Greg and Sophie Sangwine

Christmas is a really nice time of year and it is usually one of the busiest times but the last week or so has probably been the most relaxing time Sophie and I have had in Zimbabwe to date. We’ve eaten some great food, watched some movies and sat in the sunshine playing games and reading books. We’ve not been in to work except to use the internet. One of the best things about having spare time has been being able to spend time with friends.
There are some amazing projects happening in Zimbabwe. Stories like ours are repeated by other overseas workers in areas like health, farming, evangelism, community projects and orphanages. But there is a problem occurring, causing these people to be forced to leave Zimbabwe due to their visas being declined. I want to share with you a story we’ve heard recently.
There was a family working here who own a business, own a house and are tax paying people with a permanent residency visa. 2 kids born in Zimbabwe, wife and him have lived here for 10 years. Aside from residency, he has needed one month work permit extensions for over a year and then suddenly is told they have 6 days to leave. I cannot imagine what it feels like having to take your 2 young children and wife away from their home, their jobs and their schools. I’m told that this is happening all over the country at the moment as immigration protocols are tightening and it is people that are serving God that are affected.
It gets me thinking about our lives here too. We’ve been given a work permit until October 2014 when so many others continue to just be given month extensions. It really makes me think that we need to make sure what we are doing is the best it can be and not to waste the opportunity we have been given. Please pray for a fruitful 2014!

So, today is Wednesday, and I do feel that Wednesday is a good day for a Blog from me!

This normal Wednesday has come in the middle of a not so normal week. For those of you I have not grossed out with a photo and intricate details, I had a rather eventful Monday this week, which involved me being attacked and bitten by 3 guard dogs! A normal morning of arriving to pick up my teaching assistant and her children from their house, turned into a day of blood, hospitals and extremely large bandages! (Which were not entirely necessary for the hole the dogs tooth had created, but the nurse insisted for prevention of infection!) After the initial shock, which lasted a little while, I spent the day resting at home, or at least attempting to rest – I was very bored and I am a fidgety person at the best of times! It was a pleasure to have my Pastor turn up at the house to pray and anoint me with oil and to then hear that the children at One Way Pre School had been praying for me throughout the morning in their praise and worship and bible teaching times. So a horrible experience turned into a slightly more pleasant one knowing that the people I work with and for were so supportive and that spending the year teaching the children how to pray, had turned into a blessing for me!

Aside from some rather large bruises and the small hole, I am well on the way to recovery. My arms feel like I have done a workout due to the 3 injections I was given, which I have to have a further two in one week and 3 weeks. This does however mean I can get the children to do even more tidying up than normal to ‘help their teacher’!

This week has also been a struggle in terms of general house problems such as TV not working properly and generator burning out half way through a film and so forth, however these are very minor problems and are in fact, being fixed as I type this, on this rather normal Wednesday!

We are excited to be teaching and practicing numerous plays and memory verses and songs for the One Way Graduation ceremony in less than 4 weeks, so it is all very busy at school and trying to prepare Grade Zero for graduation as well as keeping Nursery learning and entertained is proving busy, but rewarding. I am very tired (struggling a little to sleep without seeing large dogs in my head!) but the beauty of having 50 children charge at me in the morning for good morning cuddles is enough to keep me going!

We are also in the process of putting together a timetable/ plan for our teacher training course in 4 weeks time (4th/5th Decemebr) which we have 30 spaces available, 20 of which are already filled. Myself and Greg will be teaching on planning, assessment, health and safety, curriculum, indoor and outdoor learning and many other aspects of Early Years Curriculum including how to use the natural resources in your environment to teach with, without needing huge financial support! So I am slowly going crazy in my head thinking of how I am going to talk to a group of 30 adults when I teach reception aged children for the reason that know how to talk to them!! But all will be well, especially well if you are able to kindly donate small donations towards this training course as we would like to be able to offer it for free to all participants as they come from some less fortunate circumstances. (Please see support page for how to!)

The weather is all over the place, my wardrobe doesn’t know if I am in winter or summer clothes, the rains pretend to come, then disappear, the sun is hiding then full on sun stroking and my hair is straggly from the dustiness…so at least in England you can rest in peace knowing at least you KNOW its probably going to be cold tomorrow! (Please note, this is very light hearted weather moaning, I am English and feel it is my duty, but really I am thoroughly enjoying outdoor playground duty in the 30 degree heat!)

So thank you for your time reading my ramblings, I am sorry they do not flow chronologically or anything of that sort! Enjoy your Wednesday, and if yours turns into an extraordinary day, do fill me in on the details!

Much Love, Sophie x

We’ve had such a strange time since our return to Zimbabwe 5 weeks ago. It’s been the most uncomfortable few weeks since we first arrived. Our challenges have mounted due to visas, new children at school, finances, electricity (serious lack of), water shortages, the hot weather and other things. The thing is though God has richly supported us through these 5 weeks. We’re stronger because of it And I think that’s because we are uncomfortable.

When I think about it it is because God hasn’t wanted me to be comfortable. My relationship with Him is always stronger if I’m finding things difficult. For example back in the summer of 2008 I made a decision to go back to uni to complete my degree, I felt God tell me it would be hard and I would find it difficult but that he’d support me and I trusted in Him. Over that next 12 months I got my degree, my finances were in order and I had a stable girlfriend who I knew I wanted to be my wife one day. It would have been easier for me to stay in Oxfordshire and give up on the degree but God wanted me challenged, he believed I could do it and He rewarded me.

Another example of finding things difficult and succeeding has been found with this project. I won’t detail the things we’ve achieved by the grace of God in the last few months but they’ve exceeded our expectations. We exceed our expectations as well because I’m not sure if I really believed we’d have been the success we have been. God has blessed us even more when we’ve felt uncomfortable.

Below are 6 things about my life that I don’t find easy but find incredibly enjoyable about my life:

1) Living in Harare- London is full of culture, eateries, drinkeries, sports and cinemas and life in Zimbabwe is much slower and more mundane. I’m growing to love the slower pace of life.

2) Dealing with a different culture- Particularly with being on time or ‘saving face’ rather than saying what you mean, Shona culture can be a struggle. But like number one, I actually love the fact there is less pressure on timing here.

3) Being the bosses- In my last job I worried about my classroom and my kids and my work load and trust me that was enough but here we’re reliant on for everything. I vow now never to complain about a boss ever again.

4) Teaching pre school aged children- Everyone I worked with had a little chuckle to themselves when I said I was dropping down to teach reception and I know why. I’m a duck out of water but I’d feel confident that if Ofsted worked in Zimbabwe I’d be given a “good”

5) Constant hot weather- I’m not a sun worshipper or a tanner- I burn A LOT!! ….Enough said…

6) Being away from family and friends- I miss everyone a lot.

7) Being part of an African Pentecostal church – I wouldn’t say I have a denomination. I’m a christian. That’s it. I’ve loved every church I’ve been too for its own way of worshipping and experiencing God but our church has to be the craziest I’ve ever been to. It’s such a challenging environment to be in. Sunday services which last 5 hours, 3 mid week meetings and prayer retreats. Admittedly we don’t attend nearly everything but our church here certainly doesn’t always make me feel comfortable.

Without God I would probably have never chosen this path for my life. But I’m glad God told me what to do because He knows me better than I know myself. Because He chose a path for me where I can do good for other people whilst I grow closer to Him.

When I was a little boy my mum told me I’d stamp my feet and throw my cricket bat or kick the goalpost if something was hard. I’d just give up. I’m glad I’m not a giver-upper as an adult because the challenges of the past few weeks and years would have certainly floored me.

It’s not all doom and gloom. I believe i’ve had quite a few WOW moments in between the challenges that are there to encourage me. Firstly we’ve been able to do up our house a little and make it more like a home. Secondly we bought a generator to make our life easier so we can now have some tv and lights on. Finally, today my class showed some amazing progress in addition- they were little superstars and I couldn’t have been prouder. We have also received word of 3 visitors between now and christmas, so have much to look forward to.

What I’ve learnt from my challenges is that God just has high expectations of us. He believes we can do things that we don’t believe we can. The head teacher I used to work for challenged me to challenge myself as much as I challenged the children in my class. One day I told her I couldn’t do it and she simply said: “Greg, firstly I wouldn’t have employed you if I didn’t believe you could and secondly if you believe you are much more likely to succeed” I admire her today for what she said to me and I think that is how God feels with us. He gave us a mission to complete, when it’s hard he’ll help us to achieve it. Not merely change the goalposts and lower His expectations. I think God wants Mabelreign, Harare to have an outstanding pre-school and that is why we won’t be leaving here until we are done. The challenges I have mentioned will not stop us from achieving our goals, they will just make our achievements all the more rewarding.

To finish I’ll illustrate (as I often would) with a sport related question: If you’ve played a game in the past and won, is an easy victory from start to finish more enjoyable than one where you snatch a last minute victory from the jaws of defeat? For me the last minute winning goal in a 3-2 win when you were down 2-0 has always given better feelings than the easy 3-0 win.

We have been back ‘home’ for over a week now and we’ve had the pleasure of Josie staying with us. We went to a safari park over-night and I rode a horse for the first time in about 20 years. I’m sure checking Facebook over the next few weeks will fill you in on what we’ve been up to.

It feels like we have never been away from One Way Pre School because over the holiday’s we have had our playground extended to double its size and added a new jungle gym for the children to play on. I think the excitement was summed up by Sophie this morning when she said that one the boys was going round and round on the merry-go-round and staring at the new equipment having not noticed it straight away. We thank our administrator for all her hard work over the holidays because she certainly has not had one. (To see some pictures of the new playground then access my twitter @GSangwine and why not follow me whilst you’re on there. Be warned of some angry QPR, football related tweets though.)

It is also amazing to see how they’ve grown. Having not worked with such young children before I am shocked at how quickly they grow. We met a 2 and a half year old girl when we arrived in Zimbabwe, she knew no English and only communicated with us through ‘huh’s’ now she is speaking English, correctly correcting us and half a foot taller running around the playground counting to 10.

We also had 3 new registrations so our school now educates 54 children aged between 3 and 6 (32 boys and 22 girls). 54 kids – beat that Beckie Bowler!

Prayer requests:

–          General health. Sophie and I are very well but Josie has been feeling unwell and many people in our church are struggling at the moment as they cannot afford to go to the doctor.

–          The children at the school. Please pray the new 3 settle in and that the 20 children leaving us to primary school find places quickly.

–          Visa’s: Sophie and I have had month by month extensions to our visas for 4 months now. This current extension runs out on October 2^nd so please continue to pray for an outcome to the visa application we applied and paid for in April.

–          One Way Ministries: The church we run the school for is going through some changes. The lead pastor was married recently after being widowed in 2011 so please pray for them. Also anything we do in the future must come from the church leadership so please pray for them as they seek God’s will for our future.

–          Water: We are very lucky to have a permanent supply of drinking water to our house through a bore hole but the rest of our area is really struggling with water shortages. We got some water back today but I’m told the school hasn’t had any for 3 weeks. As you can imagine running a school without water is very difficult indeed.

We are fast approaching one whole year in Zimbabwe, and one of the nitty gritty bits of living here, is needing a visa! We were fortunate to be provided with a one year TEP which ran out in June, we applied for an extension around 3 months ago, which is still in the process of being approved as the immigration office seems overrun with applications at this time so we are being lost in a mound of paperwork. We were given a one month extension, which runs out this weekend, we visited the immigration offices this week, and have been given another one month extension, until the 10th August. As we are returning to England, this means we will now have to pay to enter the country on our return with a tourist visa, then in September, return to the immigration offices and hopefully our TEP visas will be approved and stamped into our passports. The good news, is that the visa lady has said our one year visas will start from when they are stamped in our passports, not from the date we applied as was previously thought. Please do pray for our visas, as you can imagine it is a little stressful not knowing!

We are returning in 2 weeks to England for a 5 week holiday – this was originally 4 weeks, but due to elections schools are closing early so we changed our flights to give us an extra week at home! We are extremely excited to see everyone and spend some time visiting the places we miss!

Whilst we are away, there are a few projects happening at One Way Pre School. The plumber will be returning to plumb in some urinals to cater for the many many boys we have here. The playground is being extended, with new equipment, a sand pit and a tyre road! The kitchen will be having some cosmetic work done and hopefully we will be advertising for registrations for 2014! Please do pray for our administrator who will be overseeing the work whilst we are away.

2nd term nearly over…time flies!

x

This month we have reached another milestone! We have now lived in Zimbabwe in every calendar month! We got very excited, and celebrated with a cup of tea! (it’s the simple things in life!) As we look to a second year here, there have been some developments lately that we would like to fill you in on.

Firstly, the school extension. As you will have read from previous posts, we have been in conversation with the Pastors of the church, to discuss the possibility of opening a second set of classrooms, and expanding our outdoor area, to grow the capacity of the school from 60 to 90/120. The proposed plan would have been to open a new class in January. As positive as the initial discussions seemed to be, the Pastors have decided that at this time, they do not wish for the extension to go ahead. The church itself is in some financial difficulty and the school will for the near future, be supporting them. Naturally, we are slightly disappointed at the decision as we were fondly looking forward to expanding, however we are now able to focus on continuing the adult education of the staff members we work with to ensure the current school is sustainable and enabling the children taught here to receive the best education possible.

We are hoping that as we are now not working towards an expansion project, we are going to be looking into converting a space into a self contained flat, which Mission Teachers from England, would be able to come and work in Zimbabwe for a year, living and working with One Way Pre School and travelling the country also. So please do pray for this project to have a clear focus and wisdom in how to achieve such a thing!

Secondly, and excitingly, we have mentioned in previous letters, that we wanted to meet with Sean, another local church pastor, who runs various projects within different communities working with orphans, schools, unemployed, homeless and people with difficult circumstances. We were fortunate to be able to discuss last night, a few options for how both of us can become involved in these projects also.

On the 17th July, Greg and I will be spending the day with Sean, in a community called Hatcliffe. This is the most deprived area within the city of Harare, the background of which we will update you on once we have visited and can detail a broad picture for you. We will be visiting the schools, churches, homes and hospital areas in this community, with our main focus being on how we can support the pre-schools with daily routine, planning and using their environment and everyday objects as resources!

We are very excited to be taking this next step in our mission here and are blessed to have the opportunity to expand the communities with which we are working. Please do pray for us on this day, as we will be seeking wisdom as to how we can best serve the Hatcliffe community as a couple.

Finally, its 4 weeks until the end of our second term!! We cannot believe how quickly time flies and we have so much to do before then! We will then be returning to England for a month to visit friends and family and hopefully spread more information about the work we are undertaking here in Zim. So please do try and meet up with us, we would love to see and speak to as many people as possible, as without your support, we would not be able to achieve anything!

God Bless xx

For point of reference, here is an example of the school classrooms in the Hatcliffe community we will be working alongside.

As part of the One Way Pre School project, we not only want to offer the best education we can for each child that passes through these doors, but we want to ensure that they continue on in education once they leave us for Grade One. As you will know, education is not free in Zimbabwe and everyone must pay to receive it. The prices vary depending on schools and therefore many children do not complete their education. However, on the flip side, some children who wish to have education, cannot get it, not due to lack of finance, but through demand for places. Government schools are considerably cheaper than private run schools and therefore demand for the government schools is high – they often have at least 40-45 children in one class and still have reserve lists.

We are keen to partner with different primary schools, to ensure that we are guaranteed a certain number of places in each school for the children who leave us after Grade Zero. One of these schools, is a government run school a few hundred yards up the road from our pre school. The headteacher of which, is coming to our school on Tuesday morning, to check out our curriculum, our children and other aspects of our schooling. In order for him to decide if his primary school, will partner us officially, and offer us a currently unknown number of guaranteed places for Grade One each year.

This is a hugely exciting prospect for One Way Pre School, as if we can offer a guaranteed Grade One place, parents will have an even greater incentive to send their child to our Pre school, to receive the best education they can before they move on to primary school.

Please pray for us at this time (especially Tuesday morning!) as we meet and discuss the future with the headteacher.

xx

We had the pleasure at the weekend of inviting work people and their families around to our place for an English style BBQ. I have noticed that an African Braai is more for those on the Atkins style diet. They actually Braai huge steaks and mountains of other beef to eat with Sadza and an array of fatty sausages. Something I actually really love. Despite this our spread of Beef burgers, pork sausages, chicken, our soon to be famous potato salad, pasta salad, Sophie’s salsas and what i’ll call an English salad all went down really well. It was a lot of fun and a pleasure to have them all round to our house. We have such a large space so it does seem a shame to not share it. Apparently in shona culture you do not ask people to come over to your house. You just expect them to turn up. I’m glad people don’t do that to me, not because I don’t want their company just because Sophie and I are pretty careful with what we buy so we’d have to travel to the shops to pick up some more food if people did just show up. We ate food and the kids got to play together in our huge garden while the adults got to relax properly after eating too much.

We are hoping to make these social events a regular occurrence as we continue to try to grow the One Way Pre-School and then the Hope For Harare family.

Below are a few snaps of our BBQ day where you can see the food, the children playing and Zvido on the swings. I also use this a public apology to my wife who always ends up behind the camera rather than in the pictures! Apparently this fact makes me useless husband. I AM SORRY!!!

Today, I am thankful for the continuing provision God gives us to enable us to persevere and expand our work here.

We have just taken another registration – for January! Already, we have around 5 applications for the new year and are barely half way through this first one! We have the possibility of opening a 3rd classroom- allowing for 60 nursery and 30 grade zero children, taking our capacity to 90…insane! Please pray for this development to reach fruition, as we are looking like we will need the extra capacity!

Greg is currently sat in the next classroom, teaching Lorraine how to use a computer – for the first time! She is extremely excited to have the opportunity to learn basic ICT and we have 4 laptops provided for the school which we use to teach the children and hopefully provide support to our staff in their studies also.

Lorraine has almost finished her ECD (early childhood development) certificate course, and will be continuing for a further 6 months to turn it into a diploma. She has exams in June/July so do please keep her in your prayers, your support is vital to her success!

Our newest member of staff, Patience, works 5 days a week from 8-1 as a teaching assistant. She has now also enrolled to start the ECD certificate course in July and will hopefully take this further to a diploma after as well. We need funding for both Lorraine and Patience and your support is hugely appreciated, not only are we educating 3-6 year olds, but adults too! We could not have imagined the difference further education makes in the lives of adults here, and we are so pleased to be able to support them.

We are looking in the next few months at finances and how viable expansion will be for January. We have a lot of building works which need to be done over the August holiday, including a wall, drainage and modifications to the boys toilets. Again, we are praying for extra funding for these to go ahead, as they are important to the day to day running and safety of children at One Way.

We thank you for your prayers and encouragement and please do keep in touch, we love feedback and conversation!

xx

As you may be aware, in order for us to remain in Zim each year, we have to have a visa which enables us to work for the ministry and reside here. We apply for a Temporary Employment Permit with residency.  This costs us $500 each, for each year, so $1000 each time!

We were under the impression initially, that we would just be able to renew our visa each year, however, it turned out that as ourpermits are temporary, we have to re-apply each year! This is quite a long process and involves a lot of paperwork. We mustered everything together, and found that our visa expires in 7 weeks, and the process can take 6 weeks…so cutting it fine!

After around 10 trips back and forth between the visa place, we finally had everything they requested. We were then told, that the process would mean our visas run out on the 22nd June, they wanted us to go on the 21st June and see if they had approved us, if they had, great, if they hadn’t, they were going to charge us a further $110 to get a 3 month tourist visa while we wait for re-approval of the TEP! Stressful.

We sent one of our Pastors with a final document to the visa building 2 days ago, he returned with an envelope.

Incredibly, we have already been approved, and in a couple of weeks we need to return to the visa building and get them stamped in our passports! So we are officially here until June 2014 with these new visas. Such a huge weight off our minds as the thought of having to leave the country was weighing heavily and we did not want to do that!

So thank you to all those who have prayed for swift effective approval, prayers have most definitely been answered!

x

To celebrate, here is a picture of Spike, the Warthog.