Moletlane Children's Village

Last week we had the incredible privilege of constructing 5 new Abods, or homes, for 16 orphan children. Most of these children are orphans because their parents have died of AIDS. This new orphan village is located in the province of Limpopo, South Africa, just about an hour drive from the city of Mokopane. Architect Doug Sharp from West Des Moines, Iowa designed these Abods. It is his vision that even the poorest people around the world deserve to live in an architect-designed home and community.

The Abods are made of corrugated steel with a strip of fiberglass to bring in natural light. There are lofts in the front and back to give extra sleeping quarters, and they have good solid doors in the front and rear to give added security to the children. For safety and aesthetics, the homes have been constructed in a semi circle. Frieda, our care-giver, will live in the central house with two homes on each side of her for the children. The homes will comfortably sleep 6, but we are starting out by accepting only 4 children per home. We feel that by starting small we have a better chance of doing everything properly and taking good care of the children.

For this project we are partnering with the Apostolic Faith Mission Church of South Africa. Jan Chauke is the pastor of this church and he will supervise Frieda. The whole project is built on property owned by the church. In addition to the five new homes for the children the AFM Church is in the process of building a new brick church building. There is a small concrete building in the back of the property, which was the original church. In this building is a kitchen with stove and refrigerator that Frieda will use to prepare meals for the children. Much of the cooking will be done on open wood fires in this same area. Pastor Jan already had a small garden to help feed the children and this will be significantly enlarged. Right now there is one water tap on the property and this is used to water the garden and as drinking water. I cultured the water and found it to be a clean and safe source of water for our children. We will have a plumber bring a second tap up close to the Abods. Currently the only toilet is outdoors at the corner of the property. This is the same toilet that our team used during our week of construction. The nearest flush toilet available was about one half hour drive into Mokopane. We are currently raising funds from some of the businesses in Mokopane to help us construct a proper bathroom facility near the homes for the children to use. We will also be bringing electricity to each of the homes and will put a ceiling light in each. We will not be putting electrical outlets in the children’s Abods for safety reasons, but Frieda will have one in hers. There will be a tall security light to illuminate the entire area.

Much of the food for these children will come from the U.S. from a partner ministry called Kids Against Hunger. One of our large supporting churches, the Lutheran Church of Hope, has an annual food packaging event where several million meals are packaged to be sent to third world countries to feed starving children. The name of this particular program is Meals from the Heartland. This September will be the second annual food packaging event. Several thousand volunteers gather at Hy-Vee Hall, Iowa’s largest convention center, and package meals for about 9 days. It is one of the larger volunteer feeding programs in the world and has been a great benefit to our ministry in helping feed children here in Southern Africa. We have requested about 900,000 meals from this program for this year. Obviously our 16 children will not need all of these meals but we have several feeding programs throughout Southern Africa.

In this village of Moletlane we hope to also establish a larger feeding program to feed around 200 children. However, our first priority will be to over the next couple of months will get well organized in caring for our first 16 orphans.

Last week I had a good meeting with the tribal chief of the area. He is very excited about us coming to village to help the children. He is writing us up a document to basically give us the keys to the village. He told me that if I would like I could come there and build our own home. I do believe that I will take him up on his generous offer and see if I can get some warehouse space to store some of our Kids Against Hunger food.

In addition to feeding and housing these children we want to be sure that they are well educated and learn good solid Christian values. The children will attend the local public school that is just a short walk from our housing project. In addition to their regular schooling they will all be studying the Bible and the Book of Hope. One Hope is another significant partner of our ministry. They distribute 50 million copies of a comic book sized readers digest version of the Bible for children. We also want to be sure that our children are trained in vocational skills so that when they grow up and leave our Children’s Village they will be prepared to earn a living on their own. We will be teaching them gardening skills, cooking skills, carpentry and painting. In addition I am looking for someone to donate about 10 computers so that we can set up computer learning stations for them.

The next phase for us will be to clone this children’s village in other villages. We may add another 5 homes to each project but right now this is a perfect size to start with.I would like to experiment with different building materials and next week I am going to visit a large game farm that is using a block-making machine that makes Lego type building blocks out of compressed earth. They add about 5% concrete and let them bake in the sun, resulting in an inexpensive durable building block. I am hoping that my friend Doug Sharp will put his creative hat on again and design block homes for our orphan children.

Now that we have our first 5 homes I plan to visit with the Limpopo department of housing and see if I can interest them in connecting with our ministry to build similar housing for the poor people of this province. It cost us about $6,000/home for these first 5 but with mass production I believe that we can cut the cost by 50%. The beauty of this project is that not only do the poor get a new home, but that these new communities are designed for aesthetics and safety. The current typical township homes in the poor communities are basically made of whatever they can find, one home stacked right up against the next one.

A team from Lutheran Church of Hope constructed our first 5 Abods. Prior to the team coming, Pastor Jan from the AFM church got permission from the tribal chief to build these homes and arranged for construction of concrete slabs as a foundation for the homes. We have formed a board of directors to help manage this project and find ways for this children’s village to be self-sustainable.

Our plan is for all short-term mission teams that come and work with our ministry in any capacity will come by and visit Moletlane Children’s Village. They can interact with the children, help teach them some new skills and assist Frieda in feeding them.

For more photos of this project and the team who helped construct the homes, please visit our website at BlessmanMinistries.org. We soon will have a DVD for you to view to help you to understand a bit better how our ministry is reaching out to help many of the children orphaned as a result of this terrible AIDS epidemic.