South Africa: Community fears World Cup will cause homelessness

This article was included in an update from Dennis and I thought it was highly relevant to the work we do in Sweet Home which is in the same area as Kewtown.

 South Africa: Community fears World Cup will cause homelessness

Cape Town (South Africa) - While South African parliamentarians attended a swanky pre-International Women’s Day celebration at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre, a group of destitute women in decaying Kewtown, just seven miles away, worried about looming homelessness.

I created a Google Earth link to Kewtown and this satelite shot of the area.

Church Plant in Sweet Home

Over the past few months we've been learning more and more about a possible Church plant in Sweet Home.

Joy Klimbashe who was one of the first people we met on our scouting trip in Sweet Home is working to plant the first ever church in Sweet Home. They have a plot of land but do not yet have rights to the land. Sweet Home is an informal settlement meaning someone other than the residents own the land. The local government has been trying to secure the land from the owner so they can bring in services and give "tenure" to the residents. The church also needs this to happen.  Joy would like to make this a community center where the after school program, the HIV/AIDs support group, the alcohol recover program can meet and also a place of worship.

This is a picture of the location where he would like to build the building.

Please pray that the land for all of sweet home can be purchased by the government and the residents given tenure. This would also allow for the church plant to move forward. Pray that Joy Klimbashe can is vision for Sweet Home come true.

Summer Trip Details

We have been accepting applications for a summer trip for the past month. This week we will begin interviews and team selection. Here are the trip details.

Trip Dates:: August 6th - August 21st

Training Dates & Times:
Sunday, April 11th
Sunday, April 25th
Friday, May 14th (Evening Team Social)
Sunday, May 23rd
Sunday, June 6th (Serve day-8:30-3:00pm)
Sunday, June 27th
Friday, July 9th (Evening Team Social)
Sunday, July 18th
Sunday, August 1st (Packing party)
Sunday, August 29th (Team debrief)
Sept. 2nd/Oct. 7th (SA community gathering)
*All training sessions are mandatory and will take place from 11:00am to 2:00pm unless otherwise noted. Team socials are strongly encouraged. Please take a look at every date and note that this is a very big time commitment, in and out of trainings.

All information for this trip is available on ROCKHarbor Core.

Successful South Africa Week at ROCKHarbor

We just finished months of planning to put on South Africa weekend at ROCKHarbor this past weekend.

Here is the video that was played at service.

On Monday night we had about 30 people watch the move "Long Night's Journey Into Day" a documentary about the Truth and Reconciliation commission setup after Apartheid to bring forgiveness and reconciliation to all people of South Africa.

We also distributed over 2000 prayer cards for over 80 of the people we work with in South Africa. These are prayer sponsorships where we asked people to pray specifically for those in need or those who work directly with Bridges Of Hope.  Prayer is the most requested item we get and the ability to turn this over to thousands of people is a huge blessing.  Thanks for everyone who took a prayer card and continues to pray. If you would like a prayer card, we have a few extras, I could send you one.

We also had Dennis Wadley speak at a story and sharing night last night. I will try and get some pictures and post more about that in another post.