Day 4 - Thursday June 21, 2007

Dear Freinds,

 

Today was workday #2 for us a Children of Zion, and a busy day it was.  All on the Calvary Team are well and in good spirits.

 

Today several including Ed, Jeff, Steven, Dennis, and Becca (she traveleled over on the plane with us and is from Pennsylania) worked on the construction of the guest house at Children of Zion.  The foundation will be finished on our next work day.  Then we will erect the steel poles on which the roof will rest and proceed to lay the brick for the outside walls.  The project is going well so far, but it may be delayed until the eight door frames arrive.

  

This morning Clydia, Debra, Michelle, Steven, Joe, and Amanda went with Rebecca Mink to the children’s feeding center in Mofuto, a nearby town about 10 miles away.  Rebecca took a ’short cut’ to shave off a few miles, but the dirt road was too muddy so we had to go the regular way.  In the mud were elephant prints, but no elephants were sighted. 

 

At the feeding center about 120 children are fed lunch 5 days a week by volunteers from the  local community.  For most of the kids the meal is the staple of their diet.  Lunch was an apple, a home made roll, and kool aide.  Doesn’t sound like much, but the children have to make it last.  The rolls were made on sight by local volunteers. They cooked them on a 4 feet square sheet in a masonary oven fired by wood.  They are very needy children.  Most live with relatives who eek out a living.  The children have lost one or both parents usually to Aids.  Some of the same kids were part of a 16 student pre-school we visited at the feeding center.  They were pleased to sing their ABC’s and numbers from one to ten for us. Children of Zion  provides a major portion of the food for the lunch each day. Rebecca says there are an estimated 4,000-5,000 children in this portion of Namibia just like those we saw at the feeding center.
Several of our team worked in the class room today helping  teach or with craft projects.   Michelle Taylor, our expert on horses, spent several hours this afternoon taking some of the children on a trail ride.  Tomorrow the children are to wash the horses and other horse equipment. 

 

This afternoon I (Dennis) went shoping for food with Gary Mink in nearby Katima, a town which serves about 15,000 people in the region.  The grocery store had two parts.  One was a large ware house where we purchased most of our food in bulk quantities.  Then we went over to the other side, a modern clean  supermarket.  It was well stocked though with less variety than in Mount Airy stores. We purchased $1,1000 of food (about 2,000 pounds) which will feed nearly 70 people for a week.  Food prices are very high here for the local people.  We stopped off at the meat market and ought about 25 pounds of meat, mostly hamburg.  Then we went to the local bakery and picked up 30 big, sweet-smelling loaves of bread.  We stored the loaves unwrapped and fresh out of the oven in two large plastic containers with tight lids.  I did a rough calculation that this week it will cost nearly $20 per person to feed the 70 people here at Children of Zion. By Namibia standards that is a lot of money for food. 

 

Tomorrow Debra will accompany Rebecca  taking one of the children, Beerina, to have surgery on her foot.  The trip is 7 hours one way.  The child fell a week ago and has been in pain and bed ridden.  Xrays were taken the beginning of the week, but a firm diagnosis could not be made.  More pictures today revealed an achilles tear which needs surgical repair.  Please remember this 10 year old in your prayers that the surgeon will do excellent work, and that she will make full recoery without complication or disability for her. 
On our team Jeff Taylor had the most diverse day.  In the morning he wore his construction hat and laid brick for the new building.  In the Afternoon he switched to his teacher’s hat and taught an astronomy class for the older children.  Then he put on his veternarian’s cap to help care for the goats participating in minor surgery on one of the animals.  Now that’s variety.   

 

It has been a busy day for the Calvary team, and we look foreward to a more relaxed pace on Saturday and Sunday.  Some of us need to rest our brick laying muscles.

 

I have been impressed with the hard work, skill, energy, and faith required of Rebecca and Gary to build and maintain Children of Zion.  Fifty-five children call them Papa Gary and Mama Rebecca, and they work very hard to live up to their titles. It is an enormous responsibilty for them to carry. 
I have also been struck by the needs in this region. Children of Zion has a notable ministry to about 175 children–that is very good.  But for each one helped 25 other nearby children need help. many of them will not surive without help.

 

It has been a memorable day for us here in Namibia.  We have experienced joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, hope and despair, work and relaxaion–a typical day for your team, I expect.  Through it all, God has been with us.

 

 Good night, Maryland.   

For the Team,
Dennis Yocum

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Published:
6.21.07 / 3pm
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