The Aphiwe community center was launched on the 25th of March. It was a great day and the culmination of 2 months of hard work by the builder and various other volunteers that was incredibly blessed by God. Once the builder finished all the modification work there were three weeks left during which volunteers (local and oversees) did a mountain of work which included general cleaning up, landscaping, rubble removal, laying instant lawn, painting, designing and painting two murals, cupboard installation and a multitude of little touch up tasks. there were four days in particular where specific work teams got stuck in for six hours at a go to get all the work done. It was all great fun and we never fell behind schedule. It was also amazing how God helped us with some problems that arose but they were sorted out very easily and quickly.
The P2P group that was involved included the following people : Jonathan and Megan Sabo; Liezl Scheepers; Hendri Viljoen; Christy Beyers; Mat Collard, Laura Iderdale, Phil Ashcroft, Naomi Midgley, Leona Scheepers, Llewellyn Scheepers. It was a very rewarding feeling once all was completed to look at the end result compared to what we began with. We all felt that it was a little miracle that went down when you consider how many factors had to fall into place for the new center to come into existence and that it happened in such a short space of time and within the budget!. We are also very exited about the interest in the centre by the local residents and the many of them that expressed a desire to attend the Bible study's we will provide there.
We plan to have the centre fully operational as from the 1st of May. There will be a lot of free education provided - this will include Bible education. The center will also serve as the "HQ" for the CUDDLE project that has really grown huge in the last two months. It was great that the 5 crèche teachers that are very involved with the CUDDLE project could also attend the launch. We got the impression that the management team from Auto Page who attended the launch were very happy and surprised with the way the center turned out. There is a good chance that we will get continued involvement from Autopage in the future in the form of staff members volunteering to help with the maintenance and education the center will provide. During the launch four speeches were made by the following people respectively: Mr. James Rutherfoord (MD of Autopage); Mrs Tswalepello Mello (Health Inspector of the particular section of Tembisa in which the center falls); Mrs. Kalina Mazibuku (Head of the Tembisa crèche association) and myself (as representing the COP Trust.) It was the speeches made by Tswalepello and Kalina in particular that made us realize how much our work in the past has meant to the people of the area and how privileged we were to be God's instruments in this way. We all felt motivated to continue to do as much as we can for the community in the future.
The last part of the Aphiwe project that was finished was a beautiful mural on the back wall done by Christy Beyers and it quite aptly has the following text in the left bottom corner - "To God be the glory forever" - We all say a loud "AMEN!" to that.
Lucas Scheepers
On behalf of the 2010 team here in KMP
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