February 2019 – Focus on Water and Sanitation
Our year in South Africa is off to a good start. Last year was a bit difficult with Beth falling down our basement stairs and breaking her neck about the same time that I had shoulder replacement surgery. Fortunately, we have both fully recovered. I will be 74 years old in just a few days and view every day as a gift. I have never felt better! I am able to take a nice walk every day and enjoy sharing our lives here with all of our American guests who come to serve with us.
Our first team this year was from Iowa’s largest Catholic Church and Iowa Catholic Radio. They all had a great experience and were a joy to work with. This was their 5th annual trip with us and they have already booked for next January. Six years ago I never imagined that we would be working with the Catholic community, but they have been a big blessing to our ministry and to the children we are serving here in South Africa.
The first two months of this year we are focusing on our water and sanitation projects. With this team we constructed an additional five toilet stalls at St. Bede’s preschool near Polokwane. This brings our total to 85 toilet stalls that we have finished. We currently have funding for an additional 25 that we will complete this year. We believe that all children deserve to have a dignified and safe toilet to use when they are in their preschools and schools.
Our water project is progressing nicely. We have completed 20 wells and have funding for an additional five that we will be constructing over the next couple of months. We are beginning to raise funds to purchase our own drilling rig for $350,000, which will help us to drill even more wells in the coming years.
Our newest intern, Erica Henderson, started working with us in January. She will be with us for a year, focusing on our agricultural programs. She is a recent ISU graduate and spent a couple months with us two years ago helping with our nutritional programs. Our Teach a Child to Fish program is coming together well. We hope to have our first class of students later in February. Our students will be teachers and parents from 10 rural schools who will then teach the students in each of their schools to establish high quality gardens. Our Mountain View Farm is looking wonderful with a large crop of tomatoes nearly ready to harvest. We are busy this month doubling our poultry layer production to about 600 hens. We plan to get around 550 eggs/day to help us feed the children and to sell some of those eggs. Our rainy season is coming late this year and we are struggling with draught conditions, but it has begun to rain at least a little. We are praying for much more. The lake that supplies water to Mokpane, the small city near us, is down to just 25% capacity.
We had some issues with the staff and our board at the Del Cramer Children’s Campus, but we sorted it all out in the first couple weeks that we have been back here. We are looking forward to a good year at our Del Cramer Center and with all of our nutritional programs.