Serving While Sequestered

4/22/2020

Confined in a filthy prison cell in Rome, Paul encouraged the church and wrote some of the greatest instructions on the believer's family and community life that we have. What an inspiration for us as we try to minister to our Pretoria area community during strict lockdown!

Over the last month of quarantine, we've been able to find a few creative ways to carry on. Mike has taught worship classes via Zoom from our living room. We recorded video devotions for Hatfield Young Adults that appeared on social media last week Monday through Wednesday.

Chandra has reached out to various teachers and parents via phone and text message, checking in. Berakah has also connected parents in Mamelodi with nearby government food relief services so they can get food parcels.

Food Security Challenges

Berakah's community is struggling for food due to the increased joblessness, difficulty with travel, and fewer available resources created by the Covid-19 lockdown. We are trying to come up with solutions, but we're running into roadblocks. Please pray for Berakah to have a strategic, responsible, legal solution to feed the families in our area. Specifically, we need 1) a certificate from government giving us express permission to operate as a food security provider; 2) resources for food parcels for 125 families, which will cost on average $3000 a month for the next three months.

Answered Prayer!

With Berakah forced to close for lockdown and as such no income, we found ourselves unable to pay our staff's salaries. About two weeks ago, Chandra applied to South Africa's Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) on behalf of Berakah. We just received payment from UIF for more than the entire salary requirement for payday--which is four days from now. Hallelujah! We are so grateful to be able to care for our staff and their families!

Online School

We're grateful to Hatfield Christian School, who converted all of the kids' classes to online school in time for the beginning of the second school term.

Creative Spaces

What do you do when you're in the same space for weeks on end? Improvise! A few times we've converted our stoop to an outdoor coffee shop for creative family time.

Thank you!

Our sendng team is helping us with our work now and positioning us to get Berakah and other projects running strong once the lockdown ends. Thank you so much!

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