We love North Point Community church!

Today we welcomed a team of eight volunteers from North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA (if you haven’t heard of it, go to www.northpoint.org).  The team has been lead by Hannah Gaddis for the past three years and each year they arrive with more enthusiasm than the year before (which is hard to fathom).

We have hundreds of visitors each and every year at Project Canaan. Some stay for days, some for weeks, some for months, and some end up moving here.  We always try to work with our volunteer teams to find out where their skills sets lay, where they can add value to what we are doing and help us do things better.  Our North Point team is a wonderful example of that intentionality being successful.  Let me explain.

Hannah and her team come from a North Point environment called “Waumba Land”, which is created especially for infants (six weeks) through preschool-aged children. Their aim is to teach these little ones that “God MADE me. God LOVES me.  Jesus wants to be my FRIEND forever.”  When the team comes to Project Canaan they work with our Children’s Ministry team and encourage, equip and train them in teaching our children the same message, in different ways, each week in Children’s Church and at home throughout the week.  It is a wonderful time of fellowship, fun, laughter and prayer for our children.

This week Hannah and the team will not only be working with our Children’s Ministry team, but we will host a special day where two representatives from all of our 31 partner churches will also come and do workshops on “how we minister to children”.  This will be the first time our Pastors will see the silly side of Project Canaan, while hopefully learning new and interesting ways to teach young children about the true heart of God. In country where so many children are fatherless (or parentless), we believe that it is even more important that they be taught how much their heavenly Father loves them and will never leave them.

Our “big kids” greeted the team at the front gate today with a traditional Swazi dance.  The little guy doing the dance in the video below is named Andrew.  He was named that after Andy Stanley, the Pastor of North Point, when he and his wife Sandra were with us a few years ago. Both little Andrew and baby Grace were place with us through social welfare while the Stanley’s were here, and both names were chosen at that time. 

The boy at the front is Andrew - named in honor of Andy Stanley.

May I take this moment to really say a big thank you to Andy and Sandra’s leadership and friendship. Also to the entire GlobalX team for training and sending such amazing people, and to ALL the people who give so generously to the BE RICH campaign each year.  Because of your support of BE RICH, North Point has been able to fund our staff housing building, our green house, a 40-seater school bus for our school and also made a significant contribution to the next Emseni building at Project Canaan. Your prayers, your love and your generosity encourage us each and every day. 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  If you know someone who attends North Point or an associated church, please feel free to pass along this blog to them, with our thanks.

Live from Swaziland … happy to have friends visiting this week!

Janine