The new playground

We just hosted our final team for the year.  We had 24 people staying with us at our headquarters on Shikwaru Game Lodge.  Six were from Coon Rapids, Iowa and nine from a church in Stockton, MO. Many things were accomplished with this final team.  We constructed a jungle gym play ground for our orphan children in Zebedelia.  We hosted a community optical outreach and saw about 500 patients on the property where our Abod orphan village sits.  At the end of this team we had a big community celebration marking the completion of our first orphan project.  The village chief, mayor and several other community leaders were in attendance.   We will be moving our first group of eight children in the first week of August.  Maxwell who works with our ministry will continue making gradual improvements in this property over the next several weeks.  We would like to build a gazebo type shaded area to protect the children from the hot summer sun. This project has been a long process, but we are so excited to see the children moving in and starting a new life.  

Team member Erin Zink spends some time with her new friends

We have made lot of progress in our feeding program over the last few weeks.  We are currently providing food for 10 drop in centers in Polokwane and five in Mokopane.  The Rotary club in Polokwane has been great help to us is identifying needy children and drop in centers that are functioning well to feed needy children.  The main area that the Rotary is helping is in storing our food and helping transport it out to various drop in centers.  We are currently providing food for approximately 1,000 children each day. Meals from the Heartland and Rotary of Iowa are pledging to help provide one million meals to our ministry each year.  Each of the children receives a large full plate of rice mixture. In addition when possible we add some of the game meat from Shikwaru Game Lodge.  This last week we had some wonderful Kudu meat from a successful hunt of one of our team members.  

Since completing our Moletlane Children’s village, we are now ready to focus on our next orphan project. The next orphan project will be the “Del Cramer Campus”, named after Beth’s dad. In this new campus we plan to build a drop in center for 150 children and a home for 24 children along with their care givers.  The orphan home will be divided in to two homes of 12 children each with their care givers.  We have been meeting with the traditional chief and his counsel governing this area and they have graciously agreed to donate 15 acres for our next project.  This will give us adequate room for the drop in center, a recreational area and the orphan home.  We will also have space for some farming of corn, a vegetable garden and some live stock for the children to learn to care for and to provide food for them.  We hope to start construction on this new village in February 2011.

We can’t believe our time in South Africa is already over for 2010. We have posted 2011 trip dates on our website and can’t wait to see where the Lord will take the Ministry next year!

 May 2010

As I prepare to leave South Africa after four months, I look back and am so thankful for what we have been able to accomplish. There is so much left to be done, yet we are excited be home and see family.

This last four months seem as though it was more of a sacrifice to be away than usual. My mother was hospitalized two times with serious episodes of pancreatitis and my father went through major heart bypass surgery.  By the grace of God both of them are doing well again but it was difficult to be 9,000 miles away during these stressful times. I am looking forward to spending some quality time with both of them soon.

Our oldest daughter Christy, and her husband Dave, have made the decision to relocate their family. They will be moving from Ankeny to Southern California where Dave will be attending seminary.  I am proud of their obedience to God’s calling on their lives but disappointed that our three grandchildren will not be living in Iowa. Although we are rarely there any more ourselves, it is still home to us. Beth and I really miss spending time with our grandchildren and watching them grow up. Our son Dustin graduated from DMACC. We were unable to attend his ceremony but we are so proud of his accomplishments and all that God is doing in he and Rene’s life. Kelsey is doing well; I am looking forward to getting back and spending some quality time with her.

We are excited to see the Lord moving in South Africa! To share briefly, nearly 3,000 children were given a new pair of glasses and taught life skills and AIDS prevention during our four optical outreaches.  We established a new partnership with the optometry college here in Limpopo. This will give their students and professors the chance to help us with our optical outreaches.  We did our first outreach in Swaziland and are establishing a NGO to work more with their Teen Challenge center and orphan projects there.

 Des Moines University sent over 24 Medical students who completed a one month clinical rotation at the provincial hospital in Polokwane.

Five American physicians traveled to South Africa to help us train 120 African doctors at our International Medical Conference in April. This conference was a great success; we are excited to see where it will go in the future. 

We have completed our first orphan village and eight orphans will move into the project in July. Here they will be housed, fed, trained in life and career skills, as well as the chance to attend a public school.

We had our third annual pastor’s training conference where 40 South African pastors were trained and encouraged.

Our feeding program has grown to where we are now feeding over 500 children.  We not only feed them physical food but are also offering children’s programming, teaching them English, life skills, career skills and spiritual training.

We have made many new friends including a traditional chief who oversees over 300,000 households here in Limpopo.  These new relationships will open many doors for us to work in the schools and various government agencies. 

We have two more short term mission teams coming to work with us in July and August where we will building our second orphanage, a playground for the children, do a couple more optical outreaches and get the team involved in helping us with programs at our feeding stations. 

We are building a new home for two South African individuals who have begun working for us to help care for the ministry campus. They really appreciate the upgrade in the quality of their housing.  The conditions these workers had to live in before were extremely poor.

Our ministry will have a venue at the Iowa state fair in August where we will showcase our orphan housing and feeding programs. Our goal is to raise some financial support for these projects as well as encourage Iowans to join us on a short term mission trip.

April 2010

We had a wonderful day celebrating Easter at the church in Moletlane, where we just completed building our orphan village. We were hoping for a nice sunny day, although overcast skies would be in the forecast. We felt the rain approaching as we walked into the small village church. Pastor Chalke went outside, during service to check on the weather. He came back in reporting that the rain would be coming and advised that we take shelter in the new church. There, a recently completed roof would give us better protection from the rain.  Minutes later, a real gully washer commenced and with the new corrugated steel roof it was almost impossible to hear what the pastor was saying. The message was the same message being preached around the world this morning that Jesus had risen from the grave.  None of us could hear what was being said, although it was familiar. It seemed as though God had sent the rain to send us into the new sanctuary to celebrate this Easter. 

We are also celebrating the completion of our orphan village.  The leaks have been fixed and well tested this morning. The toilets are nearly completed. The toilet building still needs an additional 200 blocks that we will deliver this week and then the roof can be put on.  The homes are all wired with electricity and ready for the children to move in.  This week we will complete the interviews of the orphan children who will be moving in. We will start the application for the child grants from the South African government and the financial sponsorship by many of our friends from the US. 

Our feeding program is progressing well.  We are feeding approximately 230 children in two drop in centers in Mokopane. We are also feeding 70 children in Naboomspruit, this will also be the location of our next orphan village. We now have two new drop in centers in Polokwane, the capital city of Limpopo, in partnership with the rotary club there.  We are requiring that each of the drop in centers that use our food also permit us or one of the churches working with us to come in and help with the spiritual teaching of the children. 

We were in Swaziland last week, as we completed our third optical outreach for the year. In addition to the optical work in Swaziland we also did some HIV/AIDS testing and TB testing in partnership with the Luke’s Commission using mobile medical clinic.  We enjoyed visiting a pediatric AIDS clinic ran by Baylor University offering high quality care to children infected by the AIDS virus. It is heart breaking to see so many children infected. Swaziland is a beautiful mountainous country, but has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.  Harry and Echo Van Derwall direct the Luke’s Commission that we were working with and will be speaking at our international medical conference later this month.  I am looking forward to hearing more about the work they have been doing in Swaziland over the last three years.  We enjoyed our time working there and plan to return, on a regular basis.

It has been busy as we are preparing for our international medical conference April 16-18.  We now have approval from the Limpopo Health department to fund this year’s medical conference.   Eight doctors from the US will be coming to speak at the conference. We still have lots to do on this end to make it happen.  It was just like this last year and I was hoping that it would be easier this year but this just seems to be the African way of waiting to the last minute to commit.

We love our new home here and the Thompson Campus continues to be a blessing to our full time and short term missionaries. We hope to see more short-term missionaries and full time ambassadors join us!

Our first month has gone well here in Africa.  We have had one team come and go.  This team did an optical ministry like the one Stockton Assembly will do in July.  We were also able to visit some of the World Vision projects and are looking into establishing a child sponsorship program similar to what they are doing.  The Lord has blessed us with a new Toyota Land Cruiser a very comfortable, powerful and safe vehicle to transport us about the country.  We also got a new trailer to transport luggage and supplies.  Here, a vehicle break down on the highway can be dangerous so it is nice to be blessed with quality equipment.  We also just got our Polaris Ranger utility vehicle which we shipped in a container several months ago.  We added extra seating to it and now it will carry 9 passengers.  It makes a good game viewing vehicle to transport teams up the mountain on our game farm. 

Next week we will be laying tile floors in our abods to solve the problem of water running under the walls.  Raising the floor 1cm. should solve this.  I found some scrap tile that a neighbor farm is letting us have for free.  We will also be working on finishing the toilet and showers for this orphan village. 

We are currently feeding 200 to 300 children and working on getting that all better organized.  This week we had a meeting with 2 drop-in centers where 220 children are being fed.  We emphasized to them that we are not a social service agency and that the children must also be fed the Word in addition to the food we provide.  They opened the doors to us to provide spiritual programming to the children one afternoon each week- a big job for a small ministry like ours but the Lord continues to provide.  One half-hour after that open door I got the youth pastor of a large, 2000 member church to help us with the programming on an ongoing basis.  Some of the Nomads (interns) from Book of Hope will also be assisting us. 

We did our optical outreach in a large 3500 student Christian boarding school.  Most all of the students already knew the Lord and were so appreciative of their new glasses.   About 400 students received new glasses.  On Friday night, we were blessed to be able to attend their youth service where 850 young people stood and sat on the floor worshiping for 2 hours.  The pastor tells us that the hall will hold 950 students when they also pack the stage area of the assembly hall.  When I say packed I mean packed.  We were standing in the back and it took us about 4 minutes to make our way to the front stage area to be introduced.  The music was great similar to the US, many of the children gave their testimonies and we also heard a great message.  The best youth service I have ever attended.  It goes on every Friday night.  The youth pastor, age 61, is married to a beautiful 72 year old lady and they are both so full of fire and energy.  

So many more stories but it is time to go get some scrap tile for our kids.

Please be praying for my lymphangitis in my left leg.  I am trusting the Lord to heal me.

Hope you can join us soon,

Jim & Beth

 

                                                             January 2010

Beth and I are getting ready to return to South Africa.  We have just 1 more sleep here in the States.   Most of our days while we are here in the States are pretty routine and not worthy of frequent blog entries.  I spend most of my time in our office in Urbandale working on the computer and attending meetings.  I have been working mainly to raise funds and accomplish as much as possible with my staff stateside.

I have been an effective fund raiser over the years but with the economy tightening so much this year and with me getting older I have done everything that I could to prepare our ministry to be sustainable after I stop working full time.  I have always been a believer in education so I took 3 fund raising training courses.   This training has been effective in helping me guide our ministry towards long term sustainability.    I am hoping that the Lord will give me several more years to work full time in South Africa but the Lord has been guiding me to get my house in order.

We have been busy traveling all over the US visiting churches in Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and Arizona.  We have been blessed by how people and churches always honor us as missionaries and support the work we are doing.   We have met with hundreds of our individual supporters usually over a meal so I am looking forward to getting back to Africa where I can hopefully lose the 20 pounds I gained this fall. 

Thank you to all of you who have listened to our stories and encouraged us in the work we are doing.  We have 2 optical outreaches coming in February and will be putting the finishing touches on our orphan village and moving the orphans into their new homes as soon as we get back in Africa. 

While I’ve been here, I have enjoyed reconnecting with my parents, our children and grandchildren the last 3 months.  However, the time has come to head back to Africa and continue impacting lives for eternity.  Consider joining us this year to see for yourself what God is doing.

Dr. Blessman’s blog is being relocated from Blogger to this page directly on our ministry website.  To see older posts, follow this link to the old blog site.

                                                           November 2009

We just arrived back in the States and hit the ground running.  We hosted the Blessman family reunion and have spoken at three mission conventions.  I always used to think that our lives were busier in Africa, but now it seems that we are always on the fast track.  As I reflect back over this year in Africa it has been by far the best year of my life up to this point.  There were a few bumps in the road like an emergency trip back to the States with a stress fracture in my pelvis, but when I count our blessings my heart is filled with joy.