It was a great pleasure to meet a group called NCDPZ – National Council of Disabled Persons of Zimbabwe, Sanyati branch. They have about 150 members with a whole range of disabilities. They have been given about 2 hectares of land by the local council to make use of and plan to do various projects to raise income.  This they will use to assist each other and others with dissabilities whereever the need arises.  As of yet they haven’t been able to do a great deal due to lack of funds.  They had started to build a toilet, laying the base but did not have the funds to purchase 3 bags of cement and 1000 bricks needed to finish it. We were only too happy to fund this for them and hopefully they will have their toilet built soon. (The first Ratidzo sponsored toilet!). They were visably shocked and so thankful not expecting us to help after being given so many promises of help from others before.  We look forward to hopefully working with them and supporting them further in the future.  They have so many needs from wheelchairs & crutches to sun cream and eye drops for those with albinism.  Every little bit we can do will go a long way in helping this group who genuinely want to help theothers.

A strong sweet smell of honey drifted from our hive and we couldn’t wait to inspect and see how the bees had been getting on. They had sure been busy, unfortunately they had built across the bars rather than along them.

This is not uncommon, after all they are wild creatures and do what they like despite our best endeavours.  This though makes it very hard to lift individual bars and inspect and a few combs broke off.  We were advised to tie a comb straight along one of the bars and hopefully they will follow this going forward.

We did managed to harvest just a drop of honey to taste and look forward to a full harvest later in the year and thankfully we didn’t annoy the bees too much.

For a full update on our bee project, please go to http://www.beeagainstpoverty.com

A mother came to see us with her daughter in desperation a few days ago. Her daughter should have started form 1 at secondary school in January but she hasn’t managed to pay the first term fees of $84.  Offering to do any work we had if we could help.  Not having any need we thought about if and how we could help given that we don’t just give, we were happy that she came asking for work in return for us helping.  We did however find out she has cow peas (something we add to our poultry feed mix).  So we agreed to pay the school fees in return for 4 buckets of cow peas. We are happy to say the daughter is now back at school.

It’s a pleasure to be able to serve God and this community, something we can only do with your help. Please don’t stop, you are helping to change lives.