Celebrating birthdays!

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

I am the way, the truth and the life

I can’t believe it is already nearly the end of February. It seems only yesterday that we flew back from Canada and UK after Christmas. Between then and now, we have been up to a lot so I will try to give some highlights of our past few weeks. 

Back in January, as with the start of every year, we heard the Hands Watchword for 2017. This is a guiding scripture for us as Hands for the year. For 2017, the scripture is from John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” For many people, as we reflected on this word, we talked about how it was a well-known verse but how it was still challenging to see it with fresh eyes. As I reflected on this verse for myself, I saw it broken down into 3 parts where God can work in my life this year. First is the way. I realised the need to seek God more in my decisions, my actions and for guidance very single day. Second is the truth. For truth, there are certain truths throughout the bible that I would like to dig into this year and settle into my heart and mind. For life, I have always found that the days I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me are the days which are full of life. So I want to see that God filled life and spirit more in my life this year.

A big focus for my time in the past few weeks has been the year-end financial close out but last week we made the last big push and now are basically finished which is a big weight off our shoulders as the finance team. 

For Morgan, a lot of her focus was year-end narrative reports but those all went out to our partners at end of January and so she can now focus on 2018 and the goals and plans for the communications team. 

During the lent season, as Hands, we participate in 40 days of prayer. This is where we and others across the globe join together to focus our prayer on the most vulnerable across Africa. If you would like to join with us, please visit the Hands at Work website. 

Finn is growing fast and is crawling a lot! He is even close to walking now. He can stand by himself for a few seconds. 













Last Friday, as a Hands family, we travelled to Share community for our monthly community prayer. We spend time every month as a whole Hands family in one of our communities encouraging and praying with Care Workers and getting to know children by name. The previous two days, Morgan had spent time with our first team of the year, from UK, in this same community. Finn travelled with me (and everyone else) to Share community where we spent time worshipping with the Care Workers. It is always a lot of fun singing and dancing with these ladies, they have so much joy despite having so little. In the afternoon, we split up into a few different groups and went on Holy Home Visits. The family Morgan, Finn and I visited were a family of five, four children and the mother. They had lost their father three years ago. The two youngest kids are receiving 3 Essential Services (food, health and education) from the CBO (community based organisation). The second eldest son was who we found at the home when we arrived. His name in English means Truth. When we talked more with him, we learnt that he is not receiving the 3 Essential Services because after school, he tries to find small community jobs (piece work) to earn a little bit of money to support the rest of the family. Sometimes this means very long days for Truth but he is sacrificing of himself for the rest of his family. A lot of the work he finds in the community is car mechanics which he learnt from his father. I told him that my dad is also a mechanic but I know very little about mechanics which he found funny. He is studying business and economics in his final years at school and hopes to become an engineer one day. Even from the short time we got to spend with Truth, you can tell he loves his family and will do anything for them. It is great to see a male role model like this in our communities as it has the potential to affect many other young boys’ lives where there are very few fathers around. 

Thank you all for your continued support and prayers!

- T

 

It's Good to be Home

Firstly, we want to say thank you to everyone who we spent time with over the past two months in UK and Canada. We feel very blessed to have so many people walking this journey with us as we continue to serve the most vulnerable children across Africa.

A few highlights from our time away from Africa were a week away with Tommy’s family at a holiday village resort that he went to as a kid and a whole week under one roof with Morgan’s family in Calgary (that hasn’t happened for 3 years!). Of course Finn got to meet so many of you for the first time and we had great fun introducing him to you all. Finn was an amazing traveler over the two months! Morgan got to visit Northern England for the first time. Tommy got to try his first beaver tail (a giant sugary Canadian donut). And Finn had so many new experiences but one of the biggest ones being his introduction to snow. He handled it much better than his dad! 

For Finn’s first Christmas, we were with Morgan’s family in Calgary and the most exciting part for him was ripping the tissue paper off his presents. 

We are excited to start a new year in South Africa and are expectant to see what God has in store for us this year. It was a great two months away but it is always nice to come back home. 

Big Adventures Ahead of Us!

October is such a special time of year for us at Hands as we have an annual gathering in Zambia. Many of our local volunteers and leaders come together and look back on the year and plan for the next. We have people attending from Nigeria, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. All three of us have just arrived in Zambia to be a part of this gathering and to spend some time with the community of people here, which includes Morgan’s parents. … Finn did so well on his first flight!! 

In preparation for this time together in October, we have been participating in some smaller leaders meetings in the past few weeks discussing success stories and challenges from our communities across Africa and how we can support the most vulnerable on an even deeper level next year. We talked about how we can better support the care givers of the most vulnerable children and how we can involve in the Life Centre where their children attend. 

Another highlight from the past month was our family’s visit. Mum, dad and Louis all came to spend time with us and of course meet Finn for the first time. We spent time in Zwelisha Community and did some sightseeing. 

Yesterday we had the opportunity to spend the morning in a community called New Wells. We went to encourage the pastors in the community, and Levy shared with them from Luke. After that we spent some time playing with the children. 

Our time away from Africa is coming up very soon. Our flights are below so you will know where we are and when. 
25th October – land in UK 
21st November – land in Toronto 
1st December – land in Calgary 
31st December – fly back to Africa 

We also have a fundraising evening on 28th October at Capel St Mary Methodist Church, where we will be having a quiz night and African craft market. This will begin at 6.30pm.

We would like to meet up with as many of you as possible during our time away from Africa so please feel free to contact us to find out about available dates. 

See you all soon! 

Tommy - tommy@handsatwork.org) 
Morgan - morgan@handsatwork.org 

QUIZ NIGHT + AFRICA CRAFT MARKET | UK - OCT 28TH

The Many Sides of Vulnerability

Over the past couple of weeks, as a family we have been blessed to spend time together in the communities we serve in South Africa. It is unusual for me to get to four different communities in one month, most of my time is spent in the office working with our local bookkeepers across Africa. It has been a real highlight for me this month to have lots of time getting to know kids and Care Workers behind the numbers I look at daily.

I have been reminded that vulnerability takes on many different forms.

Some can be very obvious like the Care Worker we met in the hills near Swaziland who had burnt her leg and had to walk over the mountain to get the clinic every other day to get her wound redressed. Other forms of vulnerability can be harder to see like the 17 year old girl in grade 10 who did not have a South African ID so when she completes school, she will not be able to graduate and have a chance to get a job because an ID is needed to write her final exams.

Sometimes, lessening the vulnerable was possible. Like when a plan was made for a young girl to no longer sleep in the same tiny room as all of her older brothers. Others times, it was not as straight forward. Like the man we met in his 30s, who struggled with mental illness and sat alone in the dark because that’s where he felt safe.

Some stories highlight the levels of vulnerability seen across our communities and are not unique to just one family. One of these is a pair of brothers we met last week and both had bad infections. An adult was needed to accompany them to the clinic but their mother refused to take them. Their Care Worker accompanied us as we went to the local clinic with them but the clinic workers at the lab were on strike that day. Now these boys will need to go back again next week to be treated. Transport will need to be organised and an adult will again need to be present. I witnessed the true love and commitment from our local Care Workers as they take responsibility where it is lacking.

It has been re-energising for me to be out so much in our communities. It gives me that boost that is so often needed in the middle of the year to keep pushing. Sometimes I can think I am vulnerable in my own situation but it is when I get the chance to spend time with those who struggle on a much greater level that I reminded why God called me to Africa.

July has been a very busy month. Morgan’s mom, dad, brother and brothers’ girlfriend visited us and joined on many community visits. Also, Finn had his first overnight stay in one of our local offices. We had quality family time together and many special memories were made. One of these was Finn’s baptism which was also attended by many of the Hands family.

Morgan is back at work this week and I am currently hosting one of our visiting teams from the UK.

God Keep Our Land - Happy 150th Canada!

 Happy 150th Canada!

 A great day celerbating a beautiful nation from South Africa.