Lutheran Church of Hope Team

This last week we had 11 people from Hope Church in West Des Moines. Brad Krehlik the mission’s director was the team leader. We worked in the Rustenburg area in the Northwest Province in South Africa. The team had already had several training meetings in Des Moines prior to coming to Africa so they were well bonded to each other and were a joy to work with. We were able to see about 650 children in our eye clinics during the week. This week the national elections were held on Wednesday and all of the schools were closed or we could have seen an additional 200 patients. It was interesting to observe the process of their elections here in South Africa.

The children always tell us many heart wrenching stories of what their lives are like here. One 13 year old girl told us that her mother was at home dying of AIDS and so ill that she was unable to get out of bed. This child was her mother’s sole caretaker. When we ask her if her grandparents were still around to help she told us that they were alive but fearful of visiting her mother. She also told us that her mother was not receiving any treatment for her AIDS. This is particularly sad because ARV medicines are available in South Africa but there are still many people who would benefit from them who are not getting them.

Because of the national elections Wednesday we were unable to work in the schools so we went to visit an orphanage in Rustenburg, The Lighthouse Shelter, where our team enjoyed playing with the infants and toddlers.

It was a joy to see these children as this is a particularly high quality orphanage where the children are very well cared for. Many of the children cried as we left them because they really enjoyed all of the attention that we were giving them. Otherwise they seemed to be quite happy and enjoying a good life in the shelter. This particular shelter has a good reputation at helping many of these children be adopted into high quality Christian families. 

On Wednesday afternoon we visited Pilansberg National Park which is a 100,000 acre game park. We saw many beautiful animals including three of the big five, elephants, rhinos and we even had the rare pleasure of sighting a leopard up in a tree with an impala that it had recently killed. I have been on many game drives over the last 5 years and this was the first time I had seen the leopard in the wild.

Last night we had our own team church service back at our headquarters on Shikwaru Game Lodge. We had this service at the end of another pleasant game drive on top of the mountain right at sunset. Many of the team members shared how the ministry this week has impacted their lives. We seem to have found just the right combination of ministry and tourist attractions with basing our ministry at Shikwaru Game Lodge.

On the last night the team was with us we took them to Entabeni, a five star 50,000 game reserve where we were blessed by seeing many lions, elephants and rhinos quite close to our game viewing vehicle. At one point we even saw a pride of lions trying to attack a baby rhino. Those big horns on the rhinos are pretty intimidating even to a lion and the lions likely had to find an easier target.
Beth and I are preparing to return to the States for 2 months to reconnect with our family and mission supporters. It is difficult to believe that this season has come to an end for us. The time has just flown by; It will be good to visit with many of our supporting churches, friends and of course our family.