{"id":741,"date":"2010-10-20T06:37:15","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T06:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html"},"modified":"2010-10-20T06:37:15","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T06:37:15","slug":"on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m back in Swaziland today. Swaziland is a tiny kingdom inside of South Africa. Actually, I&#8217;m about 1,000 miles from Cape Town, the site of the 2010 Lausanne Congress. As that meeting unfolds and focuses on the challenge of world evangelism in the 21st century, our team will visit rural carepoints serving children whose lives have been devastated by HIV\/AIDS, poverty, violence, and abandonment. <\/p>\n<p>While the Lausanne delegates will gather in a convention hall for fellowship, music, drama, teaching, and planning, the members of our team will gather beneath humble roofs to serve meals of fortified rice and beans to the poorest children on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>And on that topic, I wanted to bring you a direct report from our field director in Swaziland. Thank you <a href=\"http:\/\/jumbogerber.myadventures.org\/\">Jumbo<\/a> for putting together this great list of all that the ministry partnership between Adventures in Mission, Children&#8217;s HopeChest, and our sponsorship partners has accomplished in 2010. To God be the glory:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ArticleBody\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0in\" type=\"disc\">\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">Currently we just added another carepoint and are now serving 25 carepoints in total.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">3180 kids have a place of safety during the days and have access to food and medical help, if needed.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">Roughly 60% of these kids are<br \/>\ngetting discipleship every week and hopefully we can raise that number<br \/>\nnext year with getting more D-Team members. <\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">We started a school fee scholarship<br \/>\nthis year where kids can apply for school fees if maintaining a B+<br \/>\naggregate. We were able to help quite a few kids this year.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">The school that was started in<br \/>\npartnership with the government at Bhalekane is giving education now to<br \/>\nGrade 1 to 6 and next year grade 7 will be added. <\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">We have hosted 14 trips this year for sponsoring churches and connect communities. There were also 4 vision trips. <\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">With hosting 14 carepoint trips, we<br \/>\ndid 14 fun days where the kids received a special meal of meat, rice,<br \/>\nveggies, salad and cupcakes. We probably ordered about 1950 cupcakes<br \/>\nthis year. And we will do it again for Christmas!)<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">With the help of many of the churches and connect communities about 830 children were provided with school shoes.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">100&#8217;s of letters from sponsors were received and translated, a few 100 letters were send back from the kids<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">With the help of Luke Commission several clinics were held that gave approximately 4000 people some medical help.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">The team down here has delivered more than 550 tons of food so far this year.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">8 wells were drilled this year and<br \/>\nwe are in the process of installing either solar or electric pumps so<br \/>\nthat the kids can have access to clean water.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">Various capital projects were done<br \/>\nthis year including 8 kitchens, 4 latrines, 2 multi purpose buildings, 2<br \/>\nplaygrounds, a big church at Enaleni, fencing at various care points<br \/>\nand we are 30% finished with a big bathroom\/shower project from Capo<br \/>\nBeach Church at Thembeni carepoint. <\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\">Our staff has grown in numbers! <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/span>While I&#8217;m here in Swaziland, I invite you to submit your questions and thoughts via Comment here on the blog and I will answer them in follow-up posts. Let me know what you want to know about what HopeChest is doing here on the ground, and I&#8217;ll post the answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m back in Swaziland today. Swaziland is a tiny kingdom inside of South Africa. Actually, I&#8217;m about 1,000 miles from Cape Town, the site of the 2010 Lausanne Congress. As that meeting unfolds and focuses on the challenge of world evangelism in the 21st century, our team will visit rural carepoints serving children whose lives&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,20,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-christianity","category-current-affairs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions! - Red Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions! - Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m back in Swaziland today. Swaziland is a tiny kingdom inside of South Africa. Actually, I&#8217;m about 1,000 miles from Cape Town, the site of the 2010 Lausanne Congress. As that meeting unfolds and focuses on the challenge of world evangelism in the 21st century, our team will visit rural carepoints serving children whose lives&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-20T06:37:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tom Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions! - Red Letters","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions! - Red Letters","og_description":"I&#8217;m back in Swaziland today. Swaziland is a tiny kingdom inside of South Africa. Actually, I&#8217;m about 1,000 miles from Cape Town, the site of the 2010 Lausanne Congress. As that meeting unfolds and focuses on the challenge of world evangelism in the 21st century, our team will visit rural carepoints serving children whose lives&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html","og_site_name":"Red Letters","article_published_time":"2010-10-20T06:37:15+00:00","author":"Tom Davis","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html","name":"On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions! - Red Letters","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-10-20T06:37:15+00:00","dateModified":"2010-10-20T06:37:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#\/schema\/person\/c78d22af30aa2e0860a621fadf855b92"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/10\/on-the-ground-in-swazi-ask-your-questions.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On the Ground in Swaziland: Ask Your Questions!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/","name":"Red Letters","description":"Christian, Christian Inspiration, Christian News, Christian Activism News","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#\/schema\/person\/c78d22af30aa2e0860a621fadf855b92","name":"Tom Davis","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b5c\/b5c5842c5b6dd6c51062873d0bb1dfafx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b5c\/b5c5842c5b6dd6c51062873d0bb1dfafx96.jpg","caption":"Tom Davis"},"description":"Tom Davis currently serves as CEO of Children's HopeChest (www.hopechest.org), a global orphan care ministry headquartered in Colorado Springs. A tireless advocate for fatherless children, Davis has spent most of his adult life calling U.S. believers to become the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the 143 million orphans living around the world. Through those connections, thousands of orphans now have the bright and hopeful future--one that is filled with opportunities and the love of the one true Father. Davis speaks hundreds of times each year at churches and conferences, mobilizing the church to action on behalf of the poor. He is the author of four books. His most recent novel, SCARED is a fictionalized account of his first-hand experiencing living and working with orphans in Swaziland, Africa. Davis' blog is the premier resource for the latest developments in Christian orphan ministry. Davis also currently teaches courses as adjunct professor at George Fox University in Newberg, OR. When not traveling the globe, Davis resides in the mountains of Colorado in the small community of Palmer Lake. He and his wife Emily have seven children, including two adopted daughters from Russia.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/author\/tdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}