| Crèche Ministry |
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One of the things the Siyandlulisa team does here in South Africa is a ministry to crèches in townships and informal settlements. Some of the team heads out twice a week to visit local crèches to help out and train the teachers. The whole idea behind the Siyandlulisa mission here is to train the locals so they can be effective in their ministry and then hopefully pass on that knowledge. The word Siyandlulisa means ‘we pass it on’ in Zulu. The plan is that in 20 years (or hopefully less) South Africans will be doing what the team is doing now. The plan for the crèches is to train the teachers and that they then network with other teachers to learn from each other. Lindsey heads this program and has help from the trekkers Julia and Tess, there are also some local people (Dominica, Idah, Tabitha, Nathalie and Bibish) who help out. Lindsey grew up in South Africa and her husband Richard is Australian. Richard began work with WEC in 2003, then when he and Lindsey married in 2006 they started up their own ministry to children and youth. During this time they were house parents in a group children’s' home for 6 months. Richard and Lindsey joined with the WEC team again at the end of 2008. I joined Lindsy on a trip to one of the crèches which was in a place called Slovo. The crèche was in a church all little bit bigger than the one at St Barnabas with all the chairs piled up on one side. There were about 80 kids in the crèche from about 3-5 years of age. It did feel like there was many more though. Lindsey told them a story and taught them a song; we then played a few games with them. This was to also demonstrate to the teachers at the crèche. The kids were a bit stand offish at first but they soon warmed to me. I picked one of them up which was a mistake because I suddenly had a dozen kids around me all wanting to be picked up, thrusting their hands in the air shouting nami (me, now). One boy became my best friend and held onto my hand for most of the time. When it was finally time to go they clasped my hand and then pushed their thumb past mine as a goodbye. It was a fantastic experience to visit a crèche, the kids were all smiling and happy, it is a experience i won’t forget quickly. On another note, the drama this week was that one of the dogs (called Kate) was badly bitten by another dog on the head and neck which required an early morning visit to the vet. She is recovering well and will hopefully be back with us by the middle of the week. We also had a big lighting storm one night which came very close. It kept almost everyone awake but also caused our automatic gates in and out of the property to stop working. Fortunately a nice sunny day seemed to sort them out.   Please pray for Richard as he is suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, also for a youth discipleship programme he is planning to start in April. Also pray for Lindsey, she has recovered from burn-out which she went through while being a foster parent, pray that she will be wise in her ministry so that she will not overdo it again. The crèche ministry needs more committed local volunteers to help us with the weekly crèche visits. Also that Lindsey will be able to do a good job of cataloguing all the resources in the children's book and toy Library. Pray that i can continue to be able to help and engage with the team and community here even if it is in a small way.    |