Greg & Sophie
So today has been one of those days, so much potential…then nothing. We woke up with a list of jobs for the day and felt good after a relaxing evening and a good nights sleep.
First up, buy paints for decorating the classrooms and toilets. So we jumped in the car, we have previously been to the warehouse and had a quote so needed to go via the bank first to withdraw enough money. Got to the bank, only our cash card had insufficient funds on it, so that plan has had to be put on hold until tomorrow.
Second, meet with Pastor Gatsi and Pastor Musora. This was scheduled for the afternoon, however it soon became evident it had never been scheduled and the Pastor was stuck in a meeting with someone else. So plan 2 got halted, and hopefully on hold until tomorrow.
Thirdly, we wanted to wire brush the walls of the classrooms and toilets to prepare the walls to be painted. Problem – Wire brushes are gone. We specifically bought 2 last week in order to carry out this job, but between now and then, someone has walked off with them. Plan 3 out the window.
After a day yesterday of sitting waiting for shipping companies to contact us – which took a huge chunk of the day and meant we couldn’t leave our room or the building- and then another day today possibly turning into a second of sitting on our bed in our one room waiting for something that could be nothing- I decided to put my determined face on and search for the brushes. I eventually persuaded the security guard to help and he unearthed one of them – the second is nowhere.
So I have spent a little time brushing, now Greg is doing the same. It’s a change from sitting looking at 4 walls.
It’s becoming quite frustrating to keep reaching a point where we think – Great! We can do the rest ourselves! Only to then find other things which need other people to do, leading us back to a state of sitting and waiting for someone else to do their job (and slowly!).
So we have spent much of the time beginning to write up the documents we will need for the school – including registration forms, policies, home/school agreements and curriculum ideas. So being forced to sit and wait, has helped in some way to get these documents done.
But as you can see, an anti climatic day! So I am now going to heat up some water to wash in before the electricity goes, then decide on whats for dinner and pray tomorrow is a successful and fulfilling day!
We were fortunate today to be taken by Pastor Taaso to his mother in laws school which benefited us to see a different day care center in action and take a look at their paperwork also. He then took us to his house…which it turns out I have been to before! Along with my parents and sister, in 2007! They did not remember the visit however, so I promised I would find the picture. So here it is! In 2007…and now!
2007
2012
Please keep in contact, we value correspondence highly!!
God Bless, G&S x
We had some good news on the permit for the school today. I think it was getting lost in a filing system but we’ve managed to get the same lady who we gave to to in the government building to re-write the document for us- Praise God.
Still some issues with our shipping but we are confident that we will be able to get that soon.
Hope everyone is well!
G&S x
Last Sunday I decided to tell the church why it is we’re actually here. Strange thing you may think after 6 weeks but they’ve been told we’re opening a pre school but I don’t think they quite understood the circumstances. (Maybe some thought we’re two obscenely rich white English people who fancy giving a bit of time and money to an African project.) It was amazing to share how we believe this to be a very clear calling upon our lives. Something we’ve been asked to do here and something that God has sent us to achieve. When we told them we currently have no timeline but are keen to be spirit led and we’ll be here as long as God wants us to be we had a great response. Many people came up to us to tell us what a wonderful testimony our story is and how blessed they are to have us. It’s amazing to feel so supported here and I couldn’t feel luckier. Apparently we’re a blessing to them but we feel so blessed just being here it is quite an adventure.
One of the challenges we will have with our school is that all schools are fee paying, we are currently battling with decisions of costs considering that we need this school to support itself but we want to minister to as many children as we can. 60 to be precise as that would be 2 classes! Please pray that His will is done with regard to school fees.
If you are interested in maybe sponsoring an orphan to go to school as a church or as a family then we’d love to receive an e.mail. Our dream is to be able to offer education to those who would otherwise have no access to it at all. For some here school really is a distant dream and for many their parents buy nothing else but food and pay for school fees.
If you have read this then send us a message. We love receiving messages, the contact really does mean a lot to us and if you’d like me to send you the talk I wrote for Sunday then I’d be delighted to send that too.
God Bless you!
Greg (and Sophie)
Well it’s a landmark week as we hope to have the building work, plumbing and electricity all sorted in the new school building this week.
We’re really excited about this stage because it means we can really start on our own developments. We really want to get painting and decorating and planting some pretty flowers around the school to make it all look very appealing, also many schools don’t really go down the display route so we’re excited to develop our classrooms. Any teachers reading this will know how nice it is to have your own classroom to make exciting.
Other things in the pipeline is the beginning of the advertising for the school. We have purchased a road sign, banner for the entrance, business cards, posters and leaflets and we’re hoping up to 60 children will sign up
And here it is! One Way Pre School!
Please do keep messaging us, every single one is an extra bit of encouragement.
Prayer points are we still need our shipping to arrive safely and to find some money for the remaining resources, playground equipment and all the things we’d love to have for outdoor learning (something they don’t really do here)
Check back soon for more updates.
God Bless, G&S x
Shalom my friends, Mangwanani!
It’s been a whirl wind month here in Zimbabwe. On this Sunday 16th September we celebrate a month here which really has flown by! We hope to have our renovations complete by the end of this week with more appointments with plumbers and builders in the coming week as well as the electrician. It is all very exciting seeing the school growing to what we hope will be a school the church can be proud of. Check back to the blog because I should have pictures available of logo’s and leaflets in the near future.
School wise we are hoping to open 2 classes in January, one run by Sophie and one run my me. One class will be Grade 0 which is the year before primary school begins for children aged 5 and a nursery class with children aged 3-4. We’re hoping for somewhere between 40-60 children to sign up.
Zimbabwe wise we keep having plenty of offers to people to take us out on trips but have as yet been too busy sorting out building projects and school documents to really visit anywhere. Personally I hope we have the registration and renovations completed by December and Sophie and I can do some real exploring in the month leading up to the opening of the school.
Last week we got the pleasure of a day spent at gogo’s day care centre which is another local pre school facility here. It was a really fun morning and was a great education in to how things are done here. They have a pre school curriculum but it is fairly limited and Sophie insures me that we can offer a more varied education. The children really loved their school and this day care centre are doing a brilliant job bringing these children up in a positive, Christian environment. We pray we emulate that in our school.
I will finish this entry now just by saying how lovely it is to hear from people back home, please do keep in touch. It’s great for us to know what people are up to!
God Bless G&S x
Hello to all!
So, much has been happening over the last week, builders have been working hard to demolish walls and create new, larger toilet spaces. The plumber begins work tomorrow, and the electrician will hopefully be around next week.
Builder hard at work shifting rubble!
Today, we spent a large part of the day beginning to organise and sort the outside area. We have two outdoor areas available for the school – one, a paved tiered courtyard. two, a grassy area. The courtyard area is fine, a lick of paint and some pretty child pictures will do wonders. The grass area needs a little more help.
First up, Greg and Emmanuel worked to fill in a large trench hole right outside the entrance area. Next to the hole was a large mound of soil and rubble which had created a problem in itself! Many wheelbarrow loads later the hole was filled, I had many splinters in my feet and greg looked like he had a great tan (it washed off later though!).
Next up, we were told the place where the bricks from demolition had been placed, was in fact in the wrong place. Que me, 3 men and a wheelbarrow attempting to shovel them all into a more suitable place. The best thing to come out of this…brick throwing!
Greg and the men found this highly amusing – I showed my English side and felt concerned for Health and Safety! I did then realise, however, that that’s boring, and decided to help by using the wheelbarrow to shovel the bricks…with great success…
until the wheelbarrow hit a brick, tipped over, I shouted for help from Emmanuel (who had sneakily been following behind evidently knowing I would fail!) and then as I turned, proceeded to slide in all the ash left from the rubbish pit burning, causing an embarrassing slide. Luckily, I stayed upright!
Once the bricks were sorted, we proceeded to measure the width of the grass area, as we need to buy fencing to cordon off the play area as it can currently be accessed by the road to the golf course – another expense, but a necessary one!
So tomorrow, we begin work on the entrance walkway – which too is covered in rubble and is a danger in its present state. But we have a lovely willing workforce around and are enjoying being able to use ourselves too! It’s been a little difficult persuading the people here that we are wanting to do work and not sit and watch others do it – they want to serve too much!
In other news – tomorrow we meet with Witness – our marketing man who will be creating a logo, fliers, posters, news ads etc for the school. On Thursday we are due to spend a day at a local pre school – should be an exciting update for you all after that!
So, please please keep up to date with the project, and please please support us any way you can! Work is happening FAST!
Please also pray for the school registration document – we should have it by the end of the week – but only by a lot of persuasion.
Check back soon! God Bless,
G&S x
Today, has been busy! We have been in contact with many people (many of whom I can’t remember their names) and have been able to buy, get quotes, and brainstorm ideas for many aspects of the school!
First up, we visited the Bank to enquire about opening a personal bank account and also a business bank account. Turns out it’s really easy! 2 forms – 1 for each account, some photos, a copy of passports and marriage certificate, and a letter from the church proving we live here. That’s it! And the debit card can be used in every country, bonus! So we have the form which we are filling in and will be applying tomorrow – so should be set up within the next week! Business is a little more complex – they want a copy of the constitution (not too sure what to write there!) and the minutes of a meeting, but once we’ve got the paperwork – account will be up! Very efficient.
Next up we visited one of the rural areas to begin searching for craftsmen who could create us storage units and small tables for the classrooms….this was a crazy busy marketplace with many many people assuming that as we are white we will buy everything and pay lots for it! Luckily we had Pastor Musora with us who, in manly sounding Shona, told them to leave us alone! This place however did not provide the sort of handymen we needed – so we continued our search.
We drove to Highfield – Pastor Musora’s hometown – where Greg had to practice the art of pothole dodging – sometimes unsucessfully due to the pothole taking up the entire width of the road! – until we reached the centre of the rural area. We wandered down some back roads past some small children, playing what looked to be an extremely fun game involving hiding in a cardboard box with just your head sticking out and scaring passers by! Here we found, under a small canopy, some carpenters making shelving units – perfect! So we hastily drew on the back of some sawn off wood – sketches of what we required – 2 large cubby hole units, 2 large shelving and cubby hole units and 8 small classroom tables – after some haggling we received a good price and should have the units within a couple of weeks!
Next up we visited a warehouse for items such as child toilets, child sinks, shower heads, paint, tiling and so on. We now have quotes for some large tubs of paint and items for the school toilets so moved on!
We then returned to the center to meet with the plumber whom we had called this morning, to discuss whether the current 2 large adult toilets in the school area, could be converted into 4 child toilets, 2 sinks and a shower cubicle. He was initially concerned that the walls surrounding the toilets were so thick that it may be impossible to knock them down to make room, however we debated for a while and think we have come up with a solution to move toilets and cisterns etc around with only needing to knock one smaller wall down. Amen!
The builder is coming at 8am tomorrow morning to discuss with us the possibility of knocking that wall down, and also removing items we don’t need, fixing concrete in the playground area, putting up a wall, fixing doors and windows and gates and other jobs. The plumber has kindly agreed to also return at 8am to converse with the builder to brainstorm the best plans so that we can get cracking!
Once the builder and plumber are sorted, we can contact the electrician and get him to come and sort out the dangling live wires and sockets in the rooms! And the lighting for both rooms and the toilets.
Then once they are done, we can decorate! So not much to do as you can see…
We are also hoping next week to go into town to start pricing and budgeting for all the resources we will be needing – I mentioned before that they do not have a warehouse to buy resources from, so we need to go and do some haggling in the city -in bulk!
We have been really fortunate to visit a school for handicapped children run by a woman from the church here. She is very knowledgeable about the academic side of Zimbabwean schooling and is coming today to bring us documentation regarding all areas of the school including policies, curriculum, registration, health and safety, assessment, observations and so on! She has also said she will take us next week to where we can buy government documents that we should have in our school just in case they decide to spring a visit – however she said she opened in 2000 and has not been visited once by government!
We are also going to be spending a day or two in a local pre school next week to see how they run their daily timetable and the way in which they teach – which we are sure will be an eye opener! Punishment in Zim is treated very differently to England – they still smack/cane children and children are expected to be very obedient from a very young age.
So it’s been a whirlwind day and we are running rather than walking through each day but it is so encouraging to be seeing wheels in motion!
We also had a meeting yesterday with Pastor Musora and Pastor Gatsi to discuss the practicalities of the school and to discuss finances. The church here is struggling financially and we are ever so grateful to those in England who are supporting us so far with the project. Please do continue to pray about us and the project and if you are able to give financially please do use the stewardship form on the support page of the website. There is SO much to do and it all costs money! We are financing as much as we can but we continually need your support.
We would be very grateful for your prayers and contact messages as these strengthen us and keep the project moving forwards.
God Bless,
G&S
The following is taken from one of the local newspapers out here:
The united nations have said of Zimbabwe that 37% of Zimbabwe’s children have no birth registration whilst 100 children a day die of preventable diseases. The UNICEF world body wants the country to make sure health and education services are achieving the basic needs which are required for society. An official was quoted as saying “during the past decade Zimbabwe has experienced socio-economic difficulties which have resulted in significant challenges in access to education, health, water and sanitation.” 30% do not have access to safe water and 40% no access to safe sanitation. 42% of rural folk practice open defecation.
We hope that if we can be a small hope or change in one of these areas then we believe we have achieved something for these wonderful people.
Hi!
Few more days between this blog post and the last, but a few things to tell you all about! So here goes…
As of yesterday we had officially been here for One Week! So we celebrated with the team from England…by having Nando’s! A small luxury which I feel we won’t get to have very often!!
Firstly…It’s getting hotter and hotter! After our strange weather welcome from the first few days, it has steadily increased in temperature each day and we are now looking a pretty colour! (no sunburn yet!)
Secondly…we have a CAR! We have name it Merv…Merv the Mitsubishi. It is so fantastic to be able to have some more independence through having the car, it can be quite frustrating waiting around for people to take you to places, especially if you need to be somewhere on time!! So we have been relishing in getting used to African driving – which includes plenty of swerving deep potholes, no road markings and free for all driving wherever they fancy much of the time! But Greg is doing a fantastic job! I am yet to drive the car as my licence is still in England but when that arrives I will look forward to trying out driving myself!
On the subject of the car, we had a minor bump the other day whilst driving around some of the English team – our car bumped into the back of theirs – small scratches on front of ours as we hit their tow bar….their car was bigger! No serious injuries praise god! So the pastors here have prayed over the car to bless it to the lord to prevent anything else! Its all learning.
We are settling into our home which hopefully we can show you when we set up a photo gallery. We are hoping to take over a second room in the center to have as an office/living space as currently we are living in one room plus the short trek to the kitchen in the office on the other side of the center. So we need provision of items such as a kettle, toaster, mini fridge etc…as this will further help with our independence – which we are praying about.
We were really fortunate last night to be able to go, along with the team from England, to the house of Mr and Mrs Timba – whom we have stayed with before on previous trips to Zim. They have always been such firm friends of ours here and we respect them highly, they care for us like their family for which we are grateful. They are currently not attending One Way Ministries for a number of reasons and we wanted to go and see them and pray for them for their situation personally as they have had a very tough year – please do pray for them if you get a spare moment, they are a fantastic family! And will be of a huge support to both myself and Greg over this year so we would love for their difficult circumstances to be resolved.
Very excitingly, the team from England have arrived and been here since Wednesday. They are staying in two houses nearby the center with two families from the church. We have had a few team meetings and spent some time together with the team helpers from Zim which have been positive. Everyone is very motivated and excited and everyone seems to want to get started! Myself and Greg are doing less than previous years as there is a team of 6 already from England doing the main programme and so it is a joy to see the conference growing and expanding with team since when it started 6 years ago it was just Dave Bankhead and my Family! The children here look forward to the conference every year with such anticipation and we are praying that they will come with hearts ready to receive all the team have to give!
We have many of the children from the rural areas staying at the church center for the week in the spare bedrooms and we have already had 4 of them in our bedroom today playing with our remote control car, so I think this week may be quite busy and noisy! But we are so excited to be able to spend more time with these children as normally we are staying further away and we don’t get to see these children often as they live in the rural areas so it will be a pleasure to get to know them and show them how loved and special they are!
We have also booked to have a meeting with both Pastor Gatsi and Pastor Musora on Monday afternoon to discuss some of the finer points regarding the pre school as arund 50 people from One Way are off to Israel for 2 weeks in September and if we are to open the school in January, we need to start preparing, painting, renovating, resourcing, registrating etc…now. So we are going to have a busy busy week ahead with both the school and conference going on, but we are going to face it with much prayer!
Thank you to those of you who have sent us messages over the last week, we appreciate all communication and look forward to blogging after the meeting on Monday to let you know the latest on the happenings with the school.
We should also have some more information in a couple of weeks regarding other projects the church are interested in us helping with – including sunday school, youth group, tutoring for exams and such like! So the Lord is providing us with many opportunities to connect with the ministry and we would love prayers to help us focus and hear from the Lord on his plans for us!
Speak to you all soon!
God Bless,
G&S x
Shalom!
We have been here for 4 days now…and 2 exciting things happened today! Number 1….
WE GOT OUR PERMITS!! We now have in our passports a delightful temporary employment/ residency permit! Its shiny and takes up a whole page of our passports, exciting!
Since then, we have been on a whirlwind tour of Harare with Pastor Musora as he showed us some of the rural areas and took us to see what could possibly be our first Zimbabwean car!
Secondly, however….IT RAINED! SHOCK! This is unexpected in August (rainy season starts around oct/nov) but it was the first time we have seen rain in Zim so we got excited and stood in it for a moment! Don’t let me hype it up too much, it wasn’t much rain! You will be pleased to know the sun returned shortly after.
Tomorrow we are having our first official meeting with Pastor Musora to go to the government buildings in Harare to officially reigster the school and fill in all the relevant documents. We have today decided along with Pastor Gatsi, that the school will be called’ One Way Pre School’ (the church is called One Way Ministries) So exciting!!
We are aware now of where the pre school will be within the church centre – they have sunday school in 2 rooms just outside the building which are both large and there is a concrete tiered area outside it which we can place outdoor equipment in. So that is a great start!
We have also begun to discuss timings for the school (it looks like a long day!! possibly 8-5!) and we may be starting with around 30 children. This number can grow over time…
We also have to discuss hiring staff, feeding the children, the curriculum, the timings of the day, resources etc….so there is SO much to do! But we are delighted that things are moving along so quickly (many of you will know it often takes a long time for things to be done in any African country so its good news!)
So PLEASE do pray for the continuing developments with the pre school – we need God’s hand over us!
In other news….we had our first Sunday service – it was a churches together service to end the adult conference in a big tent outside, at went from 8.30 – ….2!! LONG SERVICE! But it was mightily fun and full of LOUD worship! The preacher (whose preach lasted the entire length of our normal church service in England) was excellent and we left full of enthusiasm!
We are looking forward to the team from England arriving on Wednesday to begin preparing for the childrens conference (thanks mum!) which begins on Sunday – the first day of which will be on Prayer Mountain!
So to sum up…yes we know its hotter in England at the moment! Thank you to all those of you who have reminded us! However, we are looking forward to it continuing to warm up over the next few weeks!
Please do continue to pray for us at this time, and thank you to all those of you who have commented and sent us messages of support so far! We feel so blessed every time we hear from someone!
Keep checking back for more updates! There could be lots of exciting news coming up…!!
I’m going to post this now before the electricity leaves again and I can’t send it!
God bless, G&S x