Two Successful Teams for the Year and New Developments at Our Mountain View Farm

Beth and I are down to our final week in South Africa for this season. We always stay so busy that it makes the time go by so fast. We successfully hosted two short-term mission teams along with a few individual guests. Our first team was with Fr. Ray McHenry. It was his 9th year in a row leading a team from his church. This year, we were able to bless him by building a new church dedicated in his honor. This project was so successful that now we’re planning to construct a new church building for Pastor Johanney’s church that has outgrown the school hall they meet in.  

The other team was a small group, led by a volunteer from Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, focusing on Celebrate Recovery. They had several training sessions for our South Africa volunteers. They were blessed with an overnight retreat at our Mountain View Farm. They also helped plan a large concert event at the sports field in May for the 300 youth that attend our CR meetings in Mokopane. I’m excited that the team also helped trained four individuals and a Pastor from Lesotho how to start their own Celebrate Recovery program. We’ve had a feeding hub in Lesotho for just over a year and while doing a site visit in January we learned they are struggling with serious teen drug and alcohol abuse issues. Our Celebrate Recovery program for teens in Mokopone is likely the largest one in the world and has a 3-year track record of helping nearly 300 youth deal with their hurts, habits, and hang ups. It’s exciting to see this great program expand into a new country. 

In March, Beth and I moved into a beautiful new home on the Legend Golf and Safari Estate. This is located 10 miles West of our Shikwaru Campus so we’re still close by. This move is part of our succession plan to elevate Dustin and Alex into a more leadership role with the ministry in South Africa. They plan to remodel and move into our old home at Shikwaru. The golf courses at Legends went bankrupt just before COVID but now there are some new investors working to open both golf courses, including the world-famous extreme 19th hole on the top of hanglip mountain. If successful, this will make our new home a good investment. Even if it does not turn out to be a good investment it’s a beautiful, peaceful place for Beth and me to live in for the next few years. It is sheer joy to ride our bikes right out our back door and ride for several miles, all with an excellent view of Entabeni Mountain. I also have a beautiful view of the mountain out of my office window. 

I have been pushing hard to expand and improve our Mountain View Farm to make it a center of excellence to train future African farmers and to supplement our large feeding program. This month we will be adding a herd of goats and hopefully soon a small herd of cattle. I am also hoping that we can expand our agronomy operation to help us feed even more children.  

The first few years that we managed this farm we struggled to make it financially productive. We would grow produce and try to sell it in the market. Now, we are focusing on growing food to feed the children in our feeding program. The African feeding hubs pay a small portion of the cost of the food and our American donors supplement that. 

Lastly, I continue to be excited about our egg research project. We just added two additional hen houses at the farm to double our egg production. 

If you did not receive an invite to our annual gala on May 2nd at the Airport Holiday Inn in Des Moines and would like to attend, please email: fitz@blessmaninternational.org or call our Urbandale office 515 343 5920 for more details. 

Prayer request: Please pray that God will continue healing Alex from her recent back surgery and that she will be back working with us fulltime soon.