“I feel like a Queen in a palace now!” Gretta exclaimed after she saw her repainted kitchen at Sbukosezwe creche. The team of 8 from Leek, England, had spent the morning repainting it, and helping Gretta with the 67 three to five-year-olds that were attending the creche that day.

While iThemba doesn’t like to make manual work projects the focus of their work, helping someone improve their physical surroundings can encourage them. Gretta has tirelessly worked for many years with young children at her creche, and somehow she is able to keep them all learning something and not causing havoc! It was such a pleasure to get to be a part of encouraging her to keep going in her work.

This team from Leek has had hearts of service these past two weeks. They helped us with our Holiday Club (where we had about 100 kids and 30 teens), assisted with some gardening projects, helped to run Life Groups, and also repainted two kitchens at two different creches.

The majority of this team was past retirement age, and yet rather than spending their retirement traveling to South Africa’s tourist spots, they were here with us in Sweetwaters getting dirty, working hard, and playing with kids! They were a huge encouragement to our iThemba team as well.  iThemba has a very young staff, so it was great for us (as well as the kids and teens in the community) to meet people as old as their “gogo’s” who were taking time to invest in their lives and also knew how to have some fun! My co-worker Thulani said when they left, “Let me tell you, you have inspired me. When I am your age, I hope I am just as crazy as all of you!”

I can’t upload photos from home, but click here to see some pics of the Leek team and their work:

Thank you to all who have been praying for me and for these teams these past 3 weeks. My health is much improved, and even after going hard for 3 weeks, I don’t feel a relapse in energy at all. Praise God! I’m now taking a few days off, though, since I don’t want to push myself too hard. 🙂