Last Day of School Outreach for Term One 2008

The 14th of March 2008 brought to a close about a month of outreaches into local scools. Altogether, over a period of about a month, we visited 125 schools, that have an enrollment figure of 61,915 children (at each school we checked the enrollment figures with the principals). We are so grateful to the Lord for making this possible and for holding back the rain right until the last day, because most assemblies are held outside and rain would have made these gatherings impossibile. To clarify, there are those who go out to preach at schools right throughout the year, but this past month has been a special attempt to reach multiple schools every single school day.

The last day, 14 March 2008, was a major logistical undertaking because the school's assemblies start at approximately the same time - 7:30am or 7:45 am. To drop off co-workers at each school required a lot of planning by our transport department. The school on the 14th were mostly in the Stanger / Groutville areas and were very big. Some had over 1200 pupils.

Overall, we are thrilled with the response. Teachers have begged us to come back again as soon as possible. Some have requested that a team should be sent once a week or, at least, once a month. Unfortunately, this is just not possible because of the many other committments which the co-workers have. Nevertheless, one part of the answer to this is an "academic gift package" which is being put together by CFT with Kwasizabantu and other local organisations, which will be made available to all these local schools. Maths and Science is an extremely weak area in South African schools. We are fortunate in having teachers at our mission school DSS who have developed materials over the years that will be of great assistance to the struggling rural schools. The Lord willing, next week on Wednesday the 19th March, there will be an Awards Ceremony held by the Department of Education (Maphumulo) at the Kwasizabantu Auditorium and  it is expected that 500 teachers plus the Minister of Education for KZN, MEC Cronje, will attend. We will hand over a the "academic gift package" to each of the 47 schools and MEC Cronje. These materials, on CD and DVD contain a wealth of teaching material and prepared lessons, with emphasis on Science, Maths and Life Orientation (with a Christian Worldview), and Evangelism MP3s. In all our visits to the 125 schools we've noticed that the Department of Government has supplied at least one functional computer and printer. It is hoped that the "academic gift package" will be useable on these computers and that teachers will have their skills improved in how to teach and will also print out worksheets and other lessons. The "academic gift package" will also contain the necessary updated software to make the disks functional.

We trust that the seed which has been planted in these 61,000 lives (and the teachers who also attended the assemblies) will bring forth much fruit. Please pray for these precious children and teachers. We were so encouraged to meet so many teachers who said that they made their decision to follow Christ when they were school children many years ago when a Kwasizabantu team preached at their school. After all, we've been preaching in schools for 3 decades! Although we've stopped for this term, since Easter holidays begin next week, there are teams going out on an ad hoc basis throughout the year.

(At the same time, Rev Joe Newlands from Donnybrook, in Southern KwaZulu-Natal, has been preaching to 53 schools over the past 4 weeks. The areas included: Loteni to Coleford; along the Drakensberg, Riverside to Umzimkhulu; Bulwer South and East.)

Some photos of the last 2 days as well as 2 low-resolution video snippets are below. Should you want to read more about the outreaches through the past month you can see [more] here and [more] and  some [more] here as well.

(travelling to schools)

2 low-resolution video snippets