Miracles happening over the hills and far away

This blog is dedicated to all the wonderful people who spent 5 days at Emakheni Primary (also known as Dumisani’s school) in July earlier this year. The school that you drive and drive over the hills to get to.....and then keep driving!

So you wondered what could be done in five days?

Were you amazed when we levelled an uneven area into a playing field, built a vegetable garden per class with the kid’s help and installed a jungle gym and sandpit for the students who had nothing to play with during break time? Did you think it was incredible that we built shelves in every classroom, we ran bible and life skills classes for each class every day and that the kids loved playing Kingdom Youth for Christ soccer on their new field? And were you touched when we participated in a concert and braai on the last day with grateful children, parents and teachers? Through Christ all things are possible!

And did you ever wonder during those “moments” whether it was all worth it?

When you were still digging the foundations for the jungle gym after 4 hours, when the “soil” for the vegetable garden looked a lot like chunks of rock and clay and when the kids kept pocketing the red and blue crayons when you were trying to teach them about life in England??

Well, a bunch of us volunteers returned to Dumisani’s school a few weeks ago as Liezl and Lilandi Scheepers were performing their 10 plagues puppet show extravaganza. As we drove up the hill to the school, the kids waved as they recognised the Good News of the Kingdom of God magnets on our cars! As we drove in the new entrance on the right side of the school (no longer do you have to brave the toilets just to drive into the premises), we noticed that grass had been planted on the playing field!

Kids were playing around the field, the sandpit was full of sand (which they had obviously taken care of) and there were trees planted here and there from an outreach day Westville ecclesia did a few months ago.

The kids were all over the jungle gym and the paint on the slide has actually come off due to constant use! The swings have to be secured up the top of the jungle gym when break time is over just so the children will eventually go to class!

But the vegetable garden was the most awesome thing. We thought we had cleared a large piece of land to build the 8 class gardens…..well, the school has extended the garden and it now runs all the way down to the fence in depth and right down to the toilet block in length – amazing! And that is not all……the soil was (wait for it!) producing vegetables in abundance – onions, carrot, cabbage, turnips, beetroot, you name it! They now have extra watering cans and long hoses to make care of the garden easier so they can sell the produce to the community and fundraise for the school. We left the garden with a bag full of vegetables grown out of that soil we thought would require a miracle to grow anything. And maybe it did require a miracle!

We chatted to Brother Dumisani and he explained how the locals are now keen to send their children to his school, due to the flow-on effect of P2P in terms of the locals perceiving that the school is helped and nurtured by others who care. And Sunday school courses are going to be run for the children to help them learn about God!

As the kids lined up to welcome us and we helped fit them ALL into one classroom to watch the puppet show, we could hear some of them singing “talk together, talk, talk together, talk together….all about the Lord”.

And we knew that God had been working in this small, rural school long after we left on the last day of P2P in July.

Leah Egginton, Australia

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