I’m back in Swaziland today. Swaziland is a tiny kingdom inside of South Africa. Actually, I’m about 1,000 miles from Cape Town, the site of the 2010 Lausanne Congress. As that meeting unfolds and focuses on the challenge of world evangelism in the 21st century, our team will visit rural carepoints serving children whose lives have been devastated by HIV/AIDS, poverty, violence, and abandonment.

While the Lausanne delegates will gather in a convention hall for fellowship, music, drama, teaching, and planning, the members of our team will gather beneath humble roofs to serve meals of fortified rice and beans to the poorest children on the planet.

And on that topic, I wanted to bring you a direct report from our field director in Swaziland. Thank you Jumbo for putting together this great list of all that the ministry partnership between Adventures in Mission, Children’s HopeChest, and our sponsorship partners has accomplished in 2010. To God be the glory:

• Currently we just added another carepoint and are now serving 25 carepoints in total.
• 3180 kids have a place of safety during the days and have access to food and medical help, if needed.
• Roughly 60% of these kids are
  getting discipleship every week and hopefully we can raise that number
  next year with getting more D-Team members.
• We started a school fee scholarship
  this year where kids can apply for school fees if maintaining a B+
  aggregate. We were able to help quite a few kids this year.
• The school that was started in
  partnership with the government at Bhalekane is giving education now to
  Grade 1 to 6 and next year grade 7 will be added.
• We have hosted 14 trips this year for sponsoring churches and connect communities. There were also 4 vision trips.
• With hosting 14 carepoint trips, we
  did 14 fun days where the kids received a special meal of meat, rice,
  veggies, salad and cupcakes. We probably ordered about 1950 cupcakes
  this year. And we will do it again for Christmas!)
• With the help of many of the churches and connect communities about 830 children were provided with school shoes.
• 100’s of letters from sponsors were received and translated, a few 100 letters were send back from the kids
• With the help of Luke Commission several clinics were held that gave approximately 4000 people some medical help.
• The team down here has delivered more than 550 tons of food so far this year.
• 8 wells were drilled this year and
  we are in the process of installing either solar or electric pumps so
  that the kids can have access to clean water.
• Various capital projects were done
  this year including 8 kitchens, 4 latrines, 2 multi purpose buildings, 2
  playgrounds, a big church at Enaleni, fencing at various care points
  and we are 30% finished with a big bathroom/shower project from Capo
  Beach Church at Thembeni carepoint.
• Our staff has grown in numbers!

While I’m here in Swaziland, I invite you to submit your questions and thoughts via Comment here on the blog and I will answer them in follow-up posts. Let me know what you want to know about what HopeChest is doing here on the ground, and I’ll post the answers.