love in action

Here are my Grandsons with Angel....a little girl of two that the family was taking care of yesterday. Angel is HIV+ but with her medication the virus is almost undetectable. Please pray for her healing. Also below is an article taken from their church website about a trip with my daughter Vashti to the shelter...her place of 'work'

Love in Action – Shelter Visit

15 October , 2012

On Thursday 18th October seventeen ladies from Hillside Church accompanied Vashti Downs on a visit to the homeless Shelter on Pickering Street, near Point Road in Durban. We took "love hampers" collected together by ladies who were not able to join us – gift bags with toiletries and chocolates – and spent time praying and connecting with the ladies and children. (The men in the Shelter were pretty jealous and wanted to know if we would bless and pray fro them too!) Tanya Tedder tells us how the visit impacted her:

"Amazingly I was not afraid at all! Beforehand I prayed that God would allow me to have a significant encounter with just one person and God responded by giving Melinda and myself a heart-to-heart connection with a whole family – a precious family of six people living in one tiny “room”. My heart broke for them. There was one very small bed and the three older children slept on the cold hard, concrete floor. Whilst we were there, I saw a number of cockroaches crawling up the wall, and apparently rats crawl over them while they sleep. And yet, they were a loving, close knit family: a husband and wife who were childhood sweethearts and have been married for 22 years. Due to circumstances, they found themselves jobless and homeless. They have been living in this particular shelter for about two years with their four children ranging from 3 months to 11 years. They pay a shocking R60 rand a night to stay there (that's R1800 a month for a dirty cubicle that is not even secure against theft). They are not allowed to be in the shelter during the day so they have to take the four children out and walk the streets begging for food and for enough money to pay for the next night's rent.

 For me, it was a life-changing encounter. As long as I live I will never forget this brave, loving family who despite the most difficult of circumstances had hope in their eyes. Emam is a Muslim man and he accepted our prayers with sincerity and humility. He has been searching for a job to be able to support his family and get them out of the shelter. We asked him what his dream job was, and he said he would love to get a job in welding. That is his passion and his skill. We are trusting that these prayers will be answered. They said that they had met a Christian man on the street the day before (a complete stranger) and that everything that Melinda and I had said or prayed for was exactly what this man had said. We believe that God wanted to remind this family that he loved them; that he had not forgotten about them; to give them hope. I will never forget seeing God’s love for this precious family and they will remain in my heart and in my prayers. I will definitely go back to the Shelter.  Vashti, I salute you. It was a privilege to be a part of your dream."