHI might find the right parents for the ARK. Also, it is George and Anne Maries dream to someday have the Children's Home . Please pray for that as well. We were able to visit with the kids after school for three days and do crafts and play games with them. They really enjoyed getting the love and attention. They asked how you all were doing and wished you could have come too!

Auntie Johanna and Selma are still at the Ark and the rest of the aunties are new. Auntie Suzzette is staying at the building in the garden and working for George and Anne Marie and doing care and compassion with Anne-Marie a few times a week. Auntie Jennifer got married and moved to Windhoek. Auntie Rachel is doing well and still lives right behind the Ark. She has such a huge heart and prays for us all daily.

At the schools, we were greeted with open arms. The principals gave us their classrooms for the day and the students yelled out our names in the hallways. They asked about many of you by name. The impact you made on the kids is tremendous! One of the highlights for me was having a girl come up to me at school with her " Choose to Wait" photo from November 2005. She carries it with her every day.

We spent time with the kids in block E. It was great because we took the afternoon to bring some crafts for the kids and just hung out with them for a few hours. One boy kept saying to us, " You must come every Saturday." They had such pride carrying their crafts to their homes.

Many of you had the opportunity to meet the young boy, Daniel, on the last trip. He is much stronger and has put on weight. Elly's Mom is taking care of him on a regular basis. It is inspiring to see Elly's Mom taking care of him since she lost her own.

For those of you who know Wisey, he is doing well. We met his fiancée from Holland who was visiting there are a few months. Wisey is working at the furniture store in town.

Also, we spent some time with Giovanni. He was helpful in many of our meetings and is a solid young guy. We sure surprised him when we tracked him down!

Have a great weekend! We miss you.
Monica Harter

Leaving Johannesburg

We are in Johannesburg waiting for the flight home. We had an amazing trip. Sorry for so few posts, the last week has been very busy and we have been far from any Internet connections. I will be adding blog posts for each day over the next two weeks so please come back here to see what happened on the trip.

The past few days in Rehoboth were amazing. It was great to see old friends and see a lot of progress in the work George has been doing for the past few years. The garden is growing and looking great. It is winter so it is not in full bloom right now, but the pictures from last year are incredible. George is also starting a bakery that already has a major customer that has also been buying vegetables from the garden. Care and compassion is their main mission and they continue to grow the garden in order to fund the care and compassion mission. We will give a lot more details over the coming weeks.

Worked in schools. Meeting with EBC.

The team went to Dr. Lemer at 7am expecting to work with one of the morning classes. Upon arriving they were each give their own classroom for 45 minute periods which lasted most of the day.

Wood drove with George to Windhoek to help buy equipment for the bakery. The money we had brought with us as a gift was enough to purchase an oven (2 x 20 loaf ovens), a mixer (20 loaves) and a bread slicer. George and Alan had spent a lot of time working out the business aspects and came up with a spread sheet covering all aspects of the venture.

In the afternoon we had a meeting with EBC Aids program out of Windhoek. They have an after school program that helps hundreds of kids stay out of trouble. I was throughly impressed with their professionalism and materials they brought with them.

This was our last night and we had a Braai (Bar-B-Que) with the Dein family, their neighbors and all the kids. Its was a lot of fun, but also sad to think that we were leaving again. I know we all wished our trip could last for weeks and weeks, but we pray that we will be back soon.


In the year since we have last visited George has made such progress big progress on the garden and grown the care and compassion mission. I know he could use a lot more help during this time of growth and transition. If you know of any way to bring him small teams and financial resources this is a ministry that is well worth your effort.

Choice of rental cars and vans

Who knows if this will be of any use to anyone in the future, but in all the travels we were given a different rental van in each location. This is a list of our favorites from best to least favorite.

Toyota Quantum
A huge 10 seater with tons of space. Very easy to drive and had enough power to keep up with smaller vehicles we were following.

Kombi (Vw?)- The standard rental. Easy to stall in traffic, but a versatile vehicle that stands up well to the work we do.

Nissan - Xtrail. Not really a van, but we twice had this as our second vehicle. It held 5 and was a good vehicle.

Mercedes - We had a Mercedes van in Namibia that was hard to drive, get in and out of and our least favorite of the trip. Maybe someone else can remind me of the model name?

RAP, Care and Compassion in Blok-E, Visit with Daniel

(follow up - added after we returned)

Today we spent half the day with RAP (Rhenish AIDS Program) which is based in Rehoboth. They work in the outlying small communities around Rehoboth and do education and development work. Last week they also opened a new after school program office in Rehoboth. They are lead by Johnathan Van Wyk. We drove with Johnathan to two villages an hour south east of Rehoboth.

We visited a school in the first location and did crafts with one of the rooms. This was an old mining town and home to around 500 people. There were eight school rooms in the elementary school.

We drove a little farther down the road to another school run by the Rhenish church. We did more crafts in the school room behind the church. The church needs funding for a full time pastor. Currently a pastor comes from somewhere else every other week and opposite Sunday's are run by a few of the women.

There was also an abandoned garden project behind the church. The garden was looted and has since been abandoned. Johnathan is looking for resources to restart the project.

RAP was a very professional organization and I can see that they will make good changes in the community.

When we returned to Rehoboth we visited the afterschool program which looked like it was going to be a very good opportunity for many kids in the area. They tend to focus on those children they identify as most vulnerable.

After leaving RAP we returned to George and Anna Marie's. The aunties had just finished their care and compassion trip. We went back out with Anna Marie and autie Suzzette to visit with people in Blok-E. We spent some time with Daniel who was looking like a normal child compared with the photo I saw of him from last year. The only photo we have is a little blurry as I didn't want to use a flash. I don't know the whole story so I'll write what I think I know and try and correct it. Daniel's mother died last year soon after the team returned to the states. His grandmother has been taking care of him since that time. While we were there she was feeding him.

Rehoboth

We spent the morning meeting with the principal of Rehoboth High and Dr. Lemer High. They both invited us back to work with their students. After meeting our meeting with Dr. Titus at Rehoboth HS he allowed us to walk the campus where we saw many of the learners that we have worked with for the past few years.

One of them ran up to us to show us a polariod picture we took with them in 2005 after the Choose To Wait classes.

One teacher spoke with me for a short time and thanked us for coming on campus. She said our presence alone made a big statement to the learners.

In the afternoon we had a meeting with George and Terry at the garden. It was winter so there was not much growing, but the harvest pictures we saw were amazing. George said people drove all the way from Windhoek (1.5 hours away) to buy the corn.

George also planted 80 orange trees in the past few weeks.


Terry works with the catering company (Independence Caterers) that has agreed to buy all the product that is grown in the garden. He has also agreed to buy 150 loaves of bread a day if George can produce that much. George's plans are to take the profit from the garden and the bakery and use them to fund their care and compassion ministry. Independent Caterers has supplies food a raw materials to the Namibian government. I'm not sure how large their operations is, but I do know it is large.

Development which turns into self funding for relief and also builds more development. This is exactly what we learned is the best model for a sustainable future. George is amazing.

Travel to Rehoboth, Namibia

(follow up - added after we returned)

This was mostly a travel day. We planned to leave GNCC with plenty of time to make it to the airport. We had to make a last minute stop at the ATM because were were not expecting to have to pay with cash. Then a stop for gas and coffee took a lot longer than we thought since there were no ATMs working and we had to figure out how to pay for gas with cards.

We barely made it to the airport on time and we barely made checkin. We went through security and ran to the gate and made the last bus to the tarmac.

George and Anna Marie were there to meet us and help get our luggage and donations back to Rehoboth. The only problem was that none of our bags arrived. Nothing. We followed them back to Rehoboth with no cargo and a phone number that no one ever answered. Our bags actually arrived late that night, but they were delivered to a maintenance building and not discovered by the lodge staff until the next day. We didn't actually get our bags until late the next night.

We spent some time at their new house and it was great to see everyone. We paid a visit to the Ark before devotions started and spent some time with the kids. It took a while for the someone to find the key to unlock the door.


After that we drove up to Lake Oanob and had dinner with George and Anna Marie. The main restaurant burned down a few weeks earlier so the summer restaurant was used. It was very very cold and service was slow, but we had a great talk with George and Anna Marie.

Soweto, Rockville, Slovoville

(follow up - added after we returned)

We visited Nelson Manella's home which has now been turned into a museum.

We then had lunch at a famous resturant in Soweto (name now escapes me). We were joined by Buhle (Boothlai) and Pastor Timba.

After lunch we visited the church that they both run in Rockville. Two million people live in Soweto and I'm sure we only saw a small portion of it, but from what we saw it looked like a lot of development had been going on since Apartheid fell in 1994. Buhle had the children sing everyone a song. Everyone in Africa can sing.

We then took a trip to some squatter camps where Buhle does a lot of her ministry. She used to walk between the various camps, but has recently received a donated car and drives to each location and brings as many as she can to Sunday services. The area we visited was called Slovoville. The first stop was at an abandoned farm house.

The next stop was a camp near a cemetary where the cemetary is building a fence around the homes to deny them access to water and resources.

The last place was an abandonded mining area called Bottom. A number of abandoned industrial buildings where people have taken up residence. In the center of the buildings is a small flat cracked cement area that is probably the remnants of another building. It was about the size of a basketball court. There were about 100 kids hanging out on this cement area playing football. Within seconds the kids rallied around Buhle and began singing songs. She has an amazing ability to inspire and lead children.

Water in this area was a single shared spigot for at least 50 entrances to the abandoned industrial buildings. It would be hard to estimate the number of people, but I would guess a few thousand lived there. We left the area as night approached.

We returned to Timba and Buhle's home where we continued our discussion. She also sells goods created by people in squatter camps to help build commerce for the people there. Buhle and her daughter sang a song called "Mango" for Matthew's birthday. They were an amazing duet.

Timba and Buhle were leaving the next day to visit the U.S. for a month where they would be visiting other partner churches.

Church with Paul then with Elias in Zandspruit

(follow up - added after we returned)
It is Sunday and we spent the morning at Paul Siaki's church. A great congregation and we enjoyed the service. We then headed over to the squatter camp called Zandspruit and attended Elias's church in a tent.

It was one of the most amazing services I have ever been to. The music at the end had everyone dancing and Elias was kicking his leg in the air above his head. I don't think it was an experience any one of us will forget.

We then had lunch with Elias. Zandspruit is a migrant camp in which the residents are only there for a few months at a time. The land is government land where people are there illegally, but have virtually taken over every inch of space. All the buildings are make shift and there is no electricity, water or proper services. When we later drove by at night it was pitch black. The area is home to approximately 10,000 people, but that is a rough estimate. It may be more, but may be as low a 5,000. It was very densely populated.

After lunch we returned to a creche "pre-school" deeper in Zandspruit and did crafts with the kids. This creche was also in a shipping container. We helped load the generator, speakers and equipment from the tent church and headed back to GNCC. The work Elias is doing in Zandspruit is truly heroic. He is an amazing pastor and leader.