Birthdays and More Birthdays

We don't just celebrate our birthdays but we celebrate everyones birthday at The Village and we have fun doing it. Once a month we have a birthday celebration to celebrate those that had a birthday that month. We have found that individual parties for each child is a bit overwhelming and have decided that one celebration a month with cake, candy, popcorn, games and gifts is the best for everyone. We try to make it a special day where we all gather together to sing to each child and/or adult and have an organized game time included. When a child is new to The Village this will often be their very first time to celebrate their birthday and we try to make it special.

We want each child to feel loved, secure and special within our big family and we also want them to come to understand that they are special in God's family. Our most important responsibility at The Village is sharing God's love with each child and that includes teaching and showing them what it means to be part of a family. We aren't their biological family but we pray that they will come to know that we will always be here for them as their Heavenly Father is always here for them.

In June we celebrated Allison's 21st birthday. Allison is a very dear friend who has become part of our family. She has spent her last 5 summers with us and pours out her life to each child. She has become part of everyones family when she is with us at The Village. We are excited to see where the Lord leads her in the future and as she finishes her last year in college.

Ma Paddy, a dear lady who has become part of our family and blesses us with her talents and love. Paddy spends much of her time with us, the O'Tool family and the kids at The Village. Paddy always has sweets in her pocket for Liam and Lindie. She graciously gives of her time and resources by teaching our oldest girls how to make jewelry. We celebrated her birthday by surprising her with a cake on the 4th of July. (Her birthday is the 5th)

In August we were blessed to celebrate a very special birthday-Pops turned 76 years old. Pops and Nana are so very precious to our family and especially our children. Pops and Nana are our South African grandparents and they pour every ounce of love and energy they have into them. They give of their time by babysitting when I need to grocery shop, run errands, when we have teams or if I just need to get out. Our kids love being with them-actually they prefer them over us.

It is the people like Ma Paddy, Pop and Nana, and other local friends that help us carry-on our daily tasks and makes it feel like we belong in Welkom. In that last few years, we have really felt the love and connection of those around us locally that have given us the extra encouragement to keep going when the times get tough. God has given us these special friendships and it is so important and needed. We love you and Thank You. 

We also celebrated three special girls in August. Paulina, Lerato and Modiehi all had birthdays and they were celebrated in barbie fashion. We had a team from New Jersey with us to help us with the party and Mallory and Lauire planned the games. This was Modiehi's first time to have her birthday celebrated and to receive gifts. It was heart warming to see her face and to feel her appreciation. 

Mal and Laurie planned a little pin the tail on the donkey, musical chairs and an egg toss game.

As you can see, we have a lot of fun amongst our daily tasks in keeping everything organized at The Village. 

A barbie birthday cake for

Paulina, Lerato and Modiehi

Modiehi, Lerato and Paulina unwrapping their presents

Paulina and her new dress

Modiehi and her present

Papa Revival playing Pin the tail on the donkey

Kids Bible Club & More

I have so many wonderful things to share that I'm not sure where to start. I will begin with our last group that here. We had a group from Powell Ohio and a couple from Point of Grace Church during the first two weeks in July. They had a full two weeks of ministry related outreaches and kept busy with these outreaches in the Welkom community.

They helped with outreaches and canvasing around our church, Welkom Baptist Church, and also in the OD township area for Pastor Vincent. Spent time visit children in the hospital and trying to help brighten each child's day with a little gift, hugs and smiles. They also spent time with the children here at The Village doing crafts, playing games, singing and enjoyed a traditional African meal in their homes. The team also helped with projects around The Village in painting and getting our sign up on the playground. During the teams last week here they hosted a Kids Bible Club at our Church and did an excellent job!

We held the Kids Bible Club for 3 days with our last day having over 90 kids in attendance. Allison, one of our summer volunteers, took on the role of Ranger Alli and did a super job of getting the kids excited about learning about Jesus and singing everyday.

Painting the O'Tools House

playground sign 

Game Time

Kids Bible Club at Welkom Baptist Church

Ranger Alli with a few helpers for song time

Games and Craft time

Thanks Jim, Kim, Holli, Zach, Clara, Mick and Lori 

for joining with us in the ministry here at Restoring Hope Village. 

Tumelo

Early in February, while Hope Community Church team was here, we visited the Hospice Daycare again. The ladies from the team brought with them some great crafts to do with the kids. As usual we also played games with balloons, sang lots of songs and shared a Bible story.

(craft time)

(The first day I met Tumelo at Hospice Daycare)

While we were there, the head sister (nurse) talked to me about a little boy named Tumelo. His mother had passed away a while back and he has been living with an uncle since. His uncle is now ill & often in the hospital, has no income & is struggling to care for Tumelo. The sister was asking us to help them get a place for him at Restoring Hope Village. She had already been phoning the social worker & leaving messages but was receiving no response. I told her I would follow-up with the social worker & see what I could do. I could tell from being with Tumelo for just a couple of hours that he was suffering. He looked healthy and his clothes we decent but he had very bad behavioral outbursts. He didn't know how to interact with the other children, when he didn't get his way he would get into a rage & he wanted to be held all the time.

(each child received a beanie baby)

In the mean time for about the next 2 weeks, I also tried to reach the social worker but received no response. After being back to Hospice two more times & hearing from the workers that his uncle was deteriorating quickly, Brian and I decided to find the social worker in person. After a bit of work, we found the social worker and she even admitted she had messages from the worker at Hospice. She said she was going to get to his situation sometime but didn't know when. Brian asked if we could take her in our car to the boy's house but she said no. We then offered to bring the boy and his uncle to her office and she agreed. Our first attempt to fetch the uncle we found him gone and the neighbor said he went to the clinic. We checked back the next week and located him. Brian & our houseparents went to fetch the uncle and Tumelo and took them to the social worker. The entire story is way to cumbersome but it took about 6 hours to get this all accomplished.

In the end, the uncle & another uncle that came on the scene, wanted one more week with Tumelo. The social worker said that would be fine. The following Monday, Brian and I went back to the uncle's house in Thabong & fetched Tumelo.

Tumelo has been living here since April 2nd and is living with Papa Revival & Mama Phelisa with Kamohelo, Tumi, Paulina & Modiehi. Tumelo is adjusting to living here but he needs lots of patients and love from all of us. He has never been expected to obey anyone before so life here is a big adjustment. He is learning to live with a family & to behave like a little 3 year old boy should. This past Saturday night he camped out in our tent with Papa Revival and Kamohelo and he thought that was pretty cool.

(Dieketseng and Tumelo)

He has become good playmates with Liam and Lindie. We are thankful to have Tumelo here and we pray that he will come to understand about God's love at a young age.

(Uncle Brian loves giving rides on the dirt bike)

Hope Community Church

Toward the end of February a wonderful group from Hope Community Church joined us for 2 weeks. We happily welcomed back some friends that came last year and quickly became friends with those we didn't know. The two weeks this group was here was the fastest two weeks filled with lots of hard work but also lots of laughs, good discussions, spiritual refreshment & fun.

The group worked on two main projects with many other little projects wedged in also. Half of the team worked mostly with Louie on constructing our new Guest Cottage. They named themselves 'Team Block' because they moved & lifted around 900 cement blocks each weighing 32 pounds. They built the exterior walls of the cottage with the cement blocks in about 5 days. Libby and Rachel did an awesome job keeping up with Louie and Josh.

They also managed to get the roof trusses fabricated and put into place, the roof on and the ceiling completed.

While Team Block was busy building the Cottage, the rest of the team worked on constructing the beginning towers of our future playground with Brian. We have a small shortage of cement blocks right now so the towers couldn't be completed but they got as far as they could go. Brian's ideal dream for this playground is for it to resemble something of a castle. When its completed it will have 4 towers that are connected by various forms of bridges & tunnels. Two of the towers are going to be 3 levels high and the other two just 2 levels high. As you can see, Brian has put great thought into this playground. Unfortunately, right now it is just a couple of towers, but someday it will be awesome, we hope.

I also need to add that Sue stayed extra busy painting just about anything she could get her paintbrush onto. She painted our front gate that was starting to get rusty. But she spent most of her time starting and completing the detail work on the O'Tools house. She painted trim, baseboard, interior doors & anything else to make it look great.

Along with the work they also had fun with the kids but that will be for another post.

Tom and Todd

Tom and Todd recently spent 2 weeks with us at The Village. This was Tom's fifth trip to help us and this time his brother Todd also came along. Tom and Todd were great fun to have around and also very helpful. They helped Brian construct an electric fence for the entire perimeter of the property. They also helped with other projects around The Village.

The kids loved hanging out with them in the afternoons. There last night here they spoiled everyone with pizza and steak for supper.

Thanks guys, we can't wait until you come again...hopefully soon!

{This is the electric fence they constructed. Its a bit difficult to get a good picture of the fence and the picture doesn't give all the long days of hard work justice}