Happy New Year to all of you!!! This year has started with lots of snow in England – so beautiful! We are thrilled to announce number 2 is on its way and is due at the end of August! So we will be a family of 4!!
Laura, Matthew and I had the opportunity to spend Christmas in Zimbabwe! It was a wonderful time to catch up with friends, spend quality time with family, enjoy the sunshine and visit Turf! A reminder again of why we love our homeland so much!! We thought you might like to hear a bit about our visit!!
Zimbabwe is still in a desperate state and we found it very sad and overwhelming at times. The poverty and the need is so great and you feel quite helpless at times. We were encouraged again at the amazing things that local churches are doing – bringing hope to so many people! We are proud of our fellow Zimbabweans – they are so resilient and determined. We continue to hold our country in our prayers and really trust God for break through.
Laura and Matthew had not visited Turf and we decided to do a day visit out there for them to get a feel of where we will one day be living. It was wonderful to share the passion I have for this place with them and see Laura get excited at all that the community holds. It was also exciting for me to see the classrooms complete and the block of Sixth Form Classrooms where the Sixth Form will start in March 2009. The mine has recently painted the school and it looks brilliant. They have also fitted flushing toilets and electricity will be arriving over the next few months – you can imagine the students are thrilled about this. The Head Teacher of the Senior School has recently started practising Farming God’s Way and they have a field of maize growing as well as a sty with pigs in it!! She is a dedicated lady, working under very tough conditions. The Government is finding it increasingly difficult to fund Government Schools and all Government Schools did not open in January 2009, due to lack of funds. It is a sad situation. Makomborero continues to support this local government school in Turf. We left Zim feeling excited for what we are called to and can’t wait to get stuck in!! We were thrilled to send out 360Kgs of textbooks, kindly donated by girls at Benenden School to the new Sixth Form Centre and know that they will find them very successful.
We hope that has given you a taste of Turf! We continue to seek God about when we should return and we look forward to having an exact date! We will also write again shortly with an update as to how the start of the Sixth Form Centre has gone and hopefully be able to send you a few photos of the students we have enrolled!
Thank you again for your support of us!
Written by: Laura Albertyn
