Quotes That Inspire

 Source: moonjazz
 
Give someone a fish and you feed them temporarily.  Give them NO fish while you try to teach them to fish and they'll die before they learn.

~Neil Christopher

Twitter

So, I'm a little behind on the times, but I've finally joined this century and set up a twitter account.  I'm still trying to figure out how to use it and what I want to tweet that's interesting, but if you'd like to follow me, here is a link.

For those of you on twitter, what kinds of tweets do you like reading?

~Jenny

Wordless Wednesday

School Supplies for Phokeng Kids

In the town of Phokeng, South Africa, there is a lady named Agnes who looks after over 80 orphaned and vulnerable children in her community.

In South Africa, the school year starts in January, and Agnes’ kids need school supplies.  Most of these children have never had any of the necessary school supplies.  Education is one of the major keys to long term change in South Africa, and we want to be a part of making that change happen.  We would like to partner with Agnes to buy school supplies for all of the school age children and we need your help.

If you would like to sponsor a child, $30 will buy new school supplies for one child for the year.  We would greatly appreciate any help, large or small, that you can give. 

There are 2 ways you can donate:

By Check:

Send your check to:

WorldHope.us

4380 S. Monaco St. #2092
Denver, CO 80237

Please write "South Africa School Supplies" in the memo section.

By Credit Card:

Go to worldhope.us  Select "One-time donation" then "South Africa" then "General fund" and enter the amount you would like to give.

When you make a donation, please send an email to JennyLincoln@hotmail.com to let us know that the donation is for the school supplies, and the amount so that we know how close we are to our goal.

All donations are tax deductible.

Thank You!!

South Africa Statistic

According to the General Household Survey of 2005 there were approximately 118,500 orphans living in a total of 66,500 child-headed households across South Africa at the time of the survey. 

Source : Children Count

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Source: Sarah Parrott

We pray you have a Blessed Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!

MK Christmas Party

Our friend and fellow missionary, Amy, organized an amazing Christmas party for the missionary kids in our area.  All of our kids had helped at the Phokeng Christmas party the previous Saturday and this was their reward for a job well done.

Amy planned many activities and fun things to do.

Grayce and Kyler making snowmen ornaments.

Nehemiah, Kendi, Madison and Matthew making felt Christmas trees.

 Madison and Micah

Amy and Kendi making Christmas candy.

 Kyler making a box in which to put his homemade candy.

 Madison helping Kendi frost sugar cookies.

 Malachi, Ian, Kyler and Matthew making Christmas candy.

Yummy Christmas candy.

 Thanks for a great day Amy!!  We had a blast!

~Jenny

Wordless Wednesday

Mystery Picture

A lot of you guessed the mystery picture correctly!  We'll have to try harder next time.

It was a close up of an elephant's ear:

Here is the original picture:

Eye Doctor

Last week we were able to take a small group of  Phokeng orphans to see an eye doctor. Lynette, one of the YWAM team members that we work with, arranged for her eye doctor to do vision exams for the orphaned kids we work with.

I’m sure that none of these kids have ever had their vision tested.  We are finding out that many of their eyes have not developed properly.  Their eyes aren’t following moving objects properly and we need to help them exercise their eyes.  Several of the kids will need glasses, which will be about $100 per child.

We found that one of the kids has catastrophic damage to his left eye because of a thorn that he got in his eye a few years ago.  The doctor said that he is essentially blind in his left eye.  No one has ever know, this little boy has just been functioning through life.  The eye doctor referred us to a local surgeon that might possibly do the surgery for free, hopefully they’ll be able help restore the sight in his left eye.

 Sarah, from YWAM, helped with some of the vision testing.

Many of us take our vision for granted.  Usually it’s as simple as going to the eye doctor and paying for glasses.   These kids have never even had the option of going to the eye doctor.  They’ve just adapted to their poor vision.  Many of them have struggled in school because they can’t see the chalkboard or their eyes can’t focus on what’s happening.  We know that correcting their vision will be life changing for these kids.

Pilanesberg

 This week we went to Pilanesberg game reserve for a safari day with the kids.  It was an amazing day, probably one of the best safaris that we’ve ever had.

We got to see a lion chasing a herd of wildebeests.

When it didn’t get its kill, we followed it as it walked over to two other lions that were eating a baby wildebeest that they had just killed.  (We didn’t get to see them hunting and killing this, it had happened just before we arrived.)

When the third lion arrived, the three of them fought over their meal, playing tug of war with it, each one trying to get the largest piece.  They were probably about 30 feet away from us and we watched them as they struggled back and forth, growling at one another.

Finally, each one tore off its own piece of meat and they went to their own area to eat their lunch.

During the whole process, an adult wildebeest stood about 100 yards away watching.  We assume that this was the parent of the baby that had been killed, but we have no way of knowing for sure.

Several black backed jackals also stood by watching, waiting to get their piece of the left over meat.

It was the most amazing, rare experience.  We’ve been on countless safaris and have never seen lions in the wild this close, much less seen them fighting over a kill.

We also saw giraffes, rhinos, hippos, zebras, kudu, impala, monkeys and ostriches. But those are much more common to see at Pilanesberg.

And we had a few wild animals of our own in the car with us.

~ Lincoln

Wordless Wednesday

Phokeng Christmas Party

Saturday we helped put on a Christmas party for some of the orphaned and vulnerable children that we work with.  A missionary friend of ours, Amy Stubbs, did an amazing job organizing the party for Agnes’ kids.  Agnes is a lady in the town of Phokeng who looks after nearly 80 orphaned and vulnerable children in her neighborhood.

Over 100 kids from the neighborhood showed up for the party.  The kids first had some time to color nativity scene coloring sheets.

All of the missionary kids put on a Christmas play, with Chris Stubbs being the narrating and Agnes' daughter in law translating.  Kendi was a sheep, which is good, because that’s what she wants to be when she grows up.

Agnes and her sister stayed up all night Friday night preparing  an amazing meal of chicken, fried potatoes, coleslaw, sweet potatoes, rice, beets, carrots and green beans with decorated sugar cookies for dessert. Fruit N Veg, a local vegetable market, donated all the vegetables.  Agnes works so hard for these kids, and puts so much love into what she does for them.

After the meal, they watched a Christmas Veggie Tales movie on a projector on Agnes’ porch.  They loved it.  It is so much fun watching over 100 hurting children laughing together.  I’m not sure that they could understand much of what was being said, but apparently Veggie Tales are funny to just watch.

The day before the party Lincoln drove 6 hours to another province to pick up some soccer balls donated by OneHope, a mission’s organization that is very active in South Africa.  These are to be Christmas presents for the kids.  Agnes didn’t want to give them out to the kids during the party because then she would have to give one to every kid in the neighborhood, and there were only enough for the orphaned kids that she looks after.

It was an incredible day for these kids, and we were so fortunate to be able to be a part of it.