AIDS is no longer just a disease, it is a human rights issue. It affects people of all ages, but in particular it affects young people in Africa. For the sake of all of them, we must act, and act now.
-----Nelson Mandela

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
James 1: 27 (ESV)

To our dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from our home in Foster City! We are excited to share our upcoming trip with you so that you too will be able to experience together with our family what God has in store for us as we travel to South Africa this summer. As some of you might know, we had hoped for some time now to travel with our family to serve those who are in need wherever God lead us and at the right time for our family. As Henry is now finally approaching the end of his fellowship, and with Calvin no longer an infant we decided to be open to opportunities that might come our way.
During our church’s Mission’s Awareness Month, we had the opportunity to have George Snyman and his wife come from South Africa to share the vision of Hands @ Work and to hear it from them first hand. Not only that, our family was given the honor of hosting dinner for them and personally getting to know them and what led them to starting Hands @ Work. It was amazing to hear from them right in our own home about how God decided to change their life course from having good jobs and a nice home to“making their time on earth count”. Being the more passionate and emotional person, I was already on board to go and see what they started and how with my hands I could help. More importantly I too wanted to respond to caring for others especially those most in need; the orphans and widows. And I wanted to live soberly and as a good steward of all the blessings in my life. We shared with the Snyman’s about how we wanted to visit and serve all along thinking that God would somehow provide care for our 3 children while we were taking this big trip together, but to our surprise, the Snyman’s were amazingly so open to us coming as a family. Of course we had our hesitations especially with Calvin being so young, but we did not know that God had this in store for us and at that moment I knew that God was already leading the way for us to go together as a family. You see, this is so very important for us to share with our children what the other side of the world looks like. Here in the Bay area, we have everything and more that we need. Henry and I of course like most parents want to give their kids the very best in everything, but a trip like this would be priceless in showing them that we have so much and that we can be stewards and be responsive to the needs of others. After the Symans left, Henry and I talked about how some people without much or any effort just exude God’s presence and they were certainly ordinary people overflowing with God’s presence. I told him excitedly that I wanted to go, and he simply said, OK. That was it. We decided together that night and God has so far provided for us financially to purchase the tickets and has already given us an opportunity to share about our trip to Juliet’s class.

So to our dear family and friends, it is with great joy that we share this journey with you so that you too can hopefully partake in our experience prior to, during, and after our trip.

The following our some of our concerns if you get a chance to pray for us:

1. Please pray for our departure on July 12th at 10pm from SFO. We will be connecting in New York the following morning, and leaving from JFK at 11:29am. We will then arrive in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. From Dubai we will travel to Johannesburg, South Africa, which is a few hours drive from our final destination Mpumalanga. This is by far the longest travel time for our entire family. Juliet and Noah have been generally good fliers, but we need a lot of prayer for Calvin who is now very active!
2. Recognizing that our time there is limited, we hope that all our family can somehow play a part in sharing the riches of God’s love to the orphans through our affection and presence. Please pray that Juliet, Noah, and Calvin would treat the children as their friends and as a result both be blessed by the relationship.
3. We hope to come back with a broader perspective of the world and our place in it, that we would realize that God is so much bigger than our limited understanding. We want to extend what we learn there to make a difference in our lives in the States.

Vision of Hands @ Work

The local Church in Africa effectively caring for the dying, orphans and widows, and unified in this mission with the Church outside Africa.

Core Values of Hands @Work

We are Christian
We are committed to the body of Christ
We value people
We are committed to the poor
We are responsive
We are committed to local community ownership of projects
We are stewards
We are partners

To learn more about Hands @ Work please visit their website at www.handsatwork.org