January 30th, 2012

As I write this I am sitting in one of the most beautiful, peaceful places in the world.   It is Sunday afternoon and I am sitting at the base of Entabeni Mountain reflecting on all the Lord has done in the last several weeks. While a couple of our newest team members are busy playing the famous Legend Golf Course.

We just completed another great week in Africa.  Our newest team arrived Friday night so we have about 20 people staying with us.  We had four ladies from Mount Olive Outreach in Johannesburg.  They run a large child development program serving 450 people.  They have been operating their center since 2007 and are doing a great job with feeding and all of the educational programming.  They also have a similar software system to the one we are using to track the children that they are serving. These four ladies were a tremendous help to us in getting ready for our big celebration and distribution of the 20 millionth meal from Meals from the Heartland.  It is a massive task to entertain and minister to and feed 1500 children with a small staff that is not used to such a big outreach.

In our estimation 1,500 kids attended the celebration.  We hired six donkey carts to bring the children and one 65 passenger bus. We had a jumping castle, good music and children’s games to entertain them.  At the end of the day we had a children’s church service where many of them gave their hearts to the Lord.

The purpose of this day was first of all to celebrate the official open house of Del Cramer Children’s Campus.  We started construction of this center one year ago in February.  Another big reason for choosing this particular time for the occasion is that Meals from the Heartland just packaged their 20 millionth meal of the rice packets that we use to help feed our orphan children.  KCCI TV news Channel 8 from Des Moines, Iowa sent a news person along with a camera man to document these memorable events.

Del Cramer died 10 years ago and was Beth’s father.  He was a wonderful Godly man, a deacon in his church and founded and directed a larger bridge construction company in Iowa.  He also loved farming, mission work and children.  God called us to honor his legacy by naming this center after him.

We had a team of about 40 people helping us serve and take care of the 1500 children.  We were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of children attending.  Crowd control was a major struggle but we managed.  No one got injured and all had a wonderful time and left with full bellies and smiles on their faces.  The hot African sun was brutal to those of us with white skin.  We had 2 large tents and our Lighthouse Church providing some relief from the sun but the shear number of children forced many of the activities to be out in the sun.

I mentioned the the purpose of this event was the open house of the Cramer Campus and to distribute the 20 millionth meal from Meals from the Heartland but the real purpose of all that we are doing is to serve and honor the children that God has called us to serve.

We had invited the mayor, chief and many dignitaries to this event to permit them to celebrate with us and take some of the credit for bringing such a nice campus to their village to provide for so many children.  I was a bit saddened and disappointed when most the dignitaries failed to come after we had invited them.  Our plan was to demonstrate to these dignitaries that we were there to serve the children; Hilda sewed some nice aprons that we planned to give to them and then ask them to serve the children prior to the dignitaries being served.  That is not the way things are usually done in this culture.  Usually the dignitaries eat first and the children last.

It turns out that most of the dignitaries refused to come because we are having  a temporary conflict with leaders of the village.

Right now we are taking the path of praying and laying all of this at our Lord’s feet.  We trust completely that He has called us here to do this work and that He will protect and guide us through these difficult times.

This last week we have had Mark and Candice Vander Tuig here ministering with us. Mark is an excellent carpenter and really helped us get some maintenance jobs completed around the campus.

The two new buildings that we are working on to complete the Thompson long term missionary campus continues to move forward.  I hope that we can start thatching the roof of the first building tomorrow.

I purchased our 4 ton tipper truck this week to help us deliver food, haul construction materials and take farm produce to market.  I trust that it will serve us well.  I also found a good used 8 passenger van with plenty of room to transport teams.

Our feeding program is growing exponentially.  This week we heard from Swaziland that some of the people are in such a state of starvation that they are eating cow dung.  I am arranging with Jacques to immediately transfer a truck load of the rice packets to them to give them some immediate assistance.  I have honestly lost count of how many children we are helping to feed but it is already well over 2000.  Our goal over the next couple of years is to increase this to 10,000.

We will soon be in desperate need of getting American churches and individuals to help us fund our feeding program.  We have set up a plan where people and churches can financially sponsor one of our children for as little as $1/day/child.  Please pray about helping us.  Our storehouse is nearly full of food from Meals from the Heartland but we need money to hire staff and equipment like the truck we just purchased to do a good job of distributing the food.

I really enjoyed having my good friend Doug Sharp here last week to help us improve the drawings that he is doing for the Lodge of Dreams.  I was amazed to sit with many people interested in this building and see how each person contributed some good ideas to make it a better building.  It is going to be a beautiful building.

We finally received our official NGO/NPO numbers for Blessman Ministries International.  We were initially told this should take a couple of months and we had to wait nearly 9 months but we finally have it.  Praise the Lord.  This will help us in so many aspects of the ministry here.

Please be praying for us to get more people to sponsor a child in our child development program and also for a peaceful resolution to our conflict with the village tribal authorities.  Thank you for taking time to read this and to pray for us.

January 4th, 2011

As I sit at the threshold of a new year, I am filled with excitement of what lies ahead. With the loss of my father last year and the struggling worldwide economy it was a difficult year. Even with that there were many positive things that happened in 2011. We completed our Del Cramer Children’s Campus and Lighthouse Church. Our feeding program expanded with the deepening of our relationship with Meals From The Heartland and Convoy of Hope. We had well over 100 visitors from America come and stay and work with us. Three thousand people received a new pair of eyeglasses most of these being children. Our farming program is off to a good start at our children’s campus. Our corn is well knee high and the sweet corn is beginning to tassel. Every week we are selling lots of chickens and our vegetable garden is producing more than we need to feed our kids at our own feeding center so we are busy selling some of the vegetables also.

The year ahead-
Samaritan’s Feet: I am anticipating a visit from Manny, the founder of Samaritan’s Feet, later this month. I am hopeful that they will agree to ship a container of shoes here for us to distribute to all of the children in our feeding programs and through our network of churches. Samaritan’s Feet will also have a team of their own come in July to distribute the shoes with us. I am thinking that the following year this program will expand greatly. All of our American teams should be able to spend a day or two distributing shoes with us.

Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child: This is Franklin Graham’s ministry of distributing shoeboxes full of Christmas gifts to children in developing world countries. They packaged 9 million shoeboxes in 2011 and we will be receiving 105,000 of them to be distributed in the Gauteng and Limpopo provinces. We will likely get around 25,000 for the area near our headquarters. I am hopeful that this program will also expand in future years. Our American visitors are going to love distributing shoeboxes similar to the ones that they packaged in their home churches. These will be distributed over a 2 to 3 month period at the beginning of each year.

Expansion of farming program: We did our first training for Farming God’s Way about 6 weeks ago and it was a bit disappointing because only a few villagers attended the training. Once they realized that we were offering knowledge and not free gifts they seemed to lose interest. One of the perceptions that we constantly battle here is that the locals see us Americans as a money machine to bring them money. I know for sure that we can assist them in creating wealth through farming and our other microenterprises, but we must first teach them the concept of delayed gratification. It is a concept that most Americans know well but it is not well understood here.
Last week I met with a Chief about a one and a half hour drive from our home. His name is Chief Motlala pronounced Makella. This is the next tribal area to the north and west of Mokopane. We still have a good relationship with Chief Kekana of the Mokopane area but it is good to broaden our relationships with the tribal areas. Chief Motlala has 35 villages that he rules over. He has built 20 schools in his area and is currently building a large church in his own village. He has 2 wives and served us tea in the home of his second wife. Pastor Jake introduced me to him and we had a 1-hour meeting in his office at the tribal council. He has 500 orphans and vulnerable children that he is feeding in several of his villages. We explained to him how we could help provide the rice packets from MFTH and that we would require of him to provide us with data about each of the children to permit our American donors to know a little more about the children that they are helping us feed. We also spoke with him of the importance of not just feeding the children but helping with them education, career training and religious studies. He is quite supportive of our approach and would like to start working with us in that. I also explained to him how we are using farming to make our feeding programs long term sustainable. He has control of lots of land that is currently lying fallow and is excited to have us help him get it into production. He understands the potential of this land being used to feed his people and to provide a profit. He already has a system to work with us where BMI could start a company with his council and BMI would own 60% of the business. We would offer them a training program to teach his people how to farm. We would apply to the SA government for equipment and funds for a grain processing mill. There is a program here where the government will provide 50% of the funds for such a mill. There is not mill within several kilometers of this village so it will encourage the farmers to bring their maize to us for processing. In the Bible, Joseph was a model of a great politician and businessman. We will be trying to follow his model of providing for the people. The chief was also interested in having us do optical outreaches for his people.
Our next step with him is to return to his village January 17 and present all of this to a group of village leaders called Indunas. We will then plan for a 4-day Farming God’s Way Training to train approximately 100 of the village people how to do this farming. It is basically no till farming of small plots using simple tools like a hoe. At the same time we will work with Jake to write up a contact of how we will be doing business together.
I am thinking that we can bring many American Midwest farmers over here to SA to help us with additional training and business skills to make this farming operation a great success.

Lighthouse Church: Our new church plant is off to a good start and has about 60 people regularly attending. We have an excellent preacher and he delivers a strong Godly message every week. We now need to develop the infrastructure of the church by setting up a church council; children’s programs, practice sessions for the choir, and home visits for people attending. We have 4 strong Godly men currently who faithfully help us lead the church: Maxwell, Johannes, William and Simon. Jake and I had talked about chartering and eventually purchasing a bus to bring people to church as none of them have cars. My good friend Jacques came up with a brilliant idea for this. Instead of a bus, hire donkey cart drivers to go around and bring people to church. This will likely cost about the same as a bus but fits much better with the culture as donkey carts are a popular mode of transportation in the village. We could become known as the “donkey cart church”. I will present this new idea to our pastor, Jake, and if he is on board, meet with a few donkey cart drivers and get started with this. Jacques, being head of “Reaching A Generation”, is quite interested in helping us develop a strong children’s program. He has great curriculum for this that we can use.
We had a YWAM group visiting Shikwaru last week and they helped us do an outreach at the church for the neighborhood children. We had over 220 kids come in to play soccer, face painting, jump roping, singing and dancing. After about 1 hour of fun activities we showed them the “God Man” film. At the end of the film all 200 children prayed with the YWAM team the prayer of salvation. We did this outreach on Friday and invited the children to come back for church on Sunday, New Year’s Day. Many of them did return and the YWAM team led the children’s program. Our Del Cramer Children’s Campus is becoming known as a kid’s magnet for lots of fun and enriching activities.

Family Visit: This last week we had Robert and Lori Cramer and family (Beth’s brother’s family) visit with us. We had a great time celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve with them. On Christmas Day both Robert and Rob spoke at church and told the congregation much more about the legacy of Del Cramer.
Lauren brought a good friend Jamie and all 3 of the kids went out for a hunting safari. It was a small miracle that all 3 of the kids were successful in their hunt. Rob shot a wildebeest, Lauren shot a zebra and Jamie shot an impala. I have seen several people hunt all day and not have success and on this day 3 young people prevailed. They will all 3 get trophies and we will use the meat to help feed our orphan children. Praise the Lord.
In addition to hunting, the Cramer’s especially enjoyed helping us with ministry activities with the children at Del Cramer Children’s Campus. With this being a holiday week, there was not as much activity going on as usual, but they were still able to get the flavor of what the center is all about.

Construction Program: This year we will be building our 4th home for our long-term missionaries and a large garage and office building for these same missionaries.
In addition we will begin construction of our Leroy Blessman Lodge of Dreams team dormitory for short-term teams staying with us. Construction projects are a bit of a stretch for this doctor, but the long-term benefits are worth the stress.
Next week my friend Doug Sharp is coming and I would like for him to help me fine tune our drawings for all of our construction projects and meet with him and Jake about setting up a company that builds Abods as well as block homes.

We will also soon have Lisa and Heather arriving here to start another year with us. I am excited to get our staff in place and begin this new year.

December 3rd, 2011

This has been another good week in Africa. I am fully rested up and feeling productive. I got the first draft of my autobiography finished. Beth is busy editing it for me and our daughter Kelsey has volunteered to do some photos or illustrations for me. It is turning out to be more like a short story than a full book. It is about 40 pages but hopefully will be a blessing to my own family and people interested in the mission work we are doing.

Our biggest struggle this week has been getting our recent food container through customs. It has been stuck there for about a week now and we are being charged dock space rental while it is stuck there. Lisa is doing most of the work on getting this through. In spite of several emails and phone calls, there is still no progress. We are suspicious that the officials are holding it, hoping for a bribe. We are trying to pray it through but no success so far.

Our farming program is still struggling also because we have not had any rain. Please pray with us that it will soon rain on our crops. The need for it is getting to the critical stage. We are irrigating our vegetables and they continue to thrive. Our chickens are also doing well. We sold another 200 of them this weekend. We have almost completed construction of two of our new chicken houses and they look much better. This farming business has a steep learning curve for this doctor but fortunately many of my Afrikaner friends have been happy to share their wisdom with me.

We have only had one chicken die out of our 800 so we are doing extremely well. Unfortunately, one of our guard dogs died this week. I am suspicious that she was poisoned. That apparently is quite common here in SA and makes guard dogs of less use that one would ordinarily think they would be.

I had a good meeting with the representative from Samaritan’s Purse, also part of Operation Christmas Child and it turns out that one of their coordinators in Johannesburg is

a good pastor friend of mine. So I am confident that our relationship with Samaritan’s Purse will be a good one. It is a bit complicated. They will be receiving a shipment of 105,000 shoe boxes and we have to manage the logistics of getting them into the hands of needy children through the church. The total of these boxes will be divided between two large provinces Gauteng and Limpopo so this first year our number of gifts may be a bit small but that is alright in that we only have a couple of months to set up all of our logistics of making this work well. The plan is to distribute all of the shoes through churches in our area also using the volunteers that come to work with us from America. I know that they will love this new program that we will be doing.

We will start our first optical outreach at Northern Academy again the last week in January. It has become one of our favorite places to work.

In addition to struggling with the food container we are still waiting to get our official notice that Blessman Ministries is an official NGO in SA. We submitted all of the correct paper work for this in July or August. I have stayed busy this week working on getting our Del Cramer Children’s Campus drop in center registered with the proper authorities. The application is due December 14th and I am getting back on the plane to the States shortly. Hopefully we will get all of this taken care of before I leave. We can only register one time a year so if we miss this it will be an entire year before we can try again. I have good staff here helping me so I trust that we will prevail.

My time here in SA this time is so brief that I am having difficulty getting together with everyone that I wanted to meet. I was able to meet with 2 of the 4 pastors who traveled to the USA last month to our BILD pastor’s conference. They are still reporting excellent feedback from their trip to America. I am still impressed that all 4 of these gentlemen arranged for their own visas and paid for their own

airline tickets. It demonstrates their desire for high quality training. I plan to continue offering pastor training conferences for them here and these 4 will start training other leaders in their churches.

We celebrated Thanksgiving here last week and this week we gathered our little community at Shikwaru to celebrate Jacques’ birthday. These people are my family away from the States and I enjoy having fellowship with them.

One evening this week I was invited to another farm family’s home for a Chinese dinner where we each cooked our own meal in little individual grills. It was an enjoyable cultural experience on a large pig farm. The amazing thing was that one of the guests is the cousin of my cardiologist’s wife in Iowa. It is truly a small world.

I am missing my wife Beth a lot this week but fortunately Randy Collier who has been a frequent traveler to SA is here with me. He is one of the most organized people on the planet and I am impressed at all of the work he is getting done this week.

We have gotten the land pretty well cleared for our new missionary home that Pierre and Rentia will live in. We have also cleared the ground for our new garage all on the Thompson Campus.

I had lunch today with Pastor Andy and Thora his wife who lead the large youth ministry at Northern Academy in Polokwane. We are making plans with them for another boys and girls conference. We did these last year and they were well received. 160 of their students are now wearing sexual purity rings that they purchase themselves vowing to keep themselves pure until marriage. Many of

those wearing the rings are boys which is an amazing accomplishment for the group of students. They still run nearly 100 % high school graduation rate. It is definitely one of the best schools in our entire province.

I am excited to return in January and get started again with all of these projects we have been working on.

November 29th, 2011

It is good to be back in South Africa after 3 months in the States. My father and Lisa’s father both passed away while we were home, so it was a sad time for both of our families.

There were many good things that happened as well as the struggles. I focused most of my time and energy on raising funds for the work we are doing here in South Africa, and it has been a good time to deepen relationships with many churches and friends of our ministry.

This year we have raised funds to build an additional long-term missionary home.  On the Thompson Campus and have raised partial funding to build team housing for short-term team members.  It will be called the Leroy Blessman Lodge of Dreams in honor of my father and related to the theme from the movie Field of Dreams, which was filmed in Iowa, with the thought that if we build it, they (the short-term missionaries) will come.  We are hoping to have approximately 200 short-term missionaries come work with us each year.

Josh and Heather Borchers are moving to South Africa to work with us full time after the first of the year. They both will be a great addition to our staff.  Josh will help us with our Internet technology needs along with many other gifts that he has. He is hoping to keep doing his American job from our office here in SA designing websites and other online work that he does. He developed the soft ware that is serving our feeding program so well. Heather will be managing the office and finances for us here in SA freeing up Lisa to do more regular mission field work using her nursing skills. Lisa will continue to manage the logistics of our outreaches.

Pierre and his wife Rentia Dejager just joined our team the first of December; Rentia will be helping Beth with hosting activities with our team members and visitors. Pierre will be a consultant for us in our construction and farming microenterprises. He has been teaching Farming God’s Way in Zimbabwe for the last six years.

Del Cramer Campus is where we have our own feeding program and the Lighthouse Church. Both the church and feeding center continue to do well. We have had an interim pastor and are just now appointing him as the new senior pastor and will start paying him a salary. The church is in an impoverished neighborhood, so the collection plate is far too anemic to pay his salary, but our ministry will supplement that until the church attendees mature into a more giving population. I am confident that the church can become self supporting over the next 12 months. We are still feeding only 30 children a day at the feeding center with our intention to keep the number small until our quality is solid. We had struggled last year to learn all of the ins and outs of becoming a government supported center and just yesterday the head of the social worker called for me to come to her office and she gave me all of the documents that we need to fill out to become fully supported by the SA government. A year ago I sensed some resistance and now they seem to have a strong desire for us to become fully registered. I am sure that this speaks to the quality of what they see us doing over the last few months. That will help us fund our workers (8 cooks and care givers who are currently volunteering) and 3 administrative staff; it will also help us get some government funding to pay for the food for the children. The government funding will also pay for the social worker working with us and even our security company and help with the electric bills. The Lord is good. We are helping over a dozen other feeding centers to feed their children and are currently helping supply food for over 2,000 orphans and vulnerable children daily. We have a vision to increase this number to approximately 10,000 over the next year or two.

Next week I plan to be busy working with our administrative consultants to get all of the proper paper work filed. We will not find out until March if our program has been accepted but I fully expect that we will be properly registered by then.

Our farming program is off to a good start under the leadership of Johannes and with Pierre acting as our consultant. We have about 800 chickens (broilers) under management at this time. We sold our first bunch of 200 two weeks ago for 35 Rand each or about $4. We are now ready to sell 200 more this weekend and even today a few ladies are coming by to make their purchases. As I look at this program in its early stages I see some improvements that we need to make. Johannes used our laundry room at the campus to put the baby chickens in for their first 2 weeks and then has a large chicken coop that he moves them too. I am concerned that we have a bit of overcrowding with this arrangement and that we will develop illnesses in our chickens. So next week we will be building 3 additional larger chicken coops with a concrete floor and separate clothes and gum boots for the workers to wear when they are working in each chicken house. It is a bit of an investment but in the long run it looks like the right thing to do.

Our vegetable garden is off to a good start with spinach, beet root, cabbage and sweet corn. The moths have been attacking our cabbage and we will likely have to replant it. I think that I am going to enjoy farming as much as practicing medicine. We are waiting to plant our main maize crop until we get adequate rains here. Please be praying with us for good rains over the next few days.

Monday evening I have a meeting with some government officials interested in helping empower African farmers to do a better job. We will be exploring partnerships with them to train and equip local farmers to feed their families and make a profit.

Today I had a good meeting with my good friend Chief Kekana. He is happy that we are back in South Africa and we already started planning for new projects that we might be able to do together.

We had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for about 20 of our SA friends at Shikwaru. We cooked turkeys imported from Brazil and corn casserole which is a tradition in the Blessman family. We had lots of other good food and deserts. After our feast, Randy Collier told them stories about the Indians and Pilgrims and how the tradition of Thanksgiving got started and what it means to nearly all of us Americans. It was a great time of fellowship with our African neighbors and friends. I am missing my wife and family a lot during this holiday season, but my African family is doing a good job of keeping me company. It is amazing to see all of the new construction on the Shikwaru side of the property. God continues to bless Reaching a Generation Ministry as well as Blessman Ministries.

I will be meeting with representatives from Operation Christmas Child with Samaritan’s Purse next Tuesday with the hope that we will become their Limpopo distribution point for their Christmas Shoe Boxes.

I have been hiking up the Shikwaru Mountain every day since I have been here this time. That hike always makes me feel better and think more clearly. I have been enjoying seeing lots of animals. I also saw the Cape buffalo the first night that I was here. They are majestic animals.

I am currently reading a book “When Helping Hurts”; I am learning lots about improved ways of doing ministry in third world countries. Towards the back of the book the author speaks of how harmful short term mission trips can be. I understand where he is coming from but strongly disagree. I have been doing mission trips for 20 years and our ministry has been hosting trips for the last 10. I have seen tremendous value to the people who go on short term trips and also to the people they are ministering to. I am thinking that it may be time to write my first book explaining my experience. I have never thought that I had enough to say to warrant a book but I feel like this is a good opportunity to share how the Lord has blessed me over the years.

I will be returning to the States for a short time and then Beth and I will come back to South Africa at the end of December. So many wonderful things are happening here we will be returning excited for what the Lord will do in 2012!

November 11th, 2011

When I am in South Africa I do my best to update my blog every Saturday night.  Here in America, my life is not as interesting so my entries are few and far between.

Beth and I arrived back in America in August just in time for the Iowa State Fair.  A short two days were spent at the fair due to my father’s illness. Just a couple of weeks after we arrived back in the States he passed away from lung cancer.  His death was relatively easy as far as dying from cancer goes and it was good to be able to be with him the last couple of weeks of his life.  I had called him nearly every day for the last 30 years and really miss talking to him.  With the help of a wonderful wife and lots of good friends I have dealt with the grieving process pretty well.

The fall season is harvest season for Midwest Farmers and it is the same for missionaries.  Many of our Church partners have their missions’ conventions this time of year.  Our goal for this harvest season has been to raise financial support to continue the work we are doing in Africa and to also raise money to build one more missionary house for the Bob and Leila Thompson Missionary Campus.  With this addition we will have four- two bedroom homes for our long term missionary families. We are also planning on building a much needed 40 bed short term team lodge, in honor of my father, Leroy Blessman. We will begin construction on the Thompson Campus and Team Lodge after the first of the year. I am hoping to build the lodge using the earth compressed blocks and thatch roof.  For the smaller home we will use traditional clay fired bricks to match the other 3 homes as part of that campus.

The other thing that Beth and I have been busy doing this season is recruiting people to come to South Africa and work with us next year.  We look forward to all of the wonderful teams and lifelong friendships the Lord will bring us in 2012.

We will have eight short term mission trips in 2012.  We hope to do one of those in the country of Swaziland distributing glasses, food and shoes to the impoverished orphan children there.  We just received our NGO non profit status in Swaziland which will make working there easier.  It is a very small country of less than 1 million people surrounded by the country of South Africa.  It is a beautiful mountainous country with the highest percent of HIV infected people in the world.

November 18^th I will go back for a couple of weeks to follow up with our projects there. It is going to feel good to switch gears from fundraising to the hands on work in Africa.  We are excited this year to have Heather and her husband Josh joining us full time in South Africa soon after the first of the year.  Heather will take over office management and the administrative duties that Lisa has been taking care of releasing Lisa to get back out into the mission field using her RN degree.  Josh, is a computer wizard and will help us with all of our IT work and also help with logistics of feeding 2,000 children every day.

Our last official function before I head back to Africa will be a Thanksgiving Celebration at Terrace Hill, our Iowa Governor’s mansion.  We are looking forward to this celebration to fellowship with many of you who have partnered with our ministry over the last couple of years.

Thank you for your prayers and support as 2011 comes to a close and we look to all that the Lord has for Blessman Ministries in 2012!

Jim and Beth Blessman

We arrived back in the States August 9^th and I have not had a chance to update my blog since we have been back.  It has been a very emotional time for me as my father died from lung cancer just a couple of weeks ago.  It was a big blessing for me to be able to be here with him before he died.  I am so thankful we have always had a great relationship and I had the opportunity to say goodbye. He was a great father and a wonderful Godly man loved by everyone who knew him.  It has been a difficult transition for me but I know that I will soon see him again in Heaven.

We are so thankful for the teams we had in 2011 and had some great positive feedback; this really encourages us as we move forward for our 2012 teams. They all love the safaris, and the mission work that they get to help us with. We have been a bit pressured this last year being short of team housing but will be correcting that next year with our new Leroy Blessman Lodge. This lodge will be a team dorm able to accommodate up to 40 short term team members. We are excited to start this project next year.

Last week I visited Vermeer Manufacturing Company in Pella to take a look at the improvements they have made in their block machines.  They will be shipping us a new model in December.  We were able to complete our first project the Del Cramer Children’s Campus with the first machine we purchased from them and using the new machine to construct our new 500 square meter 30 bed team housing complex.  We are busy raising $400,000 for this and hope to start construction February 1.  We have already cut the tree trunks to support the large thatch roof and will start building blocks January 15 when our new machine arrives.  I would like to begin building one more missionary home as soon as Jacques can get zoning clearance for us to begin building that on the Thompson Campus.  I am looking forward to both of these large construction projects next year.  It will be especially nice to be building right in our own back yard and not have to commute to an offsite project.  I would like to finish both of these projects by the end of August 2012.   The first week in October Vermeer Company will be building a sample building using the earth compressed blocks.  It will be nice to see how the experts do their building.  I am hoping that many people who are interested in helping us with our construction will check it out and get some training there.

We have an international BILD training program going on for 2 weeks in Ames early in October and I am hoping that we can get about 3 of our African pastors to come to America for that training.   They then will be able to help us to continue further training for our African pastors.

Earlier this year I read the book Soul Provider and contacted the author who runs a ministry distributing shoes to impoverished youth in third world countries.  Last week, I flew to Charlotte NC to visit their headquarters.  We have agreed that we would like to work together to add his shoe ministry to the other programs that we are doing in South Africa.  Our ministry will become their SA distribution hub for shoes in that part of the world.  We are really excited about this new partnership.

In October we will be having a dinner hosted by First Assembly of God in Des Moines. They have selected our construction projects as their fall mission project and will help us to raise funds to complete the Thompson Campus by building one additional missionary home for approximately $60,000.  We also help to raise additional funds to be applied to our new short term missionary lodge ($400,000).  The main event for this is a banquet on Saturday evening October 1. We want to extend the invitation for anyone who is able to come to this event and hear all of the great things God is doing in South Africa!

Please be praying for us as we begin this busy season and prepare our hearts for all God has for our next trip to South Africa!

July 31, 2011

The weeks are flying by with only one full week left in South Africa before Beth and I return to the states.  This has been somewhat of a stressful week as we started out with a confrontation with the Induna and a few of her community members.  They are upset that their community is not controlling the operation of the Del Cramer Children’s Campus.  Our orginal intent was to have the community take over management of the center, but as we have now worked here for several months, we see the potential problems.  I always find politics distasteful, but it is just part of life, even on the mission field.  I see this as another one of the many spiritual battles we fight here.   We know how to pray our way through them.

On Monday we opened the feeding center and fed about 20 children.  By the end of the week 60 children were showing up for fellowship training and a hot meal.  I would like to pare the group down to about 25 for the first few weeks while we work the kinks out of our system.  The team due to arrive this evening is bringing what we need to give each registered child in our program a photo id name badge, and we will start serving only the children who are properly registered with us.

Next Monday we will be conducting interviews to select the ladies who will be cooking with us and helping with the programming.   The community is really pushing to have control of who works in our center, and I am hoping to come to an acceptable compromise with them next week before we head back to America. Chappy and Priza, our administrative consultants, have been great assistance to us.

We now have electricity at the site, and our water pressure pump is hooked up.  We are still struggling to get our water purifying system working, but have a consultant coming Monday to sort that out for us.

The animal control inspector was out this week and approved us for 2 dogs that should be arriving in another week.  We had their dog houses built and, as soon as the fence is complete, we will be ready for them.  Simon and Johannes moved to the Del Cramer project to start living there today.   That will help a lot with security and the general relationship with the neighborhood.

What will likely help the relationship with the neighborhood the most will be starting our next church there.  We picked out some good sound equipment and drums while we were in Pretoria yesterday.  We will have our first church service on August 7^th.  Pastor Jake will be our interim pastor to get us started.  I am also going to have him set up an office at the Del Cramer site to generally help with managing the church and community relationships.  He is an excellent man of God.

We had a good trip to Johannesburg yesterday to fetch some books from the rotary book depository there.  I was amazed at the quanity and quality of books they have.  There is a rotary club in Houston, TX that collects and ships books for schools and other organizations like ours to use.  I took a math teacher from a primary school near the Del Cramer project.  When we showed them the books we brought back this morning, all of the teachers were pleased and excited to have them.  I am sure that we will be making many more trips back to the book depository.   The village schools here are in such dire need of better teaching materials and this is a way we can partner with the rotary and give them a lot of help.

Our next container of food has arrived at the port in Durban.  Lisa is having a little difficulty getting it cleared through customs.  Today we received a document from the health inspector that should help with the situation but, still there are some hoops to jump through with this.  We will need a lot of prayer for this one.

Our sewing ministry is ready to be launched.  Hilda graduates from her class at the end of this month and has already been sewing curtains for the Del Cramer center.  All of the orphans we feed are wearing tattered and well-worn school uniforms.  I would like to start by replacing all 25 of these children’s uniforms to get our sewing team experience in doing this.

Our first step into the farming program will be in the next couple of weeks.  Johannes will be building chicken coops for 200 broilers and we will start raising them.  They should be ready to eat and/or sell in just a couple of months.  We currently have a warthog that Jacques shot and donated to feed our orphans, along with the rice packets from Meals from the Heartland.  In addition, we have been purchasing some corn meal to make their traditional pap, and a lot of cabbage and vegetables.  It will be really nice when we are raising our own meat and produce to help feed them.

Our building business continues to come along well.  Maxwell was asked to bid a job building a garage and another job building a thatch roof for Pastor Jake.  I am hoping that after we leave for the States, William will have time to attend a 3 week trade school to improve his welding skills.

Our team in America is busy getting us ready for one of our biggest events of the year, the Iowa State Fair.  We hope to showcase the Del Cramer project that we just finished and also show the people of Iowa what is next for us, the construction of the 30 bed team housing project, using our block machine.  We have 2 Iowa State architect students here with us this week and they are working on CAD drawings to help better explain how this beautiful building will look.  We also want to showcase our feeding program where we are feeding over 2000 children with the help of 1 million meals packaged and sent over from Iowa each year.

We are looking forward to our largest and final team of this season (winter for Africa and summer for Iowa).  We rented a 22 passenger bus and a driver to help with the logistics while they are here.  We will be doing an optical clinic in a church up north of Polokwane on Monday, and visiting a preschool and handicapped center on Tuesday.  Wednesday will be a work day at the Cramer orphan project and Thursday will be another optical day at the orphan project.  On Friday we plan to visit my good friend who is a hog farmer and do optical exams on his 120 workers .  I am impressed with farmers like this who are interested in taking the best possible care of their workers.  On Friday night we will take the team back to Northern Academy and participate with the 1000 plus youth group up there.  My friend Stephen, who is also on our board, will be sharing his testimony that night.  He is an African man who grew up in poverty in Lesotho and was blessed by having an American sponsor help him get a good education.  He is now a successful businessman who works hard to help many of the orphan children here in Southern Africa.  He wants to tell his story to the youth at Northern Academy to be an encouragement to them to never give up.

We have a game drive scheduled for the team tomorrow afternoon at Entabeni so, they will start off with a lot of fun activities.

Follow up from the pastor’s conference.  I am getting a lot of good feedback from the pastors who attended the recent conference led by Michael Vos, Jaysson Gruwell, and Brad Miller.  Seven pastors have already gone to the BILD website and signed up for the conference in America in October.  I know that all seven of them will not likely be able to get the required visas and raise their funds for their airline tickets, but I expect that at least a couple of them will make it.  This will help further the trainings and fellowship we are trying to create here in South Africa for our pastors.

July 26, 2011

Sunday:  Today we said goodbye to our pastor’s conference team.  The leader of the pastor training, Michael Vos, preached at Bishop Seleti’s church this morning.  It was a great message and well appreciated by the small African church in one of the rural villages that we work with.  Michael’s father, Don, has been here the last 2 weeks and seemed to enjoy observing his son work on the African mission field.  I believe that we are indeed having a positive influence on the pastors we are working with here.  At the same time, they are having a positive influence on us and we learn from each other.  Blake gave his testimony again this morning at church; he always gets a good response when he shares his story.

This morning 10 of our new team members from Zion Lutheran Church in Beaverdale went on a “walk with the lions” tour.  It was an amazing experience to actually walk with a couple of large male lions.  We were even able to take hold of the tails and follow along behind them.  We got a lot of great photos to share.  I am especially excited for my grandchildren to see photos of pop-pop pulling on a lion’s tail.  Few people in the world ever get to go on a safari to view the lions, and even fewer will ever actually walk with them.  It was our first time to do this, but will likely encourage future teams to have this same experience.  One of my rotary friends from Polokwane is in charge of the lion walk program and helped make it possible.

I received an email this morning from a seminary student that I met last year who is interested in doing a 9 month seminary internship with us next year.  It was the first thing I read as I was waking up and I got a bit excited because this will work well with the church plant that we are wanting to start.  His wife also sounds like a great asset to our ministry.  I love the way God always provides just the right people at just the right time.

Pierre and Rentia, who will be managing our farming program, stopped by again this weekend and brought some of their children to see where they will be living.  By the end of the week we should have the agricultural fence completed.  Also next week, Johanney, Maxwell’s brother from Zimbabwe, will be joining us to begin preparations for the farming program.

The electricity has been off here all day so this evening we are planning a romantic candlelight dinner.  Good timing as it is the one year wedding anniversary of Breanne and David who are leading our current team from Zion Lutheran Church.

Friday:  We had an excellent time doing optical ministry at Northern Academy the first few days of this week.  The children there are such a joy to work with.  Tonight we will be visiting the youth group where 1,000 children will be praising and worshiping the Lord.  Blake will be giving his testimony for all of these kids.  Also, our friend Sims will be coming to hear his testimony and spend the weekend with us.  Sims did the original 3 DVD’s of our ministry work here that are available on our website.  His father is a good friend and is on our ministry board.  We also did an optical ministry today at the high school near Del Cramer Children’s Campus.  We are making a lot of good friends in this village.

I just found out that the rotary in Johannesburg has a warehouse with 3 million school books in it donated by the school systems in Texas.  I am planning on taking the principals from the elementary and high school down there next week to fetch a large bunch of books for these two schools located near Del Cramer Campus.

Yesterday we had a work day at the Cramer Campus getting it ready to start feeding children there on Monday.  We got our reverse osmosis water purifier hooked up to give us healthy drinking water at the campus.

Last night I received some really great news that the food container coming next Wednesday will have a crane on the delivery truck so we can easily off load the container.  I have been quite stressed as to how we would go about getting all of that done.  With the crane, the process should be quite easy and safe.  Otherwise, we would have had to unload all 287,000 meals, pull the container off the truck, then reposition the container and reload it.  The Lord is so good to me.

Maxwell’s brother arrived this afternoon and I am excited to get to know him and have him start working on our farm program.  We finished the agricultural fence and will soon have the block fence finished as well.  Once we get that, I hope to have Simon and Johanney living at the Cramer Campus and get 2 trained guard dogs to give us excellent security.

I visited Moses today and his health has considerably improved.   He is walking without his crutches and hopes to return to work August 1^st.  This is indeed a miracle from God.  I remember about 3 weeks ago crying as I drove away from his home thinking that he would die soon.  We still pray for him each time we see him and he has been reading the gospel of John with his wife.

On Wednesday we went back to Pastor Chauke’s church and preschool.  The American team members always love to go there and just sit and hold the babies.  In the afternoon we visited a feeding program and they also enjoyed playing with the older children there.   I think we have found the formula for keeping teams happy with a combination of optical ministry, feeding programs, construction and preschool programs.

My dad has had a difficult week.  He is getting so weak that he could barely get out of bed and he has complete loss of appetite.  This seems to have come from his radiation therapy.  Fortunately, the radiation has helped his pain, and now that we stopped these treatments, his strength should return soon.  I am looking forward to getting back to the States to spend some good time with him.

July 15, 2011

It is starting out to be a difficult week.  My father has been very uncomfortable and not feeling like eating at all.  Dr. Ricker, his family doctor, started him on steroids and oxycodone and that seems to be helping after only 24 hours.  He was about ready to give on up on his radiation therapy as he was concerned that it was making him feel worse.  I believe it will soon start helping his bone pain so I have encouraged him to stick with it a bit longer.  It is difficult to be this far away when he is so sick.  Fortunately, my only sister is staying with him until I get back to the States.  At least I can speak to him on Skype every day.

Our block making machine has been giving us fits again and would not start this week.  I finally gave up on the mechanics in our rural area and sent the diesel engine to Johannesburg with Beth today where there is a Hatz dealer.  He diagnosed the problem as being the dirty environment we were working in is damaging the internal parts of the engine.  It is going to cost about $1,800 to repair it but, fortunately, they can get it repaired in the next few days.  We just have a few more blocks to make to finish the fence around our property.  Today we also start building the agricultural fence around the farming portion of our property to prepare for our program that will start soon.

I received really good news today from the Eskom the electric company.  They finally came out to put up our transformer so, we will have electricity tomorrow.  We have all of the appliances in and ready to work.

I spent a couple of hours this morning working with our new administrative staff at the feeding center.  They are prepared to start feeding children on July 25 – next Monday.  I also met with our social worker to get her to check out the list of children I received last week from the primary schools listing who they thought were the most impoverished children ages 12 to 14 in our vicinity.  The social worker will fine tune this list and get it down to the first 25 children we will feed initially.  We decided that our domestic worker, Esther, would help with the cooking for the first couple of weeks and help train 2 new care givers in meal planning and cooking.  Simon, our newest employee, has finished data entry of all  the children in Chappy’s drop in center and will actually be moving to the Del Cramer site to head up the training portion of our program there.  He will have 2 additional care givers working under him.

We had a bit of a financial tragedy with one of our pastors from the States that was out on a hunt.  He reported that he was on a tight budget and wanted to only shoot a warthog as that is what he could afford.  He was having a bit of difficulty finding a good shot at one of these animals but, yesterday, towards the end of the day, they had a good shot at what they thought was an antelope.  The ranger told him it would be under $1000 USD, so he took the shot and wounded the animal.  It  turned out to be a very valuable tsessebe, worth about $15,000 USD.  The usual rules in the hunting field are that you pay for what you shoot but, in this case, he was led a bit astray by the professional hunter who was new at his trade.  I am not sure how all of this will be sorted out but, at the moment it is quite stressful for everyone involved.  Jacques, the CEO of Shikwaru, will ultimately make the final decision on the financial liability of the hunter, but he is currently in the States at meetings.   On Saturday, the pastor hunter and the Shikwaru Lodge came to an agreement of the minds and settled with each other for the wounded tsessebe for around $1000.  This is a financial loss to the farm, but keeps all relationships in tack which, in our culture, is of the highest importance.

The Pastor’s Conference was a great success.  Only about 40 pastors ended up coming, but our feedback from them has been quite good.  They loved the teaching and are asking for more conferences.  I like to do as much of our ministry as possible through the local church and local pastors.  Matre Dei has been a good venue for these conferences; it is inexpensive, clean and comfortable.  Also, their food is getting good reviews.  A couple of Catholic priests, who have become my friends, operate this center.  We may possibly even house some of our teams there in the future when we have overflow.

Our diesel engine for our block machine is off of life support at the repair shop and is on its way back to us from Johannesburg.  We will get it installed back on the block machine.  I am still waiting for our mixer and have been promised that it would be ready by the end of this week.

I had a good meeting today with the ward counselor from the municipal department who wants to assist us in building a new home for Mrs. Kekana.  Our ministry is offering to provide the blocks for her new home and asking the city to provide the concrete slab and roof.  Hopefully, this will get this project moving in the next few weeks.  I am hopeful that this home will be a model for the government housing people to show what our ministry is capable of building.  This could possibly lead to a contract to build many homes.

Today I got the list of the 25 children that will start our feeding program on the 25^th.  Our office furniture is in so things continue to come together for us to open our doors.  There is so much going on right now that I have decided to postpone opening the church for a while.

My father is finishing the week a little better than he started.  He is able to eat small amounts of food now and his spirits have improved.  I keep telling him that I am bringing him to Africa with me in October.  That would be a miracle but I would sure like to see it happen.

Our next team from Zion Lutheran Church and Lutheran Church of the Cross will be here.  We are looking forward to getting to know them and working with them.

July 13th, 2011

The fourth of July in Africa is not a holiday but we still cooked some burgers and hot dogs on the grill with our team from Virginia.  Beth brought out some small American flags and we all celebrated America’s birthday.  There were several of our African friends present and they seemed to enjoy the festivities even more than the Americans.

Over the weekend Jacques, Brad Cleveland, Pastor Kelvin and I all sat around our dining room table and dreamed about the construction plans for our new team housing complex.   The more we dreamed the more expensive it became, but it is going to be beautiful.  About 500 square meters in size and 2 stories for the central commons area.  It will be brick or block construction, with a thatch roof.  The central commons area will be quite tall with 4 bedrooms on the second floor and a nice balcony.  The ground floor will be large and spacious with a tall fireplace in the center with a chimney going all the way to the top.   Surrounding the commons area will be 4 chalets connected by a passageway.  Each chalet will have 2 bedrooms.  Brad is an architect student from Iowa State and he will soon be joined by DJ Freesmeier, a classmate of his.   Together they will produce some CAD drawings for us that we will then have fine-tuned by professional architect Doug Sharp in West Des Moines, who has done a lot of work with us.  It is exciting to be starting another new project.  We still have a lot of funds to raise but I trust that God will provide.

Construction on our Del Cramer Children’s Campus continues to progress well.  We are still waiting for electricity at the site and waiting to get our mixer repaired, but all of that will be coming soon.  This team got most of the windows glazed and a lot of painting done.  We will have to put a ceiling in the kitchen, but all of the block work for the buildings is done.  We have a good start on the block wall around the property and will be making 3,000 blocks to complete that as soon as we get the block machine running well again.  We have struggled this week with it shearing bolts in the piston that compresses the clay earth.  Beth is going to Polokwane to get some steal hardened bolts that should work better for us.

Lisa and I went in to meet with the administrative staff of the best run feeding center in the Mokopane area.  We have been providing food for them for the last 3 years.  We made an agreement with their 3 top administrative staff people to do consulting work for the Del Cramer feeding site for the next 3 months, with all 3 of them working with us half time.  This guarantees that we will have excellent leadership of our new feeding program, which will help us do everything properly to get our center registered with the government and get the most possible aid from South African businesses.  After 12 months of operation, we should receive government funding to pay the consulting fee or to hire our own administrative staff.  God always provides exactly what we need.

Maxwell’s brother is suppose to be joining us later this month and I am hoping he may also be able to help us start pasturing the new church plant at the Del Cramer site.  I think that both he and Simon could live at the Cramer site and do security for us to save money and give us excellent security.

We also met the ward counselor for the Mokopane area and he took us to meet with the new Mayor.  We are trying to get them interested in partnering with us to help build Mrs. Kekana a new home.  She is the lady we have been helping over the last couple of weeks.  We would like to partner with the municipality, the tribal council, a big hardware store here, and our ministry to build a new home for her family.  Her current one should really be c

ondemned as it looks like it could collapse at any time.  It will be interesting to see if we can pull together this coalition to build the home.  We had a representative from the RDP, or government housing program, with us today so that should help.

We are still working on our pastor’s conference.  My friend, Pastor Jake, went around with me to a couple of the fraternal organizations of pastors in Mokopane encouraging them to come to the conference and invite all of the pastors in their fellowships.  I did the same with a couple of fraternal organizations in Polokwane.  Also, Pastor Sydney, my good friend in Johannesburg, let me know that he is planning on bringing 29 pastors.  I have gone from worrying that too few pastors would come to now worrying whether or not we will have room for all of them.  I confirmed our booking with the Matre Dei pastoral center for 50 people to sleep over and 70 to 100 to attend the conference.

Our appliances for the Del Cramer Children’s Campus were delivered today.  We are still waiting for our transformer to be installed so that we have power.  Every day I call them and they promise me today will be the day…

This evening we went to Pastor Jake’s church and Jaysson Gurwell preached and Blake gave his testimony.  They both did a wonderful job it was such an enjoyable evening.  There were a lot of youth present and their singing was beautiful.  Two of the songs they sang included all 11 languages spoken here in South Africa.  It was a nice cultural evening for our team.  This church is close to where Moses lives so we stopped by to give him a ride.  They were both all dressed up and Moses even looked a bit healthier.  He was able to get around on crutches and we did not need to take the wheelchair for him.  It was good to see him looking better.  All of the gentlemen who will be helping with the pastor’s conference next week arrived about 10:30 PM this evening.  This is our 3^rd team for the summer with just 2 more to go.  The weeks seem to be flying by.

My father continues to struggle with his lung cancer.  He does think that his pain has lessened a bit, but now his oncologist wants him to have a brain scan to rule out cancer in his brain.  He seemed pretty discouraged about that.  Hopefully we will get the results of his scan on Monday.  It is just 4 more weeks until I am able to get back home with him.  The time is flying by and it will be good to be able to spend some time with him soon.

We had a close encounter with the 4 Cape Buffalos on our game drive yesterday afternoon.  They are such large beautiful animals.  I was also able to see them last week on one of my early morning walks.

Please check back next week to catch up on the happenings here in Africa.