Lots of Girls!

It's either the bane of my existence or the greatest blessing of my life.  I'm leaning toward the former.  But God keeps bringing us more girls.

From Left:  Modiehi, Motshidisi, Dieketseng, Ntswaki, Christina, Paulina, Lerato, Monica

On a separate and unrelated note, 3 of those girls are teenagers.

The other day I had all the children in my house helping me sweep up some of the construction mess.  One of the kids asked me if our family was going to move into that house when it is finished.  Jokingly, I said "No, Motshidisi and Dieketseng will live here after they are done with school."  Then I asked Motshidisi and Dieketseng if they would like that.  After some thought Motshidisi responded "Then where would you live?"

"We would live in town" I said.

Showing a surprisingly uncharacteristic burst of self-awareness, Motshidisi countered with the following "If you didn't live here who would we complain to?"

And that's the reason nobody likes teenagers:-)

Fun At The Village

Kamohelo enjoying one of the bikes given by Hope Community Church in New Jersey

Lerato also enjoying a bike while Monica waits her turn

A John Deere is always good for a ride

Dieketseng spent about an hour giving the kids rides around the property

Brian bought this bike before Liam can walk.  Now that he's three its time for him to start preparing for The X Games.  Brian outfitted the bike with training wheels and rigged up a governor for the throttle.  Liam is giving a ride to Drake here.

Two of the bikes came with pegs.  That means the O'Tool kids can bum a ride.  See what I've taught them?

Siya was pretty excited about his bike.  Even when he wasn't riding it he was dragging it behind him.

A GREAT DAY!

Our Tuesday night Bible study with the children is moving right along.  We started with Creation in Genesis and we've made it all the way to Abraham.  In fact, we spent the last two weeks learning about Abram and Sarai.

Our memory verse is Genesis 15:6 "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness."

We learned that verse two weeks ago and this past Tuesday night we spent some time discussing what it means.  Primarily, we discussed the issue of sin, the penalty for sin, and the fact that God can take away that sin and give us Jesus' righteousness if we believe like Abraham believed.

The next day, Kamohelo and Monica came to me with some good news.  But instead of me telling you what that news is, I'll let you see for yourself.

Monica - Age 8

Kamohelo - Age 7

From The Niehoff Blog...

Lois Niehoff posted the following story on their blog.  You can find their blog HERE.  I thought it would be fitting to repost, since this is a situation that deeply affects us all.  Lois is the one who does almost all the work with local social workers, and as such is often placed in very frustrating situations.  How she continues to exhibit the special patience God grants her I'll never know.  See below:

Reality

We really enjoy being missionaries in South Africa and truly love our job but somedays we do ask ourselves ‘WHY’. Our job description covers a vast variety of duties and that includes working closely with each child’s social worker.

I understand that being a social work isn’t easy-they have a lot of cases to manage, their job is difficult and not fun because they are always seeing devastation and it must get depressing at times. But yesterday was just about all we could handle.

Since August we’ve been caring for a 2 year old boy because his father was in jail for rape and his mother had died. His father is now out of jail on bail. Yesterday his father came to The Village demanding to have his child back and was very forceful. Brian could not control his father and we ended up pushing our panic emergency button for the security system we have at the property. Our loud siren went off and that was enough to scare him. He quickly put his child down and walked away. I notified his social worker that his father came here demanding his child and saying he had a letter stating he could have him back but the father said “he forgot to bring the letter”. The social worker said the father doesn’t listen to her and he is very hostile. We were told to go to court and get a restraining order against this father.

Not even 3 hours after that I received a call from the same social saying the father could have the child back. This is the same person who told me to get a restraining order against this father and even described him as very hostile. Obviously I didn’t understand and questioned her decision skeptically. She explained that the father did bring her a letter showing that the rape charge against him had been dropped so she decided he could have his child back. I said, so just because the charges are dropped that makes him a fit father? The social worker went onto say lets look at it this way, when his father was arrested he took his son to jail with him so he wouldn’t be left alone at home. So I guess that makes him a fit father.

I brought up a few other questionable things to her and she finally said. I am not going to ask the father, I don’t want to know what he does and I just want to close the case. Bottom line, she just wanted to get rid of a case and didn’t really care what was best for the boy. Thirty minutes later we had to let the father have him back. The child left crying and our hearts were breaking.

We thank God for the time we had to show this little guy love and we pray for his future. Only time will tell but maybe he will back. Until then we pray for his safety and salvation of his father.

Please know we have a lot of great, fantastic days here but somedays end up being rather rough.

____________________________________________________

Here is something Lois didn't mention.  After we had Siya for a couple months his grandmother passed away.  The father was allowed by the social worker to take Siya for the funeral and returned him a few days later.  When Siya came back he had several bruises on his face.  When questioned about it the father gave several different and conflicting stories about how it happened.  Based on his other erratic behavior we have strong reason to believe otherwise.  Brian and Lois tried to file a report and spent almost a whole day doing so.  Unfortunately they were given the classic run-around, with each department pushing them to someone else.  After visits to the social workers, the police, and wherever else they were sent it was finally determined by someone that we couldn't file any report at all.  So the whole thing had to be dropped.  When Lois mentioned this incident of likely abuse to the social worker she responded that 'you never filed a report so...'


As of now, there is nothing we can do except pray that God will care for this precious little guy.  Hopefully we're wrong and the father will turn out to be wonderfully caring and nurturing.  We have experienced similar situations in the past with the children often returning after a brief time and a bit worse for wear.  Please lift little Siya up before our Lord.

The Life & Times - The Village Garden

Brian started the garden a few months back, as our resident green thumb.  We tried to add our own little section, somewhat unsuccessfully thanks to a few key squirts of herbicide.  The last two months Bob Niehoff, Brian's dad, has taken over the garden and really whipped it into shape.  And he's been whipping The Village children into shape too, teaching them how to plant, cultivate, thin, replant, weed, water, fertilize and now finally harvest.  The Village children have become adept at identifying which are good plants and which are weeds.

Let's see how many plants your children can identify from the photos below:

The Life & Times - Sunday Dinner

The Life and Times - Church Update

One year ago this month we held our first church meetings in Thabong.  As with any ministry we've been involved with we try to make it a point to evaluate from time to time to ensure we're effectively using the resources God has given us.  As our first year drew to a close we sat down to review all we have learned.

And we have leaned a lot of things!

Our choices were reduced to three options:
1.  Continue as we had for the past year.
2.  Make some changes.
3.  Quit altogether.

For those not familiar with the status of our church meetings, here's a brief update.  Within our first month of meeting we were averaging about 30-35 in attendance.  About 20 of those came with us from The Village, the rest were from Thabong.  Each week we usually had 1 or 2 adults, but rarely the same ones consecutively.  Sometimes we would have up to 5-6 adults besides ourselves, with the remaining number being children from the local neighborhood.  For about 6 months a man named Zachariah had attended faithfully, but due to some family circumstances we encouraged him to move to a town about 6 hours away.

After independently chewing things over for awhile, discussing things with the Niehoffs, and praying about things we came to the following conclusions.  I'll give you a window into our thought process (scary, I know).

1.  Continue as we had for the past year:  We didn't feel we could just maintain the status quo.  Twelve months had yielded one faithful attendee...whom we had just counseled to leave!  We were afraid the children from The Village were learning by example that church is for children and adults don't go.

3.  Quit altogether:  Obviously quitting church isn't an option, because it is the body of Christ and the means God has chosen to work during this specific time in history.  Our ministry at The Village would be largely ineffective and shortsighted if we were not discipling these children to become vital parts of their own local church.  The Village is, in effect, a church plant.  It is just that this culture is so debased and depraved that we feel we must reach the children as young as possible.

2.  Make some changes:  This became the logical answer.  We identified that the two main changes absolutely necessary are Location and Leadership.  Our location at a local high school is significantly less than ideal.  The best room is realistically big enough for about 50 people, not even considering the other logistical difficulties of security access, electricity, seating, cleanliness, etc...

"Church" in this culture is often treated as a club, and although that isn't the correct mindset it is still reality.  This mindset is emphasized by the fact that most churches have their own uniform, flags, colors, regional conventions, badges, etc...  Almost exclusively people would not attend a church set up like us because of the lack of perceived prestige.  Again, right or wrong, this is the reality.

Our second change - Leadership - became evident on many fronts.  I say the following carefully and ask for understanding.  We have learned in our time here that Race is a significant issue.  Not only are we whites attempting to minister within a black community, but we are white Americans.  This means that we are "rich".  There is a common idiom in Sesotho that translates "Where there are white people there are jobs."  Interpreted into real life, this means that people came for what they perceived we could offer them.  We have been involved in ministry long enough to understand that this tendency crosses all cultural, racial, and economic divisions.  But we found it especially prominent in the 12 months of church ministry - we didn't have one adult attend for any length of time without asking for either a job or money.  Typically when it wasn't forthcoming they quit attending.

There are also certain cultural barriers that, while not insurmountable, would be vastly improved by partnering with a Sesotho or Xhosa man as the leader of the church.  Issues like music style, first-language communication, visitation and counseling, and an array of other minor but important matters could be relieved by a man native to the culture and background we are trying to reach.

Now, how to proceed?  Location could be solved by saving, fundraising, and work.  Leadership could only be solved by the call of God on the life of an individual equipped to fit the bill.

It was during this process of evaluation that both the Niehoffs, Amber and I felt led to re-check another church here in town.  Welkom Baptist Church has been in town for several decades but like many churches, businesses, and organizations its arc of existence has mirrored the prosperity of the mines.  Last year as we began our meetings this church was in a state of flux.  It had been without a pastor for some time, had began pursuing a man from another country, but due to VISA issues that family was unable to come.  This left the church as a body in an uncertain position with the potential of other issues rearing up in the meantime.

Since we began our church meetings in Thabong those VISA issues cleared up and Joshua Bolaji came to serve as pastor of the church.  Originally from Nigeria, Joshua was raised in London.  This makes for quite a unique accent!  We visited the church a couple times, met with Joshua, and as a team discussed partnership with WBC.  Joshua's preaching has been rock solid and it is nice to be able to take The Village children and mothers to a church where they have the ability to fellowship.  We also appreciate the fellowship more than ever, having gone 12 months without attending a service where we weren't responsible for every aspect of it.

In addition, we have met a man at Welkom Baptist Church named Vincent.  Vincent attended a good seminary here in South Africa and has as his goal to one day plant a Sotho-speaking in Thabong.  So we'll see what God has for our future.  In the meantime, we are excited about the possibilities of partnering with WBC and seeing all our children at The Village plugged into a church where they can be fed and led.

If you've reached the end of this post then you must be a committed supporter of this ministry.  We ask that you continue to pray for us as we all work to spread the good news of God's love in this community.

The Christmas Program (Drake is the purple shepherd in the front row, Meredith the angel right behind him)

Three Shepherds, hopefully one day 3 wise men.

The Life and Times - Christmas At The Village

Christmas Eve Day kicked off our celebration of Christ's birth at The Village.  During the afternoon we gathered everyone together for a reading and discussion of the Christmas story.  We talked about God's demonstration of love in sending His Son as the gift of eternal life.  All the presents piled up from the children's sponsors made a great object lesson. Of course, some of the kids were pretty anxious to see what was in all those pretty boxes!

Our family spent Christmas Eve with Paddy and Lisa Winson, some good friends of ours here in town.  We played a rousing game of Chocolate Scrabble, in which Paddy continually introduced new rules to her advantage.  We even experienced a new Christmas Tradition - Christmas Crackers.




















Sunday started with a bit of a difficult situation regarding a crew of people who had invited themselves over for the afternoon festivities, but we were able to get that straightened out.  Church was a tremendous blessing, as we were able to attend services at Welkom Baptist Church (more on that later).  Then we headed to The Village for an afternoon with the children and several dozen visitors.

We had a great time and it was definitely a unique celebration.  For many of the children at Restoring Hope Village this was their first time to celebrate a real CHRISTMAS, and their first time to receive presents from someone who truly cares.  For the Americans, the 90 degree heat left us dreaming of a white Christmas.

A special thanks to all the family and friends who made a special effort to make Christmas a wonderful day both for us and for the children at Restoring Hope.  We appreciate all your thoughts and prayers.

The Life and Times - Bible Study

Each Tuesday we have Bible study with the children at The Village.  Here are a couple clips:

The Life and Times - Congratulations Niehoffs!

Charlie Levi Niehoff joined The Village family almost two weeks ago (we waited to post it here so no one important would see it on our site before theirs:-).  He is a healthy, happy little boy.  And as you can see in this photo, there are a few other family members that are happy as well.  Big congratulations to Brian and Lois!  And we're all thankful to have Brian's parents, Bob and Susan here to help.