Our kids crack me up

At the end of each semester we reward the children who have done really well in school by publicly recognizing them on stage at church and then inviting them to our house for a special evening.   This past week we had 25 children from Kindergarten and Primary school up for pizza, Fanta orange ice cream floats and an episode of Planet Earth. (Slurping is allowed at this party).

While they were eating their pizza we asked them to share with us what they liked best about school.  I thought you would enjoy some of their answers.

Emmanuel: I like Science because we learned about Benjamin Franklin.

Me: What did you learn about Benjamin Franklin?

Emmanuel: He invented electricity.

Me: Where do we use electricity at your house?

Emmanuel: For the electric fence.

Yes, indeed we do have an electric fence around the children’s campus. But I might have thought he would say the TV or lights?

Leah: I liked learning about Community helpers.

Me:  What is a Community helper?

Leah:  It’s people who help other people, like Doctors, nurses, Firemen, Police.  Good people who like to help.

Me:  Good answer.

Ben:  Who was the first child to come to Project Canaan?

Me:  It was Joshua.

Ben:  So then when did Spencer and Chloe come?

The kids were looking in our bedroom window to see if they could see Linda-honey (the cat) under the bed.  One of them asked me if that was my bed?  I said yes. Another asked where Ian slept?  I said that he sleeps there too. What??  All the children whip their heads and looked at me with eyes as big as saucers!  I explained that we are married and when a man and a woman get married then they sleep in the same bed.  Emmanuel then said to everyone, “And they have been married a very long time.”  😂

Me:  Deborah, did you lose another front tooth?

Deborah:  Yes.

Me:  Where did it go?

Deborah:  In the trash.

(There is no tooth fairy at Project Canaan).

I often find myself sitting with Margie or Shongwe or Allen and just cracking up about the things the kids say.  They talk A LOT, ask a million questions and are trying to figure out life.  It’s a joy to be a part of their journey and to be able to love their individual personalities.

A few weeks ago I tried a marketing experiment to see if any of you would be interested in buying an avocado keychain from Khutsala Artisans and in return we would plant an avocado tree on Project Canaan. The experiment was a success and we have the funds to plant 500 avocado trees!  So we are doing it again, this time we want to plant 250 bananas and 250 papayas.  We also want to plant shade trees around the children’s campus as the African sun is very hot and we live in the bush with very few trees.  If you buy our brand new “Rooted in LOVE” t-shirt, we will plant a shade tree in your honor.  If you buy a banana or papaya keychain we will plant a fruit tree in your honor.  Mother’s Day is coming up – perhaps this would be a great Mother’s Day gift for all the mothers in your life.  

 
You can shop today at:
https://heartforafrica.myshopify.com/collections/rooted-in-love-collection

Have a blessed weekend.

Live from Pretoria, South Africa … it’s Starbucks time!

Janine

PS - as a special treat for reading to the end, here is a cute video of the kids getting in to position for their "Rooted in LOVE" video. Yes, Bryan does have them practice before a photo!

 

What is the point?

Dying eggs as they learn about the Easter story

We now have more than 300 people working on Project Canaan.  We have 226 children who call Project Canaan “home” and 150+ children who attend our Project Canaan Academy.  Our agriculture program is now getting started (again) since we have water security and by the end of 2019 we should be growing all of the vegetables that we cook and eat at the Children’s Campus.  The income generating portions of the project (Khutsala Artisans, Kufundza woodcraft, milk, vegetables, eggs and hospitality) will generate 40% of our total operating costs in 2019, and that number will continue to increase as we continue to focus on other opportunities.  We want to be able to be self-sustainable from an operating cost perspective, and we are working diligently towards that goal.  You can see a short aerial video of the project by clicking here.

We are getting there.

Project Canaan is 10-years-old this year and in 2029 we will have our first high school graduating class. That means we are halfway there, but the really hard work has been done. The infrastructure of water, electricity, roads and fields are complete.  We are a city on a hill.  We need to build one children’s home each year and add a classroom on each year for the next ten years and then the children will be heading off to University, trade school or work. And the circle continues.

Land plan up to 2028

All of this is great, and all of it is miraculous, but if that is all we did, we would be missing the point.  Easter weekend is the highlight (and lowlight)of the Christian faith, and without the death and resurrection of Christ our faith would not exist.  Without teaching our children about Jesus, and without walking alongside our Swazi friends and disciplining them in the ways of Jesus, this would just be another humanitarian project that is doing a “good work”.  But that is not why we are here.

We welcome people of all faiths to come and serve alongside us and we respect people who do not believe what we believe. But it is very important to Ian and me that we know WHY we are doing what we are doing.  It is singularly because of our faith in Jesus Christ, and through that faith we have seen mountains move, we have seen the deaf hear, the blind see and the lame walk. 

Sometimes I am hard to love. Sometimes the people around me are hard to love.  But Jesus calls us to love each other even when it is hard to do, and that is what we are trying to do. This year’s anniversary theme is “Rooted in LOVE”.   As we all celebrate this Easter weekend with friends and family, let all of our words be spoken in love and let us all remember the greatest act of love that was shown 2,000 years ago.

If you would like to make a special gift this Easter to bless the children at Project Canaan, please consider helping us build a home for our big girls. We are only $70,000 short of our $225,000 goal.

Click here to make a donation in the US.  

Click here to make a donation in Canada.  

Happy Easter from our family to yours. I hope you will be blessed by this short video from our Thursday night communion service.

Live from eSwatini … He is risen indeed!

Janine

Meanwhile, in Boston, Nokuphiwa is riding camels and elephants at the circus(!)

Avocados = love.

There is a lot going on here and Project Canaan is more than a home for children in need.  Now that we have water security we can start growing more food on the farm, and we want to start our fruit orchards as well.  We currently grow bananas and dragon fruit, but we want and need to focus on the production of food, as we continue our journey to sustainability, and we have hired an agronomist to help us with this.

As more and more children are placed with us through the Social Welfare department, our expenses continue to rise. The children who are being placed with us are arriving in a greater state of starvation and sickness, requiring very specialized diets.  Our children who are under the 10% height/weight chart are immediately put on the “underweight diet”.  Those who are under 3% (many are far below the very bottom of the height/weight chart) go on a special diet we call the “Jonathan Diet” because it was specially designed for Jonathan who arrived almost dead.  We have 28 children on those diets today.  One of the key elements on those diets is avocados, and we can use a lot of them, but they are expensive.

Jonathan upon arrival - July 2017

Jonathan at Christmas 2018

One of our solutions to this challenge is to plant an avocado orchard on the farm with 500 avocado trees.  We have chosen four different varieties so that we will have fresh avocados all year long, providing this wonderful, healthy and delicious fruit for our children and staff.  And if we have the funds to purchase them we will plant these trees during our 10^th anniversary celebration in July.

Here is where you come in. Our Khutsala Artisans have designed and made a fabulous avocado key chain from beads and wire and we are selling them for $12.00. When you buy one of these key chains we will plant an avocado tree in your honor. Think about who you could give a thoughtful gift to today?  Who do you know who LOVES avocados?  We would plant a tree in their honor and you could send them the key chain as a notification of your gift? It’s only $12.00 and you will be providing fruit for life for children in great need.

This is the front and the back of the avocado key chain from Khutsala Artisans

This year we are celebrating the 10^th anniversary of Project Canaan and our theme is “Rooted in LOVE” and what better way to kick this off than with an opportunity to buy an avocado tree, whose roots will grow deep in to the African soil and provide life for our children for decades to come.

Everything we do, we do in love, and we believe that our friends and families support us for the same reason. Why else would you get on a plane and travel for two days to come and serve? Why else would you write a check to help us build a home or a school for orphaned or abandoned children?  Why else would you buy an avocado tree (or 10) for a farm in Africa?  It’s all because of love.  Will you show us some love today? 

Ian just said, “Just think, we will be able to serve fresh guacamole at our 15^th anniversary celebration.”  I like the way the man thinks!

Please shop today by clicking here.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all 500 avocado trees purchased this weekend? 

If you just want to buy trees you can make a donation at www.heartforafrica.org with a note in the “Comments” section that it is for avocado trees.

Thanks for sending your love in a tangible way today.

Janine