Half-way

Hello again,

This has been a most interesting week. On Monday 50 people from Grace Church, a local church, and a group of people from Canada came to the farm to help. They moved rocks, since the landscape is covered in rocks and mixed concrete for the floor of the cottage. They only stayed until 12:30 but the amount of work they did would have taken us a month to do. The last thing the group did was to place a cross on the top of hill overlooking Killarney Valley.

On Tuesday, Andrew Wartnaby and Ben traveled about an hour up the North coast to fetch a huge donation of food for Thembisa. A food distributor donated over one and a half metric tons of soup mix and corn meal, enough to feed an enormous amount of grannies. The Pajero, the equivalent of a Mitsubishi Montero, was literally filled to the roof with soup mix, and so was the trailer that we towed. The donation was definitely an awesome gift, but unfortunately we literally crushed Andrew’s left index finger in the trailer hitch. (Not Andrew Fletcher) Later that night, the family circled up and prayed for Andrew’s injury. We were sure that it was broken, but the next day the finger was found in much better condition! Praise God!

We finally got started on the roof on Wednesday but it is not exactly level so we have added a luxurious rooftop swimming pool. We only have to add one more roof sheet and make the roof level in order to be finished with the cottage.

Thursday and Friday we finished the stone wall in the front yard. We don’t mean to sound proud but we must say it rivals the Great Wall of China.

Cheers!
Andrew and Ben

P.S. We are having trouble dealing with the fact that we are so removed from American Sports. All we’ve heard is that Tiger won the U.S. open with a busted knee, but we are very grateful that our tar heel trio will be returning to us next year.

Prayer Requests:
1. Continued prayers for Andrew and Rae. That they will follow God’s will for the Farm and Thembisa and that God provides them with regular financial support.
2. The area where we are building the cottage is called Legacy of Love and Andrew and Rae hope to have four more structures built for other grannies, volunteers like us and for Pastors to take a Sabbatical. The soon to be village is called Legacy of Love because Andrew and Rae have had people love them throughout their lives and they would like to continue that legacy of love to those who come to Hope Farm.
3. Josh. He is a 15 year old boy who was staying here on the farm. From what we know, Josh came from a very broken home which ultimately threw him out on the streets. Andrew and Rae heard about his past and offered him a place to stay and to provide for his education while he stayed with them. Unfortunately he had been causing problems since he came here and became much worse the past couple of weeks. He told Andrew and Rae that he was uncomfortable staying here and would like to leave. Against all of our efforts to convince him to stay because he had no where to go he still wanted to leave. Because his family would not take him back Andrew and Rae had to take him to the welfare office which didn’t want to take him either. We are unsure where he is now, either a Children’s Home, on the streets again or at A Place of Safety (which in reality it is not because it houses teenage criminals). We hope that he is safe and that God’s hope and love have reached him while staying here.