CYPSA Open Letter to Rev. Erlo Stegen
CYPSA would like to thank you Rev. Erlo Stegen, the director of KwaSizabantu Mission, for the help and compassion that you are showing towards grass-roots level communities across South Africa.
As the drug addiction epidemic hit South Africa, CYPSA worked to find a way to help young people across all racial groups, cultures and creeds to escape the clutches of these drugs.
Your support to CYPSA enabled us to provide a free 21-day Restoration Programme based at KwaSizabantu Mission for those struggling with drug addiction. Since the inception of this programme in 2007, you have been providing free accommodation and meals to those who enrol in with us.
Thousands of young men have been helped in this way. This Restoration Programme has in turn impacted numerous communities across South Africa, and even government departments now ask us to assist them to support communities in various ways. In order to assist these departments in their fight to combat drug addiction, you donated a vehicle to CYPSA.
You have given your life for broken lives to be mended. Lives broken through domestic violence, drugs, pornography and more. Not only have you helped those harmed by these societal ills, but you have also supported many young people by providing opportunities for them to complete tertiary studies or acquire various other skills, so that they can in turn support their families and children.
Although some have set out to destroy this work, we have found in Reverend Erlo Stegen, together with those who have the same vision as him and who help others on a daily basis, the spirit of the compassionate Samaritan. He has many a time drawn deeply from his own pocket to assist others and in order to reach out to the wounded and broken found along the way.
How wonderful would it not be if more would follow this great practical example of self-sacrifice in Christian ethics and learn from Rev. Stegen’s daily life.