Dear friends,
God's blessing Zimbabwe!
How are you? We trust well!
Finally we're turning out another update...we are glad to have good news!
Silke:
Silke continues to be a great blessing to the ladies bible study that meets Mondays. She has a lot of close contacts, often leads the study and many opportunities to pass on God's love in different ways.
The ladies have prepared a little present and a special Easter card for the 80 widows, Silke writes the text for it.
Martin:
Martin is blessed to carry on with 14 lessons weekly in the primary schools. It's a great privilege to bring kids to and closer to Jesus. For the first time he was asked to do reports for Springvale school this term. This is the "new" school where he also does the devotions for assembly sometimes. Through his works there were also promised a school fee reduction for David there when he starts his grade one there next year if God so leads us. The web page of the school is: www.springvalehouse.co.zw
In two High Schools Martin was able to do the " www.truelovewaits.com " campagne . Students and teachers participated enthusiastically. What a blessing to talk about purity and how God wants to protect us physically, mentally and spiritually by saving sex for marriage and being faithful in it. It was great to get chatting with the young people and hear their + share God's ideas. Martin also led some lunch time and evening bible studies & talks at Peterhouse school. www.peterhouse.co.zw
Wednesday afternoons regularly sees the lesson at the orphanage; there as well it is a joy to experience the Lord and His word together with the kids.
The preaching ministry is also close to Martin's heart, two weeks he could even preach at a little non-denominational church "The good Samaritan" at Jericho (!) Rd. Juliasdale/Nyanga & I also preached in our house church. We are keeping up the contacts in the Senior citizen village and they are always very appreciative of us coming around and also taking the chapel service in the evening sometimes.
We are blessed to take part with some friends in a bible study at the moment that Harare Theological College (http://www.htc.ac.zw/) is running per Slide show course. This term we are just finishing an overview of the Old Testament. Next term we'll be doing the New Testament survey. It's about 15 years ago that we were at bible school and it is great to freshen things up. How easy it is to watch a good movie 2-3 hours...but when it comes to reading the bible we get tired so quickly...we enjoy it to turn that around. We are reading two books of the bible per week and then listen and look at the explanations. God just is like his word: absolutely glorious!!!
Our boys:
David is enjoying pre-school. At the moment they are doing numbers. We've had our first consultation with his teacher and she's fairly happy with him :-). He seems to have a step learning curve in terms of having to be first, quickest & best all the time...His playmates are not particular keen on that trait. So we are trying to get across to him that you can let others be first and it's not all one big race.... Thanks for praying for us that we will have wisdom and strength to bring up our boys into boys after the heart of God!
Joshua is enjoying his independence since he's started "taking to his legs". He's a real life wire to & you better not take your eyes of him for a second...Tuesday mornings he goes to a play group with Mummy & she's got her hands full keeping damage & casualties down...
Visitors:
This year we are really blessed with oversees visitors, and are really chaffed about it. At the moment Bianca is here, she lives and works in a Christian community near us. She also comes to the orphanage & joins in in some school lessons. She's from Berlin and has done bible school near our Mission hq near Heidelberg. Olga a Frisian girl is working in an orphanage near Cape Town and has plans to visit us here to.
July will see a second visit from a team of young people from Edenvale Baptist Church Johannesburg www.ebc.co.za – we are looking forward to see the guys helping us in our ministry again.
From August onwards we're due to have a short termer from Switzerland – Katharina- for 9 months. She was born in Zimbabwe, where her parents worked as doctors at the time.
Adding to this...we're planning an Orphan Camp from the 11.-17 of August here in Marondera. We've got a few friends coming to it from Germany already....and could still need some more volunteers with a heart for kids....how about you
?? The program is one week of camp & one week safari / seeing the beauty of God's creation in our beautiful country. Gestimated costs for flight, Food, accommodation etc. 1240 BP. Would be great if there'd be a few spontaneous people who would come out to join us. Just pray and think about it .
We are encouraged and are praising God for all the opportunities we have to share the Lord with the people here!!!!Please pray that many will find him and will be further discipled.
Prayer requests:
> Please pray for a friend of us in Harare. His wife died a month ago, pray especially for his older daughter who is battling a lot with God. His younger daughter copes amazingly well since she knows that mum has got it much better now with Jesus. (She did have a rough live with abuse and alcohol). Please pray for his business to, which is not doing well like many in Zim these days.
> We are so grateful to God and you, that our financial support has improved and we are nearly at 100% – Hallelujah!!! Thank you so much!!!
> Please pray for my father who of course misses mother most together with my sisters & me.
> After more than a decade of being enthusiastic about "marriage time" (weekly meetings of parents without kids to really share stuff together) & preaching about the importance of it...We've finally managed to dig some time free and are actually doing it...Hallelujah!!! It makes such a difference & a positive change in our marriage!!!
Thank you for everything & be richly blessed with
Isaiah 28, 29
Your four Waldvogels from Zimbabwe
