A4J Lesotho - January – March 2015 Malealea Youth Care Centre Dear friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, The start of 2015 was in contrast with last years. At the beginning of 2014 most of the year was mapped out - a full programme with visiting groups throughout the year. This year started without many if any visits marked on the calendar or any new students for the year. We enjoyed our return to the valley after New Year, in the company of our friend “Jamblik” – thank you for blessing us with a visit and the solar panels. We appreciate it. He is the first visitor who had enough courage to take the new road to Ha Jobo – without a 4 x 4. January we could concentrate on properly establishing the new food garden across the road from us. The shepherd school opened on the 19th and the pre-school on the 26th with the rest of the Lesotho schools. The shepherds started their own vegetable garden on site in March with the Pieter’s help. We are in the process of registering the pre-school with the Department of Education. Thus we are presented with a new challenge – new regulations state that the pre-school/ shepherd schools are not allowed to be operated from a church building or near residential buildings. The Morena (king of the valley) is willing to give us a small piece of land bordering ours, but this means that we will need to build a separate building! We said good bye to Marius and Natasja who volunteered with us in 2014 – May God bless them and direct their path. February we visited St. John’s Anglican Church in Port Elizabeth and First City Baptist Church in East London. As it were the first visit to these congregations supporting us, we had to leave our comfort zone! Pieter had the opportunity to give a message and give talks on the work that we do in the valley. What a blessing it turned out to be! We thoroughly enjoyed the fellowship, all the new experiences and the break at the sea as a family! You can visit St. John’s website http://www.stjohnswalmer.org.za/sermon/8-february-2015-pieter-mierke/ to access Pieter’s message he gave Sunday the 8th of February 2015. Thank you to St. John’s and FCB! Our friends from Bethlehem visited the 14th of March – THANK YOU for the roof in front of the church and the baking classes J. The Bethlehem ladies plan another 3 baking classes through the year. We hosted Ed – website creator and film maker – on behalf of the literacy/story telling project “Paleng”. He taught Jon and Pieter how to build a website. Expect to receive a notice soon with our web address. Last but definitely not the least of our news is related to the kit we received from Manchester United. Julia Childs from Kit Aid relayed the good news that a tweet about the Manchester United kit that was donated to the Christian Warriors has gone out globally. MUFC themselves put the tweet out. For those of you that are football fans you can follow this link: https://twitter.com/ManUtd/status/580760601963708417. Reagan has been assisting with the building at the A4J Mission Base outside of Kimberley – the soccer team is eagerly waiting for his return.
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