Danielle got a call last night that the Principal at Orleansville does not want the team to come again today because the students are behind in school from yesterday. In order for the Orleansville students to catch up.The Orleansville team will go and work with the homeless in Paarl and feed them as well as street sweeping.
Jacque handles the homeless ministries and does outreach with them. The MCM homeless vision is: “With the authority of Jesus Christ and as an act of worship to God we undertake to do what we can to ensure complete restoration forthe homeless in the Drakenstein Valley”.
They have the homeless who would like to work and get paid to come to MCM house daily, they choose 5 individuals to work and sweep the streets of Paarl in exchange for food and money. They get compensated per hour and the homeless work for 4 hours. Attendance is taken so that they can see who comes regularly and they eventually want those who Jacque and his team see fit to go out and get more standard jobs to be supported to do so.
There are three phases to the Ministry for the homeless:
1st: Getting them off the streets, fed and learning about God. Basic necessities.
2nd: Rehabilitation: working with the homeless to get permanent shelter and reach personal goals. Work on trying to find some type of employment and to learn basic skills such as money management or reading.
3rd: Reintegration: the homeless not to be without a home anymore and get them permanently settled back into normal citizen routine with a job and home and living a healthy life style. It is great what Jacque does and you can see his passion when he speaks. He really wants to help and convince them that they are loved by God and they can do anything to get through the difficulties.
Peter is the foreman. He is 58 years old and he will be the leader in what we do and where we go. Everyone is required towear a neon yellow or orange vest and cap. The words “Jesus Saves” is on each vest and cap, very hard to miss.
The dream team has so much energy as soon as they were given brooms they start singing and dancing in unisome. It is awesome! They are cheerful and entertaining. With them there is never a dull moment.
We start right outside the coffee house and continue going straight. The streets are not so bad but there are cigarette butts so we would sweep that. Some people would hold garbage bags and the rest would be holding either a broom or a dust pan made out of milk jugs or something similar cut to be able to scoop.
After debriefing, we go back to the MCM home and regroup with the homeless. Jenn leads devotion with the team and then we do soup kitchen and feed the homeless split pea soup and two pieces of bread. The food is provided by the MCM food center. They are very thankful even though they just swept the streets and all we are doing is handing out the food, everyone is very thankful. We feel good.
We’re off now to the food center. It starts out with a tour. Basically it is a big warehouse with multiple rooms, one for baking and the other is for making soup. We first tour the storage are with shelves of dry and canned foods. The local government mandates what food the children are to be provided on what day of the week. The food center has these big pots that cook large amount of soups. The soup is given at schools as well as some for the soup kitchen. The food is made daily and delivered daily to the schools. The government pays for the food supplies.
Tonight during debrief we have a group activity called the human knot. Basically, in a close circle everyone grabs someone hands and from that point we have to undo the knot we have created with our arms but weaving through and jumping over one another.
I started reading a book last week called “Not For Sale” about slavery and human trafficking for different reasons. It is such a great book, I am reading it every chance I get.
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