April is always a special month in the Malster household, we celebrate 2 birthdays (myself and Finn). This April was particularly special as it was Finn’s first birthday! It was a very special day as we celebrated with all of the Hands family and Morgan’s parents who travelled from Zambia for a couple of weeks. Finn had his first experience of cake and loved it!
Our group of new volunteers arrived in mid-February and have just finished their orientation programme and placement at one of our local offices. During their orientation programme, Morgan, Finn and I joined the group as they spent time in one of our communities, Zwelisha. In the morning, we helped prepare the food for lunch for the kids and that day it was chicken feet. I was given the job of chopping the toe nails off of the chicken feet. Later on, we went on a Holy Home Visit to one of the pastors wives in the community. The pastor is well known and very involved at the Life Centre. The wife that we were visiting had attended various events at the Life Centre but since having a baby had not been involved. The hope was that we could encourage her to start coming to the Life Centre again. It is so important to have local leaders in our communities involved at our Life Centres as this is a core value of Hands of local community ownership. During this Home Visit, Julia (the Care Worker we were with) shared her story of how she become a Care Worker and her heart for serving the most vulnerable in her community. The previous week she had been part of an exchange visit with other Care Workers from the Oshoek region of South Africa. She was excited to share with this pastor’s wife about what she had learnt from the other Care Workers. At the end of our visit, we asked her the question, would you like to come to the Life Centre on Monday? She said yes and we are now praying that God will use this opportunity to bring this pastors wife into the Community Based Organisation to help serve the most vulnerable children in Zwelisha.
Every year at Hands we celebrate Holy Week and take time to reflect on Jesus’ time in the week leading up to his death and resurrection. This year, we spent time reading passages of scripture and reading parts of a book called ‘The Final Days of Jesus’. Personally, it was a time when God challenged me on how I use my devotionals. For this Lent season, I spent the majority of my devotional time sending encouragements to others but had been neglecting the fact that God also needs to speak to me. So I found Holy Week very refreshing as I was able to spend it listening to God and being still with Him.
Just after Easter, Morgan and I had the opportunity to visit the Oshoek area and host a team from Canada. We joined them in visiting one of our communities called Sthobela B. It is a very new community based organisation and had only been running for about a month when we visited. For being such a new CBO, it was a joy to see the kids so happy. For many of our kids, when we first begin to care for them, they can be reserved and it takes a few months to become open enough to play with other children and adults. The home which our group visited on our Holy Home Visit had seven people living there; a gogo (grandmother), her 2 children and 4 grandchildren. As we chatted with one of the mothers, we got to understand a little more of their story. Both the mothers had spent significant chunks of time away from the home looking for work in Johannesburg and other big cities. They had spent a lot of time away because finding jobs in South Africa is very difficult. During this time, the gogo (still left at home with the 4 grandkids) needed to continue to make her small living by working the field. Three of the kids are too small to go to school. When she was away in the field, she would lock these 3 kids in the house to keep them ‘safe’ and out of trouble. Little did she know what damage it was doing to them. The room they were in had no windows and only a small crack under the door to keep air moving in and out of the room. The gogo would be gone for hours at a time working the field. It wasn’t until one neighbour saw what was going on and alerted the Care Workers at the CBO that something changed. The Care Worker visited and talked through with the gogo what had been happening and she also called the mothers back from the city to come and help the situation. Now, a few months later the kids are looked after by the mothers during the day and play outside in the surrounding area. Since February, they have also been attending the Sthobela B Life Centre which means that all 4 of them receive a meal and get to play with other kids for a few hours. Even though it was a tough story to hear, it also brought me a lot of hope to know that there are people who are standing up for those who have no voice in our communities.This weekend I am off to Malawi for 2 weeks to do some financial work and spend time in our communities with a team from Canada. It will be the longest time I have been away from Finn and the longest time one of us will be looking after him without the other.
Please pray for all 3 of us that this time apart will not be too difficult and we will be able to communicate well
