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Prayer Update April 2008

Dear Friends

We hope that you had a very happy Easter and that you got to hear more about the real reason for Easter than fluffy bunnies and chocolate! Easter is very much swallowed up here by school and public holidays and isn't taken too seriously. We are in the middle of the school holidays and have just enjoyed our very first South African camping experience with another family from church. This was great fun and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and basked in the last of the Western Cape summer sun.

It was also lovely to receive visitors from one of our supporting churches last week. We took them in to Chris Nissen and we all enjoyed getting to know each other a bit and showing what we are involved with. We find this so helpful as now they will go back home with a far better idea and will be able to enthuse the church. So, if you are coming our way on holiday.... please let us know.

As I said above, we are in the middle of school holidays, so it is always quite a pressure for us as a family. Paula has to virtually stop working in CNP, but obviously life and the ministry goes on, so it can be a bit frustrating for her not to be there! It is good though, particularly for the home based care team, to function without her and show just how very capable they are! We have been so thrilled with the team recently. As a result of their sheer persistence and love of the patients we are now about to see a miracle - our very first person in CNP to go on anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS. This has been a very long road involving sitting in the clinic with 100's of others every Monday for 4 weeks for over 8 hours at a time and going through all the red tape and counselling sessions involved. We are so excited though about the result and we know that this is only because of the power of prayer and the fact that the patient concerned has a 'treatment buddy' in one of our carers who is totally committed to helping her stick to the huge drug regime that will now become her life. 

Paula showed a homemade DVD about the work of HOPE home based care to our church recently and it has certainly served to open people's eyes and to move them to offer various means of help. We are now receiving apples every month fresh from a local farm, for example. We are still praying for finance to be able to bless the ladies every month. We would love them to receive a small monetary gift each month to say thanks for what they do.

Dean is soldiering on with all that he does. He is enjoying building relationships with the men in his Bible study this year in particular. These are the men that he can start to build with and he is excited about this. He is also fleshing out the bones of our job expansion with our manager at church and we are excited about this too. However, in order for this to really happen we do need people with more time and ability to come and get involved with us, so do pray for this. 

Joel and Eli are doing very well. We now call Eli, 'Eli Parrot', because his speech is simply amazing. He speaks in huge, flowery sentences and copies everything he hears - he really makes us laugh. He is also very much a 2 year old though and is enjoying pushing the boundaries and testing his mum, dad and brother to the limit. Sometimes this is very wearing and we long for play group to start again!!! Joel had a great 1st term at school. We could see real progress in his work portfolio at school and he is really enjoying picking out letters from books and road signs etc. He can't wait to be able to read. As well as his regular occupational therapy session, we have concentrated on helping him more ourselves this term by buying a 10 ft trampoline, which he adores and starting swimming lessons. He was very reticent at first but since he has discovered goggles, will now do anything the teacher asks - great!

So, we are looking at another extremely busy month and would value your prayers that we manage to keep up with the pace. Paula and her team are attending some HIV training in Cape Town for 4 days at the end of the month. This will be first class but does present a real child care challenge for us. This is always a big problem for people in our position. We are also very aware that our mission education trip to UK is coming up very quickly. We are looking forward to seeing many of you between 12 June and 30 July.

Thank you for your partnership, we value this so much

With love

Paula, Dean, Joel and Eli

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