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PL733
28th April 2018
"Grandpa is back! Grandpa is back!" The cry shot out across the mission Monday morning. Rick has returned from almost a month away in the continent of Africa. Bringing amazing stories of the work there at Houses of Hope, Zimbabwe all listened intently at the breakfast table to his tales. After 3 weeks in Zim, Rick spent some time in South Africa and then Western Kenya visiting the projects of our friend Tobias Oloo.
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Rick helping install floor tiles at the orphanage.
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The children at the Houses of Hope orphanage.
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Over the last few years we have made several trips to Houses of Hope in Whunga, Zimbabwe. The director of the orphanage there, Phillip Sitoboli also came out and spent some time here with us. During his time at HOH Rick worked with Phillip and his team to construct the foundation for a workshop and storage shed for the orphanages grain.
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The worksite at the orphanage.
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The foundation work well underway.
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Phillip preparing the afternoon sudza (staple food made of maize, prepared like rice).
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The outside dining area that Rick constructed on a previous visit.
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Getting a buzz cut from Phillip's son Tsepo.
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Before leaving Zimbabwe and crossing into South Africa, Rick took an 8 hour detour East to visit Victoria Falls. The gigantic falls were in full swing dumping millions of liters of water into the valley below. Rick stood in awe looking at the water pounding over the 103m drop, the earth shaking under his feet testified to the awesome power of the falls.
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The Zambezi river dumping over the falls.
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The walk along the edge of the falls was a powerful experience.
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After spending a short time in South Africa Rick flew to Kenya. There he met with Tobias Oloo, a friend who had visited us early last year. Tobias helps to run 54 churches in Kenya and has a 10 acre farm which he hopes to develop to help support the work; a very interesting project to Rick.
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Tobias and Rick together.
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Back on the other side of the world in India, Rick got stuck into a huge list of maintenance jobs that had built up while he was away. Despite arriving home on Monday morning with less than 8 combined hours of sleep over 3 days he was straight in to it. By evening more than a dozen jobs had been completed and Rick was well and truly ready for bed.
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Rick hammering in a copper earth rod for the electrical circuit of the new library.
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Clifton lasted about 6 swings before he broke the hammer. Rookie move.
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Over the last few months we have seen a strange increase in accidents in our local community, sadly several lives have been lost along the way. To do our own little bit to protect our children we have been working with the local police station and the Samartha Saxena Foundation to promote safety awareness, safe driving practice and implement precautionary measures for the protection of everyone.
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Installing speed bumps along our internal roads was a big step for us.
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Rick, Jackie and Sunny installing reflectors along the road.
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Melted tar is used to stick the reflectors to the concrete...
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...they are then secured in place with big nails.
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Our local police station also arranged an art competition for the children of our school on Wednesday with the theme being road safety. Prizes were offered for the most creative students and the results were excellent. We are proud of all our children who participated!
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April 25th, Road Safety Day.
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Members from the local police station inspect students work.
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Students working hard on their art projects.
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"Wear a helmet when you ride your bike!"
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Students competed as groups and individuals.
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Malika getting excited about safety!
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After several weeks in the office working hard on accounts Clifton was ready for a break, perhaps inspired a little by the competition in the school he and Sunny got to work preparing some art of their own for the walls of the Junior Reading Room in the library.
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Sunny cutting out the design...
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...for a giant tree for the library.
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Clifton expressing himself creatively.
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Sunny working on a peacock.
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A work in progress.
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This was certainly a change of pace for Clifton.
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Getting out of the office is a great way to clear ones head.
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The first 12 animals now completed, ready for the library walls.
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Ganesh has continued his steady pace, working on his part of the library project: furniture construction. Now, with just a little over 3 weeks until the doors of the building are officially opening, the pressure is on to finish strong. You're doing a great job Ganesh, keep it up!
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Ganesh has been working night and day to complete the furniture on time.
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The end is in sight! May 19th the gates of the Samartha Saxena Memorial Learning Resource Center will open to the school community.
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Our wheat harvest has also come to a completion this week. After several setbacks, some heavy rainfall, hail storms, broken trailers, a lack of laborers and no combine harvester it is finally over. Not wanting the leave the work till next week the last loads of wheat were thrashed from their stalks late into the night on Saturday by our older boys. Job well done!
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This was the first year in around a decade that we have not used a combine harvester. Our entire harvest was thrashed with this machine.
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Cut bundles of wheat are collected from the fields and stacked high on a trolley.
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The bundles are then fed into the thrasher which chops them up and separates the wheat from the chaff.
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The wheat is then collected at the bottom of the thrasher ready to be stored.
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Amir tossing a tray of wheat into a soon-to-be-overflowing trailer.
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We allow the poor people from our local community to glean our fields, picking up the leftover crops.
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Working late into the night to finish the thrashing.
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Once the cut wheat was fully harvested it also had to be put safely away to protect it from the rain. We have some massive storage 'godowns' for this purpose. Our boys put in a solid effort to ensure enough grain has now been stored away to last through the year. The flour made from this wheat makes up more than 50% of our staple food.
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Rajesh and Amos look out from inside one of our storage godowns.
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The boys filling buckets with wheat to be stored.
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Shane tosses a tray of wheat into Rajesh.
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We are so thankful to God for the blessings of our harvest. There have been so many obstacles and challenges to overcome, but each of us can now breathe a sigh of relief. We want to give a huge shout out to everyone who worked so hard on the harvest this last month, especially Silvester who has worked tirelessly on the tractors, cutting, plowing, delivering and thrashing. Without his dedication and hard work, waking up early each morning to make sure the tractors and trolleys were ready to go, we would have suffered incredible losses. Well done Silvester!
So as we end another week we also want to thank each one of you for your incredible support. Your prayers, emails and financial contributions help us to keep changing the lives of these incredible kids.
Blessing on you,
Rick, Clifton, Eugene & Priscilla
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'Man of the Match' award goes to Silvester!
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