Manna from Heaven

Day 4 Red Rocks Team Trip.

Today 4 of the girls and I (Lincoln) went to Freedom Park, a local squatter camp, and brought food parcels to people living in the shacks and prayed with them. That is always a moving experience and it was fun for me to expose our team to that part of South Africa. The rest of the team will visit Freedom Park next Monday and Wednesday.

Part of our team worked in the Lighthouse Children's Shelter garden, roto-tilling the soil and digging up weeds. Another part of the team tore down the old playground at the shelter. That thing was a death trap. It is a heavy, leaning giant just waiting for a breeze to blow over....very scary. Our team bought some big treated poles that we will plant in the ground to give the playground more stability. Tomorrow we will do that and next week we will begin reassembling the playground.

Part of our team was in Phokeng at Martha's (the lady who feeds and cares for 40-50 orphans in her neighborhood.) We got the ceiling up in the kitchen and began the ceiling in the feeding room. The doors are all prepped, sealed, and ready to install when they dry. Tomorrow I'll order the cabinets and hopefully we can install them next week if they arrive in time. The rest of the team joined the builders in Phokeng at 2:30 and we had fun playing soccer with the kids and making some beaded necklaces. It's fun to watch the team begin to build relationships with the kids out there after two days of being together.

A very cool thing happened in Phokeng today. Manna from heaven.

Across the street from Martha's home is the stadium that will be hosting some games for the world cup in 2010. Right now they are having the confederate cup there which is a huge international soccer tournament. The caterers there had a lot of left over food and didn't know what to do with it, so they decided to drive around the community and ask people where they should take it.


They happened to run into someone who knew Martha, and they told them to bring it to Martha's house. They drove up with a truck load of bread. We unloaded the bread and they said, "We'll be right back with another load." They returned half an hour later with another truck of bread, and one truck filled with potatoes. It was amazing. There was so much that Martha couldn't keep it all in her house. Good thing we just finished putting doors and locks on her new kitchen. We brought 3 trash bags full of bread back to the shelter as well. It was really cool for the children to have a gift like that come out of nowhere.