Mike finally sent me 2 pics--that is it--2!! Here they are , along with his wonderful descriptions. Can you tell he used to teach English and wrote for the college paper? My points are in blue so you don't get confused.
Trevor(their guide at the church) started our day by taking us to Youthworx which is in a converted home on Marine Street which runs adjacent the coast. It’s near a mall and many other businesses catering to tourists and middle class shoppers. The house was donated by a man who had made a tremendous amount of money in heavy equipment. When he miraculously survived a race car wreck, he made an appointment with Trevor to ask why God had spared his life. Trevor told him that he didn’t know—ask God! He did say that it could have been so that he could donate his home in a prime location to NSC to begin a youth center, and the guy did it!
Youthworx is staffed by members of the Becomers program who live in apartments behind it along with a youth pastor named Stef.
NSC’s Becomers program is an alternative to a traditional university for Christian young people who want to pursue an education but either cannot afford to go to university or who want to pursue a ministry option. They are given 1000R per month, one meal per day (lunch), and lodging for as long as they want or until they complete their online studies. Students must complete an application for the program. In Trevor’s words, these students are in the prime of their lives, and while they are young, excited, and unfettered by a family or career, the church needs to leverage their passions for Christ in reaching other young people. Becomers work the Friday night youth program and spend afternoons (mornings are strictly reserved for studies) working at NSC sponsored community centers or building relationships with area teens.
Can't you see Carter loving that program??
The rehab centre was run by a local farmer named Tim who attends NSC along with a woman named Eustace. Eustace’ husband founded the center after he overcame an addiction to alcohol. The centre can serve up to 20 people at a time, depending on government funding. It also provides drug abuse education to local schools. It looked very poor and we didn’t see any people there.
This center was a ministry of NSC and a local church. It has a feeding program (they call them “feeding schemes”) that provides a meal a day for about 120 area children. When we were there, a group from Grace Church in St. Louis was presenting a program for the children at the crèche. These kids were all 4-5 years old and there were about sixty of them from what I could tell. Supposedly another sixty will come in during the afternoon, also to be fed.
There was a well near the Khula centre that Trevor told us is called Jacob’s well. When a team from Lake Pointe came a few years ago, a sophomore in high school named Jacob was came to the center. He was moved by the difficulty these people had getting clean water for the children, so when he got home, he began raising money for a well. Completely on his own, he raised the funds for a well and had it sent to Trevor. The “experts” told them that there was no way that they would ever find water around there, because it had been tried. The church prayed, dug the well, and found water anyway! Trevor calls it Jacob’s miracle well. The cool part of the story was that Jacob came back on a 2nd trip and was actually there the day that they began pumping water out of that well!
The community centre was next door to Murchison Primary School which is a large school for students up to grade 7. When we arrived there were maybe 15 small kids playing basketball, Frisbee, and drawing with chalk with a group of teenagers from Lake Pointe in Rockwall. After school let out at 3pm that place filled up! Kids came in for after school programs. Kids were singing, coloring, playing games, shooting hoops, and a couple were even taking guitar lessons. One group of girls called the Angels sang us a song from the movie Sister Act.
these are kids at the community center getting pics taken by our Pastor The squatter's camp was unreal. Literally, these homes were made out of garbage. A few planks, an old piece of a discarded sign, sheets of corrugated tin, and bamboo made up the walls. There were a couple of places where a pipe with a spigot would stick up out of the ground, and that was where the entire community got their water. (see guys, I've been preaching about clean water for the past year and a half--so cheap for people help-donate to water for life instead of sprinkling your grass twice a week!). Trevor said he estimates that there are about 3,000 people living in that particular camp.
He showed us one location where, a few years ago, he had seen a body lying on a pile of garbage while he was driving through the camp. He figured he would at least see if he could give this person a decent burial, and found that there was a little life left in him. Trevor took the man home (this was before Genesis Care Centre opened) and he and Helene cared for him. For several weeks, families in the church with extra rooms took him in. With proper nourishment, anti retroviral drugs, and a loving home, the man recovered and actually lived another year and a half before succumbing to AIDS. His story is the inspiration for the Genesis Care Centre.
squatter's camp
No comments:
Post a Comment