05.25Campus Outreach in Mamelodi

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.—James 1:27

Last Saturday about 20 college students from Georgia who are spending two months working with Campus Outreach in Johannesburg came to Mamelodi for the day to serve with the Powerhouse. Their mission was twofold: to clean/paint/restore the houses of widows in the community and to get to know the people of the Powerhouse, finding out about how they love their community (and for almost all the students, it was their first time to visit a township). The group was divided into two teams that went to different sites. Both houses they visited are homes we visit weekly during the feeding scheme and both were in serious need of cleaning and painting. After first removing all the items from the homes, the teams went to work scrubbing and scraping the walls and washing all the blankets, clothes, dishes and anything else that needed it. At Gogo Makubo’s house, a smaller group laid the foundation for a wall that we’ll hopefully finish with the teams from our churches that have arrived today. All throughout the day there was laughing, singing, sweating and even dancing as the two groups partnered in doing the Lord’s work (check out the video below for evidence).

One of our church members, Katherine Donahoe, arrived ahead of the rest of our team and jumped right in on Saturday, although she didn’t know a soul except us. It was encouraging to see her roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty. There were two blind gogos who needed a lot of attention while the rest of the group was busy cleaning inside their house. She sang to them, rubbed their backs and even gave them much-needed sponge baths. You could see by the end of the day that the gogos’ countenances had changed, and it was certainly an encouraging experience for Katherine.

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At the end of the day, there was ample evidence that major work had been done, including a fresh coat of paint for all the rooms in the houses. The atmosphere felt lighter, happier and generally uplifted. And while the physical improvements certainly played a part in bringing joy to everyone, I believe that the greater reason was God bringing his Kingdom from Heaven down to earth as He answered our prayer, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The work done and the love shown did not go unnoticed by the neighbors either. This demonstration of love in action can’t help but amplify what is taught and preached every Sunday at the Powerhouse.

Filed under: General by Nathan on May 25th, 2009. Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

05.21Celebrating Women In Business

Last Saturday afternoon, the Powerhouse Women’s Ministry hosted an event celebrating women in the township running small businesses of their own.

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.—Proverbs 31:30

In Powerhouse style, the event kicked off with worship and a devotion, which I had the honor of giving. I spoke on the Proverbs 31 woman. The idyllic woman portrayed in this passage is not only a wife, mother and keeper of house but is also a capable business woman. In fact, she owns property, has hired help and is completely trusted to manage the affairs of her husband and family. She is industrious, tireless and charitable; but above all, she fears the Lord, which is her greatest attribute and was thus the main focus of the message I shared.

On tables set up in the overflow space of the church, ladies (and even some men) had the opportunity to promote their product or service to an interested crowd that grew larger and larger as the afternoon went on. Among the products featured were jewelry, cosmetics, handmade shoes and clothing, dishes, Tupperware and winter apparel. One of our student-teachers, Peter, manned a table featuring the small business development class that the Powerhouse now offers, so I’m pleased to say that a number of women participating, who have been seeking more formal instruction on record-keeping or marketing, signed up that day to take the class next term.


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The day’s entertainment was a fashion show featuring many of Gloria Nyathi’s beautiful bridal gowns, which are available for hire along with bridesmaids dresses (many of which have been donated by you guys!), lovely little flower girl dresses, shoes, veils and headpieces and anything else a woman would need for her special day. We transformed the sanctuary of the church into a fashion show runway, and with the help of her two sisters, many ladies at the church and all of us on the Africa Revolution team, Gloria prepared four rounds of dresses for 10 young ladies of all sizes who modeled them stunningly. Over the beat of dance party music, I emceed the event and had a blast introducing the models—Winnie, Brenda, Pinky, Prudence, Florence, Jabulile, Bella, Refilwe, Fridah and Tebogo—and describing the dresses: “And now, we have Refilwe, wearing a white satin Oleg Cassini designer gown with organza overlay, featuring a sweetheart neckline, A-line in cut and a with cathedral-length train.” (Somehow all the wedding gown terminology came back to me that day!) The crowd went wild every time, and the girls had the best time showing their stuff! I loved the fact that many of Nate’s photo students were in the crowd, and in true paparazzi style, they vied for the best spot possible, fighting back one another in good fun, to get the perfect shot of each model.

Nate had an area set up for a professional photo shoot, where he captured each model after coming off the catwalk. Equipped with studio lighting, Nate worked carefully with each model to strike poses similar to ones found in wedding magazines—the intent being to provide Gloria with a catalogue or magazine as a marketing tool for her business. Check out Nate’s photos and you’ll see for yourself how beautiful these ladies and the dresses were!

Throughout the afternoon, finger foods and desserts were available to the crowd, catered by two young ladies, both graduates of our business class, who partnered in catering the event as an exercise in sharing expenses and labor involved. Their collaboration was great, and I think they were both encouraged to find a partner in each other (in fact, together, they are catering another event for us this weekend).

The Women’s Business Expo felt like the culmination of a lot of great things we’ve been a part of this year. The highlight was working closely with Gloria (I remember standing in her kitchen back in August saying, yes, we should absolutely do something to promote your business this year), and seeing the event come together so beautifully in an all-hands-on-deck kind of way. To see graduates of and current students in our business class—alongside other women and men in the township—so encouraged by the opportunity to promote their business enterprise was wonderful.

It gave us joy to have all the various classes and people we interact with daily be involved in this event, like one big happy family, and to see how the things we are doing here are having an impact. We are trying not to think about the fact that our days now are numbered, but for every day between now and that time, we are appreciating our being here more than ever.

Filed under: General by Rebecca on May 21st, 2009. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

05.18Mamelodi Stories Wins A 2009 Horizon Interactive Award

We are very pleased to announce that MamelodiStories.org took best of category for Blogs in the 8th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards. The Horizon Interactive Awards is “a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers.” The contest received more than 2,000 entries from 32 countries and nearly all 50 states.  We are very happy to win the award, of course, but are mostly excited that new people will be coming to check out this site and get a chance to see how God is changing lives in Mamelodi.
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So we want to welcome any new visitors! My wife and I have been blogging about our year volunteering in South Africa with Africa Revolution, working closely with a local church in the township of Mamelodi called the Powerhouse. We’ve been teaching web design and small business courses at the church’s skills development center in addition to helping out with the weekly feeding scheme. We’ve also been blessed to travel around southern Africa. Additionally, I have had the chance this year to experiment with shooting 3D panoramic images and am exploring that medium as a tool for telling stories.

Our time here is coming to a close soon, but that definitely won’t be the end of the story. We are planning a coffee table book featuring the best stories and photos as well as exhibits and who knows what else. Subscribe to our RSS feed or email updates to make sure you don’t miss any important announcements.

P.S. The UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication (our alma mater) won best of category in the College & University category for its Cape Fear to Down Here multimedia project.  Congratulations to Pat Davison, all the workshop faculty and of course the students that busted their tails for a week to put those stories together!

Filed under: General by Nathan on May 18th, 2009. Tags: , , , , , , | 12 Comments

05.10Back to Bulembu

This past week, the AR team, along with Vincent & Gloria and potential AR staff for the coming year, returned to Bulembu, Swaziland, where we visited in December.

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A few things struck me on this second visit. I loved Bulembu the first time but was secretly prepared for a less-romanticized experience, simply because we were already familiar with the place. I was surprised; in no way had Bulembu lost its luster. In fact, it was even more clear to us how God is using this village and drawing the right people into His mission there. Since December, a new primary school has opened, four times the capacity of the previous school; the arts & crafts center employing ladies from the village is ever-creative in the goods sold at the gift shop; the dairy is soon to open, which will provide more than 200 gallons of milk per day for the village and ministries; and most striking, an abandoned building we toured in December is now a beautiful welcome center for abandoned or abused children from all over Swaziland, before they are placed in specific homes in Bulembu. For more background on the incredible story of how a once-abandoned mining town is regaining life through the obedience of Christians, check out our previous blog post on Bulembu.

Our team was delighted to pay a visit to ABC Ministry and spend a morning with Robin and Gerry Richter. Once again, we were all incredibly moved by the amazing work ABC continues to do in taking in abandoned and unwanted children from all over the country, rooting them in God’s love and raising them up as leaders of the next generation. To hear Robyn herself explain ABC’s work, check out our multimedia piece.

We are excited that our friend from home, Katherine Donahoe, arrives in Bulembu today to volunteer at the clinic there for the next two weeks and that friends from our church and Will’s church who are interested in community development and sustainable enterprise will be returning there in early June. We hope that everyone of you will someday see first-hand the wonderful things that God is doing in this tiny corner of His creation!

Filed under: General and Outside Mamelodi by Rebecca on May 10th, 2009. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Post a comment

05.06Siyakubonga (We Thank You, Lord)

The following is one of my very favorite worship songs. This one was sung recently at church, led by our friend Pinky. The dancing that usually accompanies this song is always so much fun.

Thanks to Brenda Leeuw for translating the lyrics into English from Zulu.

Entsungwini zokuphila kwami (x6)
(For the days of my life)
Baba, siyakubonga (x6), e e
(We thank you, Lord)
Siyakubonga (x6), e e
(We thank you, Lord)
Baba, Baba (x6), e e
(O Lord, O Lord)
Siyangubonga, Siyangubonga (x6), e e
(I thank you, Lord; I thank you, Lord)

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Filed under: Praise Songs by Rebecca on May 6th, 2009. Tags: , , , , | Post a comment

05.03Malealea Music

For our final post on the Lesotho trip, we share a video from the performances put on by local musicians at the Malealea Lodge. The singing and dancing was superb, complete with homemade musical instruments.

Filed under: Outside Mamelodi by Nathan on May 3rd, 2009. Tags: , , , , | Post a comment

05.013D Pano: Malealea Band, Lesotho

The guests at Malealea Lodge in the tiny country of Lesotho enjoy watching the local band play their homemade instruments and dance just after sunset.

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Instructions for Viewing the 3D Panoramic Image: The image above is a three dimensional panoramic image. Click on the image and drag left, right, up or down to view the entire scene.

Filed under: 3D Panoramic Image and Outside Mamelodi by Nathan on May 1st, 2009. Tags: , , , , , , , | Post a comment