|
Dear Friends, As usual I have fallen behind in my promise to all of you to keep you updated regularly with the newsletters and happenings at ABC Ministry. I thought 2007 was a busy year but 2008 has definitely been the hardest and busiest year we have had yet! 2009 has started off hard with us loosing our original horse, Valentine, whom we rescued 8 years ago, tragically on Christmas day. An unknown person stabbed her in her neck twice and hit her on the head causing her to bleed internally. We still cannot understand why someone would want to do a thing like this as it was very upsetting to all of us. One of our babies, Emmanuel, went to be with Jesus, yesterday and it was a quick death. He was recovering from a lung infection and then just took a turn for the worst. This year may have started off bad but we are determined to make it an even better year than 2008. As I look back over the last year, God’s hand has been upon us and we have walked in victory with Him. He has been glorified and many lives have been touched and changed by Him through ABC Ministry. Discouragement and disappointments may come but “as for me and my house, WE WILL SERVE THE LORD!” We had 25 new babies come in during 2008. Two babies, Travis and Noah, died and went to be with Jesus. Our numbers reached an incredible 48 in total at one time and we opened two new houses: a 3rd house for the 3 – 4 year olds, Thabsile Toddler House, which is a transition house between ABC Ministry and the permanent BMS foster homes, and a 4th house for the 2 year old toddlers, Zachariah House. This has freed up the main ABC house so that we can bring in more babies. Heather and Andy Sullivan joined our team in June, as the house parents for Thabsile House. They have 5 toddlers staying with them and these are the 3 – 4 year olds that we are preparing for the BMS Orphan foster homes. Heather is responsible for helping these children to break from the baby home and move into their new foster homes, where they will grow up. She also gets them more independent and settles them in the pre-school before they are ready to move across. She takes them to visit the BMS homes regularly and to familiarize them with the housemothers and the other children there. Andy is also involved with ZEMA, a missionary outreach to the Zionist Churches. Talitha, Jonathan and Benjamin moved to Matsapha in April, as Jonathan continued to work with Kingdom Builders after he had returned from YWAM and Brazil in March. They then relocated to Bulembu in November as our houseparents for the Zachariah Toddler House, as Jonathan felt that his time with Kingdom Builders was over. BMS were looking to open a dairy in 2009, farming cows and goats and as this is Jonathan’s speciality, he has been employed by BMS to help in this new venture of BMS. The 5 horses have been given back to Talitha and she will be working with the BMS School and doing a horse club with the orphans in Bulembu. Georgie, Timmy and Celiwe moved out of ABC and across to BMS homes and are doing well in their new homes. Siboniso has just been placed into BMS Homes to be with his sister Celiwe. Amanda went for adoption to a lovely family in Manzini and Isaiah was adopted by a Swazi family who have already adopted a little girl from our home 6 years ago. The government approved international adoptions into the USA and Canada and our first 6 babies, Cynthia, Mathew, Phillip, Eric, and twins Amy and Aaron, met their new, forever families, in November. We are presently in the process of preparing 3 more babies, Dianna and Justin who leave us for Hawaii and Kyle who leaves us for Canada, this January. There are another 5 babies to go out for adoption in February and March this year. Gerry and I were blessed with our first trip to the UK in March. It was an amazing experience although a 17 hours lay over in Dubai was more than we could handle. We were able to have a break and meet up with old friends and share our work and ABC with others over there. It was refreshing and allowed us to recharge our batteries. With the move of the toddlers across to the new ABC Houses, this has freed up our private section of the ABC house and has given us a lot more privacy. As it is not easy for Gerry and me to get away for time-out, this has given us a bit more time to be on our own, which has definitely helped me at the end of the day! Gerry has put a door up between the baby section and our private section and we are able to close the door at night and try to relax a bit. We had a few struggles with finances over this year, but God is good and always faithful. He has sustained us and keeps us going. The cost of living has increased so much this year and together with the great intake of babies, our funds were drained, as we also had to employ new staff to help with the increase of numbers and new houses. Our staff now totals 29 workers, which also includes 5 permanent, night staff workers and 9 staff in leadership. We were blessed in June with a beautiful little girl whom we are adopting. We believe that she was promised to us 15 years ago and is the fulfilment of dreams and visions which people gave us back in 1994/95. We believed then that God told us to name her “Keturah” which means “a sweet perfume to God” and so Keturah Athalie, born on the 11 June 2008, has entered the Richter personal family. She is a happy and contented baby and a pleasure to have. Sam and Josh are so excited about their new baby sister, showing her off to everyone and spoiling her to bits. They have been asking us to adopt them a sister for the past year, so God has now answered their prayers. Sam and Josh both saw their 16th birthday in 2007 and are growing into fine young men. Sam is learning to play the keyboard and Josh is amazing on the guitar having been blessed with an electric guitar during this year. Chris was blessed with a full set of drums, much to his joy and my dismay! (We are a baby home after all) He is an amazing drummer and Chris and Josh are a part of our “Praise and Worship” team at church. Chris was also the Head Prefect at school and Josh was a prefect. Andrew went through a difficult period of confusion and a lot of anger, but he has come through in victory, rededicating his life to God and accepting that we are now his ‘parents’ and God has given us to him as his family. He has achieved amazingly well at school, completing 8 grades in just 4 years! We are really so proud of all our children and what they are achieving for their lives. My mom visited us for 2 months in May and June, but missed meeting her 10th grandchild, Keturah, by just 2 days! We have had many visitors move through our home this year and I been able to share our work with church groups, students and tourists. This is always a great blessing to me, as I wish to encourage others to reach out for God’s kingdom and touch lives for Him. God uses ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things! Dominique has been very busy establishing her Website business and has quite a few clients now. Kevin is growing into a fine little man, and settled well into school. He turned 6 years old in December. With her releasing the horses to Talitha, she is more able to concentrate on designing websites. She has also started a women’s group, once a month, for the women in leadership here in Bulembu to meet and fellowship with one another and to be encouraged by an outside speaker. Luke was blessed, by the people in Bulembu, with a trip to the UK in August, to attend a friends’ wedding. He went for a month and had a really great time and holiday. He would love to return again sometime but in the meantime is now employed by BMS as the Information Technician and has plenty of work building programs, repairing computers, looking after the school computers and making sure that the internet system works. He also helps us with our 8 older, permanent children, who live in Daniel House, and he makes sure that they are towing the line and doing their homework and chores. Gerry continues to work very hard at maintaining everything which includes the 3 vehicles and now the 4 ABC houses, plus keeping the kids happy with repairs to their bicycles! He has renovated the bathroom, built a shower-room and laid carpet squares in the lounge, at Daniel House. He helped with the initial repairs and painting of Thabsile House and we painted and decorated Sam and Josh’s new room. We re-decorated a room for Keturah and he also laid new carpet squares in her room. He also helps around the village when he is able to, and is called upon by the other missionaries here, fixing TVs, fridges, stoves and washing machines. He put up an electric fence around the horse paddock to keep the horses in and the stray stallions out. The list of “things-to-do” is endless! All in all, it has been an exciting and challenging year and we all look forward to an even more fulfilling year this 2009. God bless you all and thank you for taking the time to read about our happenings and to pray for us. A great big “thank you” to all you have supported us in any way and helped us to care for these special children God has given to us to look after. Much love and best wishes P.S. Just received a new baby boy today, Peter, who was found as a newborn in the bushes on Christmas Eve. He is so precious and tiny, just 2.2kg! |