#sharehope with an "essential" person

These are difficult days.  As we sit in the relative safety of the mountain top in Africa, we can’t help but feel helpless watching the news, knowing that our friends and family are struggling. Ian and I are “fixers”, and we can’t fix this global pandemic, so we have been asking the Lord to show us what we can do, and we got an answer.  About two weeks ago I really felt the Lord telling me to be intentional about encouraging others on a daily basis through social media.  So, I started posting daily videos on my Facebook page and Instagram pages that would hopefully bring a smile to my friends and families faces.  Below is a short video that I posted this week of baby Treasure and I doing a video selfie. 

On Thursday I had a video call with of our US team and asked how we at Heart for Africa could serve as encouragers to the world.   We obviously don’t have volunteers traveling to Eswatini, we can’t have meetings and fundraising events, and those things are what the US team does on a day to day basis.  Heart for Africa’s focus is to bring HOPE to the Kingdom of Eswatini in the areas of Hunger, Orphans, Poverty and Education, but now we must expand our efforts to bring HOPE to the world. 

So, here is one of the ideas that the team came up with.  What if we could provide a way to share hope with one another through Khutsala Artisans product?  They quickly created a special page with all of our HOPE products and we are asking you to consider ordering one of those products and send it to a front line “essential” worker who is working at a hospital, pharmacy, grocery store or any other essential position.  We will insert a special card that tells that special person that the gift is from YOU.  For as little as $10 you could bring a smile to someone’s face and let them know that you are thinking about them.  I will start by sending this HOPE bracelet to my cousin Carelle McKellan who is a Public Health Nurse in Canada and she is dealing with 400+ COVID-19 patients in the Fraser Health system. Carelle, we are sending love, prayers and thanks to you and all you are doing.  Stay safe!  

Please note that our Khutsala warehouse is in Michigan and product will be shipped from there, but we have limited quantities and we are not able to ship more product from Eswatini as Khutsala Artisans have all been sent home and airlines are not flying any non-essential product.  The good news is that if we sell a lot of product during this time, there will be work for our Artisans when they are able to come back to work. 

Some of you might be wondering how Spencer and Chloe are doing and I wanted to give you an update. Spencer is working in a consulting firm in Chicago and can do so from the safety of his apartment.  We are thankful that Jane and her puppy “Swazi” are nearby and they can spend lots of time together.  Chloe is finishing her last year at Brock University, but just started a job on Monday making COVID-19 testing kits!!!  Can you believe it?  She does her school work during the day then works from 4PM to 11:30PM at a biotech company called Norgen Biotek.  Two nights ago her team made 22,000 kits and they posted an hilarious video to celebrate. You can see it below.   We are so very proud of our two children and miss them so much.

 

 

Spencer working at home

Please join me in shopping, post a photo of yourself with your own Khutsala product and use our #sharehope hashtag to help spread the word.

Live from Eswatini … sharing hope.

Janine