2009 Accomplishments

A year-end Summary 2009

The Beacon of Hope Board of Directors are extatic about the progress that has occurred in our AIDS education program during 2009. BOHI continues to seek partnerships with other public benefit organizations and churches both here in the USA and also in South Africa.

The HIV/AIDS Education program:

Our Partners:

Our primary partner in this program is Campus Crusade for Christ who is responsible for producing the training material we use. We are working with them in three Campus Crusade Regional offices at present (Richards Bay, Durban and Pretoria). The second level of partnership in this training endeavor is through local churches. They are the backbone of the training program and provide the abundant supply of volunteers that present the student seminars at the high schools.

Church Partners:
Richards Bay tri-city area.

• Living Stones Covenant Church
• Meerensee Methodist Center
• Calvary Baptist
• Outlook Community

Soshanguve (Pretoria) In Gauteng Province since 2008

• Ebenezer Fellowship. Bishop Dr. Elias & Dr. Zodwa Gomba.

New partnerships this year.
Greytown

• Pastor Patrick & Doreen Zondi in Greytown

Sohanguve

• Klipgat: Pastor Andrew Matlala
• Winterveld: Pastor Johannes Joey Baloyi

US Churches:

We are comtinueing to seak out churches across the USA that will particpate in out annual mission trips to South Africa. As the AIDS education program expands into new geographic areas it is essential that we have new blood to help us inspire new geographic areas to adopt the program.

Transition to year round program:

Number of students that received AIDS education in 2009 up by 232% over 2008.
2004 100 students
2006 1332 students
2007 1270 students
2008 2095 students
2009 4865 students

Total 9708 students

Sohanguve April Report

1. CONTINUED TEACHINGS AT BQTSE-BOTSE
When the schools closed for the Easter holidays, the team took a 3 weeks break and resumed with the teachings on the second week after the schools reopened & the team managed to conduct teachings to 82 pupils at Botse-Botse high school.
2. SPIRITUAL FOLLOW-UPS
After the teachings had been conducted the team is engaged in the Spiritual Follow-ups at the assembly twice a week and in the Student Christian Movement during break/lunch time at school. The team is also intending to set up the teams in the schools by identifying 1 or 2 students per class who have the potential to carry out the task to do the follow-ups in their respective classes. These teams will be trained for this duty, the teachings will be held at the office and refreshments and transport should be organized for the attendants.
3. PARTNERSHIP/NETWORKING
On the 24th April the team was part of the awareness campaign organized by its partner Soshanguve North Cluster HIV Campaign Organizers. The Better Choice team had established a partnership with the S.N.C.H.C.O. The organization work together with organization such as Love Life, FPB, Life Line, Institute of Health, Heartlincs and Soulbuddyz. Heart lines is the programme that deals with values on the national TV 6 weeks annually and continue with the promotion of values in the community, Soulbuddyz host a teenagers drama on AIDS and values on South African Broadcasting Corporation channel 1(SABC 1).
The S.N.C.H.C.O conducts its programs at school whereby they educate the pupils, their parents and the community about HIV and they also conduct voluntary HIV test.
4. THE IMPACT OF PARTNERSHIP
Whenever the S.N.C.H.C.O hosts events they always invites the team to perform the story of Thandiwe, which is dramatically changing the lives of the adolescent, teenagers and young adults pertaining their choice and dreams, they learn how life can be horrible to live by making wrong or bad choice and how HIV can dash their dream if they are not careful and not informed about this dreadful disease. The team also gets the opportunity to make known the program of better choice to the pupils and their parents, teachers and the community at large and this also grant the team an access to conduct the teaching at the same school.
5. FUTURE PLANS OF THE TEAM
There is a great demand of training from different churches of Cross Bearers Ministers Fraternal, so the team is hoping to conduct at least one or two workshops before the end of this month. The team and the Soshanguve North Cluster HIV Campaign Organizer are planning to host a big HIV/AIDS awareness campaign at our church, Ebenezer Christian fellowship centre for the church and the community at large.
We so much keen to know when I you coming to Soshanguve and how many persons are coming so that we can be able to arrange the dates at school and accommodation for the visitors, find attached to this letter the quotation of the projector kits and compare it with Dawie's
Kinds regard
ZODWA (SMART CHOICES - SOSHANGUVE)

Hope by Jan Krist

Eyes wide open ... Hope, Trust, Faith, and Love

REPORT FROM SOSHANGUVE

You might remember that the project in Soshanguve got started last year as a result Zodwa getting married and moving to Soshanguve where her husband pastor Elias is an evangelical preacher. Zodwa brought nine young adults to Richards Bay to get trained in the Smart Choices program with our 2008 mission team. The following is the Soshanguve report written by Zodwa Gomba.

Office
2009 has proved to be a year of success and a bright future. We have been praying for an office where from the Soshanguve, Mabopane, Winterveldt and Mathibestad Ministries would work. In January God provided us with a beautiful and spacious office in the centre of Soshanguve Township. The rent is R2200 ($220) per month. We have started using it. We are sharing this office with Pastors’ Fraternal of Soshanguve. Through this networking we are going to serve our community. There are different ministries involved, Better Choice, Prison Ministry, Counselling Ministry, Discipleship training and Jesus Film. Dawie Peterson got us a sponsor who has paid the rent money for us for six months in advance. We trust God for further renting.

Training
We have had Better Choice training for five-days. Four members have joined our team. During our Easter Conference we will be training members from Victory Fellowship Church from Soshanguve under Pastor Ndala who was deeply touched by the program as well as members of our church (Ebenezer).

Teaching
We have started teaching in Tsibogo Secondary School. Teachers begged us to teach all their Grade 10 Students. We have done 2 classes and are left with 3 classes. Both classes went very well. We have decided to take a video camera and interviewed the Class Monitors and President of the School. They were deeply touched by the lessons. They were also excited about the fact that the School only started teaching grade 10 this year and they are the first Grade 10 group to be taught at that School, that coupled with the fact that America has had its first Black President, they consider themselves blessed to be sharing a coincidence with such a great country. So far this year 94 students from the Tsibogo School have received Smart Choices training. We are targeting 18 Schools in this township. There is a follow-up group from our church who will be running the spiritual movement in every school taught.

Projects / Networking
We have joined hands with other organisations dealing with HIV/AIDS Program. On the 13th February we visited Phakamonola School where all stakeholders were invited. HEARTLINES AND LOVE LIFE & BETTER CHOICE teams. I did a presentation about Smart Choices and afterwards the team dramatized the Thandiwe story to show how bad choices can affect one’s future. The whole day was set apart for an AIDS campaign. Love life team was giving blood tests to the community members & our team also went for testing.

Orphanage
Thank you very much for supporting the children. You are making a huge difference in their lives and your support is shaping a brighter future for them.
Sthembile and Minenhle are now with us. The reason we took them is that she failed her grade 8 and we realised that it was due to my absence. Minenhle was sickly and often absent from school. We may now bring the rest to Pretoria, (Sno, Phiwe & Skho). They all want to come and stay with us, we are renting the house we are staying in but we are in preparation to buy a new plot to build an orphanage.

Prayer Requests
• Pray for a computer, printer and fax machine in our new office
• Rent which is R2200.00 per month
• Pray for transport. At the present moment we are using one car, which takes only 4 people to the schools whereas we have 10 members.
• Pray for a projector. We are using one of the members’ TV set, we are afraid it can get damaged.
• Pray for the house where we can live with all the orphans, we are currently staying with 4 orphans and we have more in our church
P.S. Would you please print T-shirts for us since we’ve already started and the ones that we have are worn out as they are worn 3 times a week, we will appreciate that a lot.

Meet Zodwa & the Soshanguve team

sIn the last three months newsletter we have introduced you to our three team leaders from the three cities surrounding Richards Bay and this month we want you to meet the team from Sohanguve. Zodwa Ntuli is one of the first two Campus Crusade missionaries that has been working with us since 2004.

You can read a brief biography about Zodwa on our website. In 2008 Zodwa brought nine members of their church congregation down from Sohanguve to Richards Bay to be trained and to work with us for the two-week program at the schools. They also ran a two-week long tent evangelism ministry in parallel with our program so they were busy little bees doing our program by day and the tent evangelism by night. All of Zodwa's team members are in their twenties and are passionate students and followers of Jesus. We were particularly touched one of he team whom we call Lebo, her full name is Lebogang Moloi. Susan wrote a piece about Lebo and her faith in the August newsletter but I want to tell you the story about Lebo's vision.


Let me preface the story by saying that Lebo lost both of her parents to AIDS in about 2000-2001 when she was still a teenager. In her words this left her completely destroyed to the point that she dropped out of school and had no ambition to do and further studying. Just before our trip last year she was reading her bible and praying and she had a vision from God of herself standing in front of a class of high school students and teaching them. She was completely mystified by this and couldn't imagine how she could gain access to the schools or what she would be able to teach the students. She tried to put it out of her mind and go back to her reading and praying but she got the same vision again. Shortly after this incident she heard about the group of young adults that Zodwa was taking to Richards Bay to do the AIDS training. She went to Zodwa and asked her if she could go on the trip because she had a vision from God and she knew that she was supposed to be on the trip. Zodwa told her that they were only taking two cars and all the seats were taken so there wouldn't be any room for her. Lebo was so convinced that she was supposed to be on the trip that she wasn't going to take no for an answer. She started to pray that some how some way she would be able to go with the team to Richards Bay. This went on until the day before the team was due to leave and Zodwa called her to say that one of the guys that was supposed to be on the trip could not get leave from work so there was a seat available for her.

Please watch the Lebo video to see her tell the rest of her story in her own words.

It is our hope and prayer that we will be able to present Lebo with her own set of equipment when we go out to South Africa in August. This will cost about $800. If anyone feels led to make this happen your gift would be gratefully received.

We will have more news in the March newsletter about the developing partnership between Zodwa's team, the Pastors fraternal from Sohanguve and Campus Crusade Head office in Pretoria

Playing For Change: Song Around the World

Program expands to Durban

New England, USA Mission Trip to Durban, RSA

After the pilot Better Choices program to Richards Bay in July 2004, a group of twenty-one people from four New England Churches were inspired to repeat the program in Durban. There were four to six people from each of the New England churches. Each of these churches were partnered with a local South African church and assigned a school that they would present the program to.

See the web site created by one of the trip participants documenting the activities of the trip.

2006 Trip to Durban website