This little girl has Downs Syndrome and, due to this condition was born with a large hole in her heart. The hole was too big to heal on it’s own and she needed oxygen from time to time. Last week she was admitted to hospital to have heart surgery. The surgery went well and she was recovering well but picked up infection and passed away a few days later.

Since she was quite severely retarded it’s probably a blessing that she’s gone home to the Father, but her grandparents are grieving and we ask for prayer for them.

Carols by candlelight!

2 of the Lambano children sang this song

The words of the song!

Happy Birthday Jesus

I'm so glad it's Christmas

All the tinsel and lights

And the presents are nice.

But the real gift is you.

Happy Birthday Jesus

I'm so glad it's Christmas

All the carols and bells

Make the holiday swell

And it's all about you.

Happy Birthday Jesus, Jesus I Love You.

Christmas Concert:

Mary and Joseph

The choir

What a lovely concert it was!

The children have done well!!!

11 Of our children received certificates for all the hard work they put in this year! Thanks to teacher Winsome, Rachel, Miriam and Valerie who diligently helped them with their home work!

This year we were worried about our Grade 4, teacher Winsome was not able to help them with their homework, they had to learn to do their homework and study for exams on their own which they have never done before and we thought they wouldn’t cope but they have proven us wrong!

Grade 4 receiving their certificates

She received a certificate for getting more than 80% on maths

Out of all the Grade 4’s he is the only one who got the highest mark in Afrikaans, got more than 80% on his Afrikaans.

Twins arrival!!!

Last week we received this two little angels, they are 2 months old. Everybody is so inlove with this twins!

November birthday!

He turned 6

This week has been a week of colds and fever!

Many of our children were sick this week, including quite a few of the mammas. However even sickness didn’t cause them to stay away from school because they were performing in the school concert.

The school concert was really good and the children enjoyed every moment of it. The theme was “Countries of the World”, inspired by the Soccer World Cup. Each grade did a sequence based on a different country, really foot stamping music and dancing. (Sorry we can’t show you pictures of the children in the concert, but we were not allowed to take pictures)

The hospice children singing!

This little boy has been with us since November last year (see our January post). On Wednesday he turned 13 he was so happy to be able to blow out his candles and have people singing to him.

Mama Lyn's 50th birthday!!!

On Monday we had a party for mama Lyn’s. All the children made birthday cards and came up to the office to sing for her, they even counted up to 50, what a long count

Some of the hospice children giving mama Lyn a gift

Lambano children singing for mama Lyn!

And this girl had a party the next day. She turned 8!

Eli Lilly's CSI workday!

In South Africa companies are encouraged to do a corporate Social Investment (CSI). And as you know South Africa has many homes that need help and it’s really hard for companies to choose which home they would like to do their CSI workday. And that is why we are so grateful for companies like Eli Lilly who chose us.

Eli Lilly's Team

Planting grass

Not much happened this week.

What a long day!! On Monday 3 of us spent the whole day at the hospital with three of our children who had their tonsils removed. All are healing well.

We had a chicken pox outbreak at the hospice and the hospice children have been under quarantine for 21 days and couldn't go to any of the parties/activities or mix with the children from the other homes. Thank the Lord that the quarantine is over and they can now leave the hospice, play with the other children and go to all the parties.

Shopping adventure!!!

Mama Barbara took the two toddlers shopping and as you can see in these photos that boys will be boys! He fell asleep while shopping and obviously as girls we love our shopping.

I’m bored of shopping, can’t we go home

I love shopping

Time to say goodbye!!!

Stephanie from Switzerland

Marie from Germany

For the last 3 months we had 2 volunteers staying with us. Stephanie is from Switzerland and Marie is from Germany. These ladies have been a blessing to us and the children. We’ve been really busy over the last couple of months and they have been a huge help by driving the children to the different schools and therapies and helping with home work and packing our store rooms - this was probably one of the worst jobs for them but they didn’t complain once.

They will be greatly missed!

Winter is nearly over!!!

2 of the toddlers that started swimming!

Winter is nearly over and the children have started their swimming lessons. The 2 toddlers went for the lessons for the first time and they are enjoying every moment of it.

Another school holiday - unscheduled

The school children have been home for a week now because the Teachers’ Unions are all on strike. Whilst most of the teachers at the Wychwood School aren’t striking, there are fears of what the strikers might do to the children if they try to go to school as some of the children who tried to go to school were threatened. We hope that by next week the strike will be over.

Hospice arrival

In the last two weeks we have admitted two nine year olds, both are very sick. One has meningitis and has had to go to hospital to receive specialised IV antibiotics. The course is at least 6 weeks long and the drugs have bad side affects so we had to take a chance and send him to hospital despite the Nurses Unions also being on strike. We could not take him to our usual hospital as the strike there is quite violent, but we got him into another hospital. Hopefully, once he is stable on the medication we will be able to bring him home and continue his treatment here.

Wychwood Fashion show!!!

Our Church had a fashion show on Saturday!!

The Lambano ladies in their traditional outfits.

The children also enjoyed themselves

The catwalk

Posing for the camera :)

The children were treated to an outing at the movies to see Shrek. This was their first 3D movie and they really enjoyed it.

On Saturday we had our first jumble sale. To our surprise many people came and bought the clothes. With the money we got we are able to buy some new clothes for the children. Thank you to all the people that gave clothes and books for this jumble sale.

Mandela day!

Mandela Day is an annual celebration of Nelson Mandela’s life and a global call to action for people to recognize their individual ability to make an imprint and change the world around them. Everyone gives 67 minutes of their time, whether it’s supporting your chosen charity or serving your local community.

For Mandela day, Parrot Company put up a fence around our vegetable patch at one of our houses, and one of the gardens was cleaned up and we had people coming and playing with the children too!

We would like to thank individuals and companies that came on this day and gave their time to play and interact with our children.

The holidays are almost over and it’s back to school!!!

We can’t believe that the school holidays are over. The children had lots of fun running around! The children start school on Tuesday and they are really looking forward to going back to school.

Sad news:

2 weeks ago we received a little boy with terminal cancer - he came for palliative care and, on Tuesday he passed away quietly while watching TV. We are so grateful that his passing was so quick and peaceful. Please pray for the family during this time of grief.

June birthday!!!

He turned 4

She turned 7

He turned 1

Soccer fever!!!

For the last 10 days our church has been running an amazing programme for the children in the community called League of Champions – we managed to get sponsorships for all the Lambano children.

In the morning the children go to the church and play games and learn Bible verses, then they play soccer for an hour. On Saturdays are the tournaments days and parents are invited to come and watch their children play. The children have had a wonderful time and don’t want to miss any of the games even in this cold weather.

Our future Bafana Bafana team

The girls also enjoy playing soccer

Updates!!!

This little boy from the hospice turned 11 on Sunday! He wanted to go to Spur for his birthday and everything was organised but his condition worsened again and we couldn’t take him. Please continue to pray for him.


Updates:

The little boy that went for an assessment on Saturday last week was also accepted to the special school, he will start school in July!!!

God is good!!!

We’ve been struggling for the past few months to get 4 of our children into school. The two 4 year old boys need to go to a special pre-school because of their physical disabilities but everywhere we went we were told that the schools are full or they did not have the facilities for disabled children.

This week we got some good news – we have found placements for three of our children. The 10 year girl that we wrote about on the 07th of May will start school on Monday in a remedial class that will help her catch up with all she’s missed. The other girl and one of the boys have been accepted at a nursery school that integrates disabled children with normal children (we really like this) they will also start on Monday. The other boy will go for an assessment on Saturday to see if he qualifies to get into a school that specialises in cerebral palsy children.

Thank you all for your prayers!

Thank you!!!

The Lord is good! Last week we sent out an appeal for funds to all our sponsors many people responded. We would like to say thank you for your help and love for our children.

Dental Programme:

Smile of Joy is an NGO that gives each HIV infected and/or affected orphaned child in South Africa the foundation for total oral health.

For the past few weeks we have had a dentist coming to work on some of the hospice children’s teeth that had been identified as needing treatment. Some of the children had to have some teeth extracted, but most of the children were really good. Only one 14 year old refused to open his mouth – he’d seen the tray of instruments and he wasn’t budging!

Raising funds for the church:
McDonalds Mcpastor night - This event is to raise money so that the AWANA children can attend a special Holiday Bible Club based on a soccer theme during the June/July holidays. Most of the Lambano children go to AWANA and they love it.

On the night we took 35 of our children to the Mcpastor night to support the church and give them an outing. We had decided that we could afford an ice-cream cone for each child. However, on arriving there, one of the men took the matter out of our hands and insisted on paying for the ice-creams. Each child received an ice cream cup with strawberry, caramel or chocolate poured over it – what a treat!
We would like to thank the people who helped with the children and those who paid for the ice cream. The children had lots of fun.

This little girl has been with us for 2 years and was very ill so she couldn’t go to school because of health problems.

This year we tried to register her at the local school where the other Lambano children go, but the Department of Education told us that they would not register her because she is too old for Grade 1 and they said we had to home-school her.

Our teachers, Bronwyn and Winsome having been working very hard to try to get her ready for school but they’re limited in what they can do because they have the other children in their classes to deal with at the same time.

Since we feel that this is the Education Department’s problem – by law every child has to attend school, we contacted the councillor of one of the opposition parties in our area and they are trying to sort out the problem for us.

We are going to come across many more of these kinds of children as HIV takes a toll on their lives, so please pray that the Government will acknowledge the problem and make plans to help these children.

You got to love SA system!!!

It’s been a relatively quiet week for Lambano which is rather unusual. We did however have to make another visit to Social Services to renew the children’s foster care grant.

You got to love the South African system. The ladies in the office went to Social Services with the documents they had been told to complete, only to be told that the papers that they had filled in were not correct, or another document was needed, or, or, or… They made about 5 visits before the documents were finally accepted. What a waste of time!

Two children were discharged this week and we still have 3 children in hospital. Please continue to pray for these children.

Hospice:

Lyn always says that we need to buy a tent and put it up at Bara hospital. We have 5 children in hospital already. One of the children is been admitted to hospital today.
Please continue to pray for these children!

There is a gap in the office and in the hospice,Jenna ( one of the house mother from England)is sick, she is off for the next 6 weeks. How in the world do we cope without her? As the wise person (Lyn) has said "Africa is not for sissies"!
Please pray for health.

can’t believe how fast last week has gone. On Tuesday Vivian and I were alone in the office and as the day went on we were grateful that the day remained quiet. Lyn arrived on Wednesday and thankfully it was also a quiet day. All the children enjoyed their holiday, running around playing very nicely with each other. The one little boy aged 5 loves to go to one of the other houses where the boys are older so he can some fun time with them. On Thursday one of our hospice children was taken ill so Vivian had to take him to Hospital. Although we thought he should stay there the Doctor said it was not necessary so she brought him back. Unfortunately he got worse so Lyn had to take him back to hospital and only got home at 11pm. Friday was the last day of the holiday so the children are enjoyed their free time with each other. Our children are very busy during the school term, as they go to numerous therapy’s and have a homework teacher from 2 till 5 so I know they enjoyed their free time.



This week is going to be busy with all the children back at school and a lots of clinic visits for the Hospice children.

Sandra's farewell party!!!

Sandra witht the children!

One of our volunteers from Switzerland returned home this week. Sandra was with us for 4 months and it was a blessing to have her here. I know that the children will miss her. Those of us in the office will miss her too, she has been such a help, turning her hand to anything that needed doing, from cleaning out storerooms to typing up the Tax Certificates (and with a smile on her face).

On Friday last week we had a farewell party for her which was really sad for all of us. Thank you Sandra for all the love and patience that you showed to our children.

New office!!!

Last week we didn’t post anything on our blog because I was moving into my new office. We decided to move “reception” (that’s me) into a new office to try and control the traffic through the general office – it’s like a zoo some days!

Our two new storerooms are beautiful and we have enough space to store our medical supplies there too.

We would like to thank Weeshuis Der Hervormden for donating the money for the new office and the store rooms, what a wonderful gift that was.

New store room

The new office

Hospice:

As we predicted, our “12 bed” Hospice would learn to expand. By the end of last week we were up to 16 patients! Luckily we were able to discharge 3 children this week and a few more are ready to go, we’re just waiting on their Social Workers to ensure that they have somewhere to go to.

We know, however, that we will soon fill up the empty spaces because we have been getting calls for admissions that we have had to turn aside because we were full.

These are our two latest admissions:

This boy is 14 years old and very shy

She is 12 years

Our quarterly hospital visits are almost over. The children from 2 of the houses have already been to the HIV clinic and they are all doing well!


Hospice:

Wow!! I was away for a week and when I left we had 11 children in the hospice and when I came back there were 15!

Here are some of the new children in the hospice:

He is 10 years

She is 12 years

She is 7 months

Praise the Lord:

One of the hospice children who's been in hospital for over 2 months is finally back at the hospice and he is doing much better! He is really excited to be back home

Wow!!! This past 2 months we had party after party!

Birthdays for this month!

He turned 15

He turned 9

Turned 9

Turned 8

Turned 9

On the 17th September 09 we wrote about this little girl. In the beginning we didn’t think she would recover but, as always, God is bigger than us. In December she was discharged and went back to her parents. We helped her parents get her into the school the Lambano children come to where she started Grade 4 in January. After school she comes to Lambano and we help her with her homework – it’s a good way to keep an eye on her health too.

She started school this year!

When she came to us!

This little boy was admitted to hospital the day after he arrived at Lambano and has spent the last 2 months there – he was very ill. On Monday he was discharged but, on the same day, we had to admit one of the other children again! Luckily he was discharged 2 days later. Please pray for their health…. Since we opened the Hospice we have been spending a lot of time at the hospital!

Teacher Winsome turned 80 on 1 February and the children were really excited :-) One of the volunteers baked her a banana birthday cake which Winsome kindly shared with the children.