In God’s Hands

We have been blessed with good health and energy out here in South Africa to continue to support the ongoing projects and help out wherever we can. We have established a good routine of travel between projects in Cape Town and in the Hopefield area and the car just about goes on autopilot between the two areas and we have a home away from home established on both sites. We are enjoying each project and strengthening our relationships with many of the recipients. We pray for continued guidance and blessing on all the work we do. We also ask for God’s blessing on all the work we do here in South Africa. We know that all is in God’s hands and that no plans are able to be undertaken without His support. We are thankful for the many God moments which are revealed to us every day, which just helps to strengthen our faith daily and keep us motivated, energised and determined to be able to continue to serve in this manner for our Father.

This month we have been working on the following projects:

1. Green Village Soup Kitchen

We have continued to support the community at Green Village. Handing out hot food on the second Friday of each month. The community ensures that the children are all fed first before elderly and others come along to get their food. The children line up from smallest to biggest to make sure that the little ones are not pushed aside, there is a lot less pushing in the lines now as the community have more faith that the huge pots will feed all and there is enough to go around. The children do sometimes bring bowls big enough to take food back to all the others at home to share.

2. Food Parcels at Green Village

The fourth Friday of the month we aim to do a food parcel hand out at Green Village. These take quite a lot of preparation, from ordering the products to carrying them to storage and then sorting and unpacking the products to place the correct quantities into each bundle. It takes a full team effort. The finished parcels then need to be safely stored till they are ready to be carried to the car for distribution. The equivalent of a full gym workout to keep us all fit. Also collecting the lists of recipients. Ensuring that they are fairly distributed amongst the community, whereby we can be certain that the most in need are getting their parcels. This month’s parcels were packed and ready to go, with the plan to distribute them at a slightly earlier time due to the winter nights creeping in and getting darker earlier.

3. Youth Bible Club at Green Village

We continue to meet with the younger generation of the community every second week and enjoy giving them guidance, hope, Bible lessons and activity. We had a very interesting lesson on Noah’s ark and the children enjoyed all the activities, lessons and songs. We never know how many children to expect and, on this occasion, there were 39 children! The activity was a bit more in-depth and we needed to use some creativity to make it stretch across the numbers and it took quite a lot of effort to get through all of it. By the end of the Bible Club there were some very happy children with a completed picture to take home. It had left Val with a painful bout of laryngitis, trying to speak over the noise. As winter is now here, we are trying to move the classes to an earlier time. This will be tried out in May as it is too dark for the children to walk back home by themselves.

4. Little Brinks

Mondays are our regular visits to Little Brinks. Every week we can see that they are growing in confidence and ability. On one of our visits one little boy in particular spent about 30 minutes in his own imaginative play with little pieces of Lego. This is a first for him as he normally struggles with a very short attention span. Another little boy managed to build a huge wooden tower but first of all he followed the diagram picture to build a sturdy base. The little girl has started to speak more and is coming out of her shell. A sad story from one of our visits - the little girl now calls everyone mama. Val got up to fetch a puzzle and the little girl was worried that Val was leaving and called to get her attention…”mama, mama”. The little boy with us (who can speak but doesn't usually say very much) said loudly to her: “mama is gone, there is no mama”. Our hearts just melted, this is the reality of these children's situations, they have many smiles but behind their little smiles they have been exposed to so much heartache. We are so thankful to Kathy (the lady who started and runs Little Brinks) for all her hard work. She tries to help these children and offers them a safe place so that they can call it their home while social work sorts out all the other legalities. She certainly is a lady with a huge passion and heart, we are privileged to be able to support her and be part of these children's lives.

5. Days for Girls Distribution

Once again, we visited Ernita (The Blueberry farms) in Wellington and the Days for Girls enterprise there. This time we were visiting to help give the ladies some guidance on how to achieve the gold standard in their sewing. We spent the day fine tuning the production and templates and helping them sew the products. It was a very successful day as the ladies were able to identify some of the minor mistakes they were making and by the end of the day we had two of almost each item to be able to be submitted for gold standard assessment. Once they achieve this level, they will be in the running to get a lot more orders and work towards taking their enterprise to the next level. The Cuddle Trust was recently asked what they consider the "successes" of their organisation. They consider themselves successful when they have supported others in becoming independent of the immediate help they provide - i.e., when they have helped them to help themselves, as is their motto.
This is why the days for girl’s project aligns so well with the Cuddle Trust - by partnering with them, they are able to support people within communities in need to set up small business enterprises that provide for an ongoing need in supplying washable sanitary pads of the highest quality.

6. Earth Day at Stellenbosch University

Lots of prep work was done to make the decorations for the stall before attending the market at Stellenbosch University for earth day. We supported the Ernita ladies to show them how to promote the products and hopefully get in some orders. The response was fantastic and the ladies enjoyed the day thoroughly and left feeling very positive and proud of their sewing skills, a real boost for them. Supporting the days for Girls initiative has such a powerful message of saving the environment, saving people money and helping support local enterprises.

7. Fundani Education container

The Cuddle Trust have been allowed to use a plot of land on the premises of Little Brinks to have a refurbished container where classes can be held. We had a Saturday morning Bible Club at the Fundani container for the Wolwerevier community children before the Easter holidays. The children enjoyed learning about Abraham and the promises made to him. They also enjoyed learning new songs and playing musical chairs. We had loads of fun with all the children. As winter is setting in, the children were very cold in the morning and as they were sent out of the game they needed warming hugs to stay warm. 

8. Christ Clean Up

This month we had another Beach clean-up time at Bloubergstrand Rock pools. We once again donned our bright blue t-shirts and met together to do a beach clean-up. We were happy to see the beach was looking a lot cleaner than it has before. There have been a few public holidays and there may have been other clean up events organised. We did still collect quite a few bags of rubbish, mainly from the sand dunes and we were able to enjoy working together to clean up the area even more. We also came across some beautiful painted stones with bible verse and scriptural references on them. It is always lovely to see God and Jesus' messages spread in different ways.

As this is now an international effort with various groups across the globe getting together to help make a difference to the environment, we were also joined by some members in Baltimore, USA. Together we managed to gather quite a bit of rubbish and helped clean up the community area, every little bit helps. If you would like to join the facebook and Instagram group to see when the next events are planned and support then follow their pages:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CleanupForChrist/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cleanup.for.christ/

The goal is to create a global community with one goal. To show Christ’s character through world-wide community clean-ups as we wait for his return. Every little bit helps, get together in your own community and arrange a clean up of a park, public area, beach etc and post your photos on the Facebook page. Be part of a global community. There is a clean up event arranged for the last Saturday of every month. 

9. Ongoing Support

Other support we are involved in includes giving talks, sisters’ class, Bible class, exhortations, Bible studies, and social linking with brothers and sisters and preaching opportunities. We have continued to support both the on-line zoom church and Cape Town ecclesia with duties. There have been a few extra ecclesial events this month:

• Easter Fellowship fraternal: This month we had a very thought-provoking morning meeting remembering our Lord. Afterwards we had an easter fellowship fraternal with talks about Christ's resurrection and the Passover timeline. A lovely day spent with family and friends all in their different groups across South Africa, joined together over zoom

• Woman of the Word sisters class day: We enjoyed a ladies zoom day event, woman of the word. It was a full day of socialising and listening to some very encouraging words around lessons that we can take from everyday objects. We had lessons about pots, hikes up Lion’s head, a pillow and Val’s talk on a crochet hook. It was so nice being together physically in smaller groups and also internationally and nationally in virtual groups.

• Praise and worship Fellowship Day: We all got together after the morning meeting for a lovely lunch and after that an afternoon of singing praise and worship. We enjoyed the physical time together and felt our spirits uplifted afterwards. Nowadays, virtual meetings have become part and parcel of our lives and fellowship but nothing can replace the physical face to face of being in each other’s company, all giving praise and worship to our almighty God.

10. Ongoing improvements, renovations and building work to various properties

Huge building work in progress. Llewellyn and Charles worked hard on building the afdak area outside the house. It is now fully enclosed, with a sliding door and newly cemented floor. The guys might be a little broken but the improvements are amazing. This is going to be an awesome space and well used, a more weather element protected area for packing food parcels and doing lots of other work. 

In Conclusion

We are very thankful for the experiences we continue to have while doing God’s work out here in South Africa and have enjoyed seeing and acknowledging all the God moments that happen to us daily. We value all the relationships we have developed and peoples lives we continue to touch. We are looking forward to continuing on this journey through-out 2022 and continuing to do God’s work here.

We continue to attend regular planning meetings to discuss ongoing plans and support needs, these are often changing as new projects and needs are highlighted. We are continuing with the ongoing projects and supporting the communities around us. We are also looking forward to having some volunteers joining us from Canada next month, Gideon and Shoshanna Hewitson.

May God continue to bless all the work being done out here and we ask for his continued grace by providing us with guidance and safety.

All our love in the Lord
Charles and Val Kotkin-Smith