Support

Many thanks to Paedagogium Bad Sachsa, Grade 5a (Mr. Schwark) from Germany for blessing us with various school supplies.

Our children are in the first term of the academic year. Usually we are required to buy various school items, but this support enables us to save on costs of buying school items.

Nina and Lucas are part of the Weltwaerts program Goettingen in Germany. They have been working with Kwathu for quite some time now. Their main area of interest in the past few months has been sports with our children, every Friday. They have also been involved with the Community Feeding Program, which takes place every Monday. Lately, mothers and children within the community, who come for the feeding program, have been sitting on reed mats. With the rains, it has been a challenge, as we do it under open skies. However, thanks to Nina and Lucas who donated 40 child size chairs. The children are now able to sit on chairs and eat at a table for their meals.

We would also like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Australian church, Overflow Christian Center, for blessing our children with assorted items such as food, clothing and school requirements.

Social

Two of our beautiful girls celebrated their birthdays during this month. Rozaria turned 10 on February 1, 2016, and we celebrated with a party on February 5. Kwathu children always look forward to their birthday as these are often days where they feel even more special and appreciated.

Victoria, our youngest child, turned 2 years old on February 7, 2016. This was a special time as this was her first birthday at Kwathu. It’s such a joy seeing how much she has grown into a healthy little girl.

Victoria has been under our care for about nine months now and there has been so much development. The little girl can now walk, run and she is fluent in her English and other local languages, which is a wonderful change.

Sweet Victoria, daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Phiri also celebrated her on February 26, 2016. She turned 3 years old.

She had a special time with her friends in school. They all sang happy birthday and each of them had a taste of a delicious piece of cake. Later that day, we had a family celebration at Kwathu. Jerome Phiri entertained us as he danced for his sister as a knife boy.

Community Support

The Community feeding program, which is our pilot project, has been doing well for the past two months. We feed approximately 170 people a week living within our community, of which roughly 130 are children and 40 are mothers. The feeding program is comprised of various children’s activities and sharing of God’s word. As we continue we hope to involve the community mothers in the preparation of food and other extra activities. This will help the community develop a sense of belonging and responsibility. Many thanks to Kingdom Ventures Ministry for being a big part in helping us feed our community. Our arms are open to individuals who are willing to be part of this project, “remember we are blessed in order to be a blessing to others.”

A big thank you to our local helpers, especially those who spare time every Monday to help with the feeding program. Thanks Debi, Adrian, Monde and Alice for your hard work.

With an ideal of reaching out and interacting with our community, we also introduced an “Art and creativity Day” which involves our children and children from around the community. Our children use scriptural drawings as a mode to teach fellow children, and later they copy these drawings on their paper.

This encourages them to go home with visual scriptures that they can share with friends and family. It’s noticeably fun and exciting for these children.

Volunteers

Kim is our volunteer who has been working with us for almost three months now. Her stay at Kwathu has been so productive and helpful. She has been actively involved in the feeding program, child interaction and other indoor activities.

We are so happy to have welcomed our visiting volunteer, Laura from Italy back. This is her second time at Kwathu, she first visited Kwathu sometime in April last year, and she was very helpful during our main shifting and the time we were settling in at our home. This time, she spends her time doing various indoor activities with the children and helps out every Monday in preparation of the community feeding program.

On a sad note we said goodbye to Sophie, our Swedish volunteer, who has been working with Kwathu for a period of four months. During her visiting time, she mainly focused on the reading program, in which she spent some good time helping out children with slower reading skills, and she helped the house mother with taking care of our little babies. We really had a wonderful time with her and she will be greatly missed by everyone. We wish her well as she settles in back home.

We would also like to thank our other visiting volunteers, Kit (Denmark) and Courtney ( New York) for their tireless efforts in helping out with the general preparation of the community feeding program.

Many thanks to Josephine, our Swedish volunteer, who has been working with us for the past five months, using her passion for music to teach our children how to play the piano. We look forward to continue working with her over the next few months.

We thank you all our volunteers for your time you sacrifice, traveling from your different home countries, and taking time to be a blessing to the ministry and our children. We are so grateful and may the good Lord bless you.

Land Update
Our administration block is almost complete. Three quarters of construction work has been done. Natalie, our devoted advocate in Alabama, USA, has tirelessly worked hard to see this project be accomplished.

From late last year to date, the following has been accomplished:

• Roofing
• Inside and outside plastering
• Air vents and car port vents
• Flooring
• Wiring of the entire block
• Security lights connected

The following stages are still pending:

• Tiling US$ 1, 840
• Ceiling US$ 2, 496
• Plumbing US$ 500
• Concrete apron US$ 400
• Glass panes US$ 540
• Painting, undercoat and finisher US$ 185

TOTAL: $ 5,961

Please continue to pray with us in the following areas:

• Pray with us for financial resources to help us accomplish our current building project, which is our administration block.
  Continue praying for Natalie’s Visa in the USA. It is very important for us if she can stay longer and continue being the hands and feet of Kwathu Children’s Home
• Pray for provision of funds for the Feeding Program God has laid upon our hearts to feed underprivileged mothers and children around us
• Continue praying for courage, faith, wisdom and love that we can accomplish the goals we set for Kwathu and that the children can live, grow and mature in Gods daily goodness and loving kindness.
• Pray for our weakened Zambian economy. The poor are feeling the pinch in all this and it’s hard for us to budget for the home as commodity prices increase every day.