Together We Can

 

In 2019 my world felt like it was crumbling.  The obedience to a call we had strongly felt as a family to care for the orphan with our home and at that time we felt like we had the support, community and promises of people to help.  We could not believe how things had fallen into place just two short years before that, with Kin’s promise to build us a home.  We believed at the time we had the backing of our church family and I had a job.

2019 presented a very different picture!

We were loosing our home, our kids were unable to go to the beloved school of our choice at the time and it was just a hard time of adjusting to a new church that we new from the moment we had started going there was a temporary place, but not sure why we had that conviction.  Our biological children had taken a hard knock from losing their church family, where we had gone for 16 years and their school community.

At the start of 2020 I felt like God was close, but I knew he knew that I was broken and struggling to understand why what had seemed so right two years earlier now was in shambles, and we were left with what felt like facing the future alone.

When Covid hit and Lulu prayed the prayer that God would give our family food to feed the hungry and MercyAIDS had all the paper work and tax exemption and constitution to raise the money it seemed right to respond. 

With in a week our lives changed dramatically and by April of 2020 we were fully involved with a major food operation that we never even imagined before.  I kept being reminded of how alone I felt and that our team was small, but soon we had support people coming onto to our team to help us manage the influx of money and resources for the hungry. It was miraculous!

By Easter 2020 with a desperate heart to have God in the centre of it all and the huge pressure we were feeling at the time, I remember asking myself when last I felt really happy at church and at peace with God and man.  My mind went back to Easter in St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Benoni.  I met Jesus over and over again at Easter time as a child.

I looked online for a Tenebrae Service and found PVC.  I watched the PVC services through Easter and continued.  Covid pressure got even more when we were accused of all sorts of things by fellow people working in Fisantekraal.  To say it affected me would be putting it mildly.  I got a life coach, after our member care person at Globe Mission advised me to get support. I started chatting through the mess, as my own pastor at the time had set me aside taking the word of the accusers to be true. 

It felt like the misery of 2019 was continuing into 2020. 

I pressed into God like never before and tried to keep myself on what it was He had called us to, but the doubt and the self-accusation was growing and I was breaking.

By June 2020 we were fighting to not crumble into believing we had perhaps made a mistake.  When one day a beautiful lady I had never met before came to our front door with 10 food parcels and a protea for me.  She simply said the words.  “God Sees!” 

This day was a turning point!

I decided to get up on the inside and push through the doubt and the self-accusation.  I was going to ignore the critics and keep my mission about feeding the hungry with a hope in future sovereignty over the lack of food.

It was not long after this that I started meeting with Francois Hugo and we started working together to reach the hungry with resources from PVC.  I was blown away by the heart of the church and the value of the marginalised.  The project grew and PVC got more involved with more parcels.

Francois Hugo introduced me to Francois Lawrence and the beautiful thing about these relationships in the beginning was that both men seemed to be so much more interested in our family, our journey and our hearts for adoption and foster care. 

Their value of relationship and their kindness and listening helped me move into a safer place.  It was Francois Hugo who helped me move from PVC online to PVC in the building in May 2021. 

I have been blown away by how aligned our hearts are with the mission of PVC and the Renew trust.  The way things have fallen into place and the beauty of it all, has given me a whole new level of trust.

This morning in church, the songs we sang, and the reality that we are at the last steps of getting a facility in Fisantekraal and the reality of the incredible care and support the trust gives, I felt I wanted to write the story again.  The story of a God who sees and cares not only for the orphans heart but for all of our hearts.  To hear Candice, preach this morning with such conviction and clarity of something I try to live out, I knew that we are meant to be. 

I am excited about the Fisantekraal Hub (more about this coming soon) and all we will achieve there together for the beautiful future of Fisantekraal.

I am so grateful for our supporters and the trust and especially to Francois Hugo for hearing God the way he did and that he allowed God to use him to bring my orphan heart home.

We still have a lot of challenges on the home front, and we still look to the future needing miracles to fill the gaps, but the ministry side of things are in such a beautiful place although it is hard work and challenging it is lovely to know we have a church and a trust praying for us, supporting us and facing the future with us.