Greetings from South Africa where it is warm and sunny. We hear you have snow and we almost cannot imagine it!

Thank you for your emails. It really helps to have news from home.

We have been here a month and have been very busy filling in for team members, some of whom are on courses and another of whom is very sick. The physical demands have made us very tired and we dropped into bed around 9pm some days. Both of us have had a week of preparing breakfast for our Residents (- the 10 or 12 homeless men who stay here until they get their lives back together), which means starting the day at 5.30 am!

Graham has almost finished preparing a life skills course for the Residents. He and Mez from Australia are delivering two sessions a week to try and move some of the guys forward. So far the comments have been good. Men come and go, sometimes without saying goodbye. Some arrive and we have to get extra mattresses out so they can sleep on the floor.. One man leaves tomorrow to try to get his son back from social services and then to a job in Cape Town. Another caught the bus to a hospital 5 hours away for surgery on his hands, only to be told the op would be in March, so he came 5 hours back again the next day. They all have ‘colourful’ stories – but Jesus loves them and so must we.

Marion has been christened Bizzie Lizzie by the residents because she has been very busy and they see her wandering around with bedding, cooking, sorting them out, getting accommodation ready for new team members, etc.

We both go out to the townships to give out food to the poorest families and a dairy product like banana milkshake to the kids. We pray with the people and this week, with an interpreter, we were able to understand some of their needs. Some of the ladies we come across are sick, with 5 kids and no man around; some are not claiming benefits they are entitled to: one woman had been raped and was now pregnant and HIV positive. How do they live like that? Why is there so much injustice? Don’t know. But I do know God calls us to help.

We have times when we want to come home – but they pass and we WILL be here till the end.

The leaders have built this place up from nothing and they want everything kept as good as possible, so we have to weed and collect grass cuttings and some of us clean windows and cars. Living in community requires a lot of rule keeping; we sometimes struggle with the way that some of this is handled. … And then Grace comes back from taking the teenagers home that Graham is teaching extra Maths to on a Saturday morning, and says how much it is blessing them and how grateful they were for the bags we made for their textbooks and then I feel like we are doing some good things.

Then another of the team became very very excited 3 days ago and was obviously bursting to tell us her news. She felt that God had spoken to her strongly and clearly the previous evening at cell group through something we had said to her. WoW! Another highlight in a very busy, wearing week.

So please keep praying for us. The Pastor was saying today that Dundee (where we are) is known as a Pastor’s graveyard and loads of marriages break up and there is much spiritual darkness. Sounds familiar? That has often been said of East Manchester over the past 30 years!

Enjoying Jesus, but missing you all.