Encouragement

Pinky is the girl between Emma and me on the picture,she was a patient end of last year for about 2 months.

She came in with severe weakness of both her legs due to HIV nerve damage, unable to walk or even stand alone. She was unable to control her bladder. She was always very depressed and feared she wouldn't walk again. We helped her get onto ARV's which is the medication for HIV.

On Friday we had a follow up clinic for old patients...the plan is to see how they are doing spiritually,socially and medically..(quite a logistical nightmare to pick them all up and get them to Nakekela)It is a time for felllowship and reunion, tea and cake and good lunch together.

Well...Pinky was just one big smile this time so I asked her why she is so smiley....and she says:

"Because I have become a Christian now...when I was a patient you all prayed for me so much and specially Sr Emma, that when I went home I joined the Church and found that the Lord has freed me on the inside as well as healing me on the outside"

She is walking without any aid and has recently been married!Oh how we rejoiced together!

The Lord Who heals will receive much glory and thanksgiving.

Sonja Miskin

Updates from Sonja Miskin

Dr. Sonja Miskin tells us a little about some of the patients being served by the Nakekela HIV/AIDS Hospice.



This is Phumzile. She lives alone with a young brother: no other living relatives. Due to her vulnerable status she was violently attacked; her eye stabbed out and she contracted HIV as a result. We found her terribly sick and she has been with us about two months now. She was so traumatized that she was unable to smile or even look up for the first two weeks of her stay with us. See now how the Lord's grace and gentleness has changed her!


This is Queenie who was found abandoned in hospital last September by one of our volunteers that did hospital visits. She has been with us since then. She has a totally paralyzed right side due to a tumor in her brain caused by HIV/AIDS. Her prognosis is not good. Her social conditions are dreadful; she has no living relatives and so we are her family and home. She has mental impairment now due to this tumor and so we are not sure how much she understands. We really would appreciate prayer for her...that our Lord would make himself and His saving mercy known despite her handicaps.




This is Pastor Sifiso Hlatswayo who regularly shares God's Word with the patients.


This is Thabile, a young mom of two small children who has improved dramatically under our Lord's care with us. She and her mother praise the Lord for her return to health! She is going home this week.


Please join us in thanking the Lord for his blessings upon the very difficult lives of these precious people.

A Visit to Nakekela

This would be my last day in South Africa visiting the Nakekela Care Center with Dr. Sonja Miskin, who so graciously let me tag along with her. It had rained a lot the day before and now today. People said it had been unusually rainy this season. The sky was gray and heavy with more downpours expected to saturate the red dirt even more. The roads were quieter than usual as we approached KwaNdebele, the area where Nakekela is located. Dr. Sonja commented sympathetically of the misery of the water seeping into the houses with insufficient zinc roofs and dirt floors. How much more miserable for the unfortunate ones that lie on the ground afflicted with the disease that affects every home in these communities.


On this particular day, because of the rain the patients that could be sitting or propped up were congregated in the one room where there is a heater. Their bodies are wasted with the effects of AIDS so it is hard to keep warm even on a temperate day. On sunny days the patients are sitting outside, facing a little garden. The care workers were bustling about cleaning the rooms, washing up and organizing supplies. The care center is immaculate despite the frugality of resources. Dishes are done by hand. Breakfast is simple: two slices of bread with Spam-like meat, slice of cheese and tea with milk.


I was impressed over and over again with the careworkers, Emma, Rose, Anna, Mama Cozi, Jeremiah and many others who selflessly do the most menial tasks: diapers need changing, new patients might have months of dirt to be scrubbed off, floors need to be washed, beds changed, laundry, gardening, cooking. Some workers cannot even read. Some have two jobs. Many are single moms or grandmas, most have young children they are responsible for because of the devastation of the disease. These workers do not have a healthcare plan, they don’t go on strike and they don’t get a paid vacation or pension. They started out as volunteers, but thanks to donors they now have a wage. They live in the community with the deprivations of their patients without the comforts we demand. Yet they work with joy and determination. They consistently share the gospel and counsel their patients.


The commitment of Word and Deed because of the love of Jesus at Nakekela is productive and inspiring. Nakekela is an earthly oasis in a desert where spiritual darkness has afflicted thousands of people with poverty, disease, and abuse. As the work at Nakekela grows, one can see God’s blessing at every turn. One can see that fundamentally, Nakekela depends on the Lord for its needs. The basic need is prayer for spiritual encouragement, strength, wisdom and the daily needs, for lives to be changed for a community to be a light in a very dark world.


The patients at Nakekela are in the last stages of what HIV does to people. Their immunity is as low as it can go. They are susceptible to viruses and diseases such as TB, meningitis and skin infections. Typically, family and friends have abandoned them. Here they are given a clean, soft bed. They are given medical attention. They are given food. Most of all they are given the gospel of Jesus Christ.


Not always, but many times patients are open to the gospel. Some heal, go home and share the healing with their community and neighbors. Most do not heal physically. That brings sadness to everyone, but a bittersweet joy when a patient rejoices to meet his Savior Jesus Christ. It is sobering to think that even this devastating disease can be used for good in reaching people who otherwise would not be open to the gospel.

-- Written by Connie Sikma who visited South Africa with her husband Doug and Son, David in January, 2009. They reside in Grand Rapids, MI.

With Strength God Alone Can Give

By Sonja Miskin


Rural KwaNdebele is a bleak place. Physically, it has nothing but dusty, potholed roads, separating dusty little houses consisting of a few tin sheets nailed together. Economically, there is little happening – the future prospects are bleak. Socially, the problems facing the community are staggering. Politically, these people have by all intents and purposes been forgotten. Medically, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is causing a bleakness hard to describe to the average citizen of North America. Spiritually, religious life is overwhelmed by ancestor worship, and crippled by superstition and indigenous African religions.


A bleak picture indeed. However, this is the field of labor chosen for some of us by our Sovereign Lord. It is my experience that in exactly such staggering bleakness the grace of our Lord is greatly manifest. A visible and tangible example of this sovereign grace is Nakekela HIV/AIDS Care Centre, which is now into its fourth year of operation. This could only be made possible by the wonderful financial support we receive from Word & Deed, through the generous giving of North American people.


This past year started off with us being able to move into our new building extensions, which was well worth the discomfort and wait we had through the second half of 2007. Utilizing funds granted by donors in the Netherlands as well as a local South African financial institution, we could make considerable improvements to our premises. Two new patient rooms were added, which now enables us to potentially house 12 patients, double that of the original six.
However, we have started by increasing to only nine due to staff and furniture restraints. Our kitchen and bathroom facilities were revamped. Some much-needed office space was added, as well as a nice little doctor's office with a small pharmacy attached. We had to sacrifice some of our vegetable garden, as we have limited space, but it is still big enough to supply the kitchen with some nourishing spinach, onions, cabbage, and tomatoes.

We also received the most amazing gift of a big electricity generator from a Dutch church group.
To date we have had more than 280 patients under our care, and of this number about 30% recover sufficiently to be able to return home and even go back to work. They will remain well and can live normal lives as long as they continue to take their HIV medication daily. This recovery rate is a remarkable answer to prayer, especially if you consider the dreadful condition in which these patients were on admission.
We strive to have every one who passes through our hands come into contact with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. To this end we have recently sent some of our Care Workers on a Biblical Counselling course presented especially for them at Mukhanyo Theological Seminary. We have also employed Pastor Sifiso as our very own in-house minister and he makes bi-weekly visits to both staff and patients.


Despite many discouragements, hardships, conflicts and struggles, the work of our Lord continues and we labor with strength God alone can give. We do not give up as we think these are good works God has long ago planned for us to do. In the end, all the glory belongs to the Lord alone for any achievements in this field of labor.

Dr. Sonja Miskin cares for rural South Africans at the Nakekla HIV/AIDS Care Centre in KwaNdebele, South Africa.

South Africa Projects

South Africa – Nakekela HIV/AIDS Hospice

Budget: $128,000

The Nakekela Hospice is a step-down clinic for AIDS patients. There are 12 beds in the clinic, nurses and doctors, and 10 home-based care workers who look after an average of 400 patients in their homes – bringing them medicine, food and speaking to them about their need of a Savior. We praise God for blessings exceeding expectations. In the first year of operation, 95% of the patients were expected to die but instead 60% were able to return home and continue their long term treatment there. Dr. Arthur Miskin and Dr. Sonja Miskin oversee the medical aspects of the clinic. The purpose of the clinic is to treat AIDS patients and alleviate the horrible symptoms that accompany the disease while bringing the Word of God to the afflicted.

Making a Difference in South Africa

Darkness as Light - by Randy and Rose Finkbeiner

It was always Rose’s and my dream to volunteer overseas in some capacity of community development work. We shared that dream before we ever said “I do” to each other twenty-six years ago. That leads me back to how I met my wife, which was the first step in an adventure that I wouldn’t trade for the world. That adventure has landed us in the middle of the global AIDS crisis in rural South Africa, volunteering with Mukhanyo Community Development Centre (MCDC).

Randy Finkbeiner with a Nakekela patient.

I think I was probably an average guy who really didn’t know what exactly to do with his life. All I knew was that I wanted to make a difference in this world. I didn’t really have an ambition to make money or to become famous or to break any records in life. I ended up with an education in Cultural Anthropology out of an interest in people but not without dropping out of school several times in the process. Not long after one of those lulls in my education I was at a Christian conference where I heard an impassioned man speak about the need to show the love of Christ to down-and-out people in the heart of San Francisco. A few months later I found myself living in this man’s garage, observing the manifestation of life’s pain in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. I spent nearly two years getting to know prostitutes, drug addicts and those who were the outcasts of society. Little did the world know that a virus was about to announce itself. It made its debut in several major American cities, one being the city of San Francisco. This virus, we now know as HIV, has sent shock waves around the globe. It was during this tumultuous time that I met my wife Rose and within five months we were married.

Rose Finkbeiner with a young friend.

It still amazes me to this day how God takes all of our seemingly unrelated, collective experiences and gathers them together in some profound way to prepare us for some future purpose. I would never have imagined that twenty-six years later I would follow the aftershocks of this virus half way around the world to South Africa.

We have faced no greater pain than to witness the devastating effects that AIDS has brought to African families. We have had a front row seat to this crisis these past four years volunteering with MCDC. My wife and I are involved in assisting families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS (one major MCDC project is the Nakekela HIV/AIDS Hospice which is funded by Word & Deed North America).

Nakekela Hospice

We live in a community that the government claims has an HIV prevalence rate of 34% amongst adults. I read the other day that half of all 15-year-old girls in this country won’t see their 30th birthday. That absolutely shocks me. Not because of the statistic, as raw as that is, but because Rose and I have recently been adopted by a 15-year-old girl who lost both her mother and her grandmother to AIDS. She now refers to us as “mom and dad.”

I met a girl recently who told me she had resigned herself to the fact that she would eventually die of AIDS. When I asked her why she felt this way, she simply replied, “Because someday I want to get married and have children.” A few hours ago I watched a 31-year-old man die. He was the only surviving uncle who was caring for eight orphans.

A new addition to the Nakekela Hospice.

What kind of hope can you offer in a seemingly hopeless environment like this? Rose and I struggle with that question daily. I know that our relationship with Jesus Christ is what transports us from day to day, but sometimes I feel a terrible hopelessness here. So I can’t imagine the suffering for those who do not have Christ in their lives. The only way I have come to reconcile this tension of offering hope in a hopeless place is by my view of the Kingdom of God. I see the Kingdom of God as being revolutionary in its ability to overthrow darkness. I have come to see myself as a member of that Kingdom and wherever I go the Kingdom goes. I recently have found comfort in this portion of scripture from Psalms 139: “If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hides not from thee; but the night shines as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”

Our hope is Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

Rose and I thank God daily for the opportunity granted to us at this time in our lives to volunteer with Mukhanyo Community Development Centre (MCDC) here in South Africa. We often see darkness as light.

Randy (50) and Rose (54) Finkbeiner volunteer in South Africa for MCDC. Randy is the Family Development Coordinator and Rose is the Sponsor-a-Family Coordinator and Volunteer Coordinator.

South Africa Mission Team Report

Putting a Smile on the Face of a Child - by Jennifer Byl (with input from other team members)

This summer, from July 31 to August 15, a group of young people from Ontario and two chaperons traveled to South Africa to work and live among the people there. This trip was arranged by Word & Deed and the Miskin mission liaison committee. Here is a report about what we learned, and some of our experiences while we were there. Certainly the experience of traveling to South Africa and being among the people has been a rewarding and spiritually insightful time. We were able to see that Christ's church is truly throughout the world and that the deeds of Christians are an important part of showing the gospel in action.

Orphan Care Centers (operated by Mukhanyo Community Development Center - MCDC)

There are five orphan care centers established in different areas surrounding Pretoria, South Africa. Approximately 60 to 80 orphans come to the care centers each day. These children are usually taken care of by their relatives, but there are cases where children live with 15 others in a shanty with their grandparent(s). This is one reason why the care centers provide food for the children. A single grandparent most likely does not have a source of income, and if he or she does, it will not be enough to provide for all these children.

Much of our time here was spent painting a new church at one of the care centers and erecting pit toilets for the children to use. Working with African workers at the care centers, we learned of their own life stories. One worker lost both of his parents at the young age of ten. Being the oldest of five, he had to leave school and find work and make money so his other siblings could attend school. This man will never be able to find a "good" job since he is illiterate. This is another area where the care centers provide help.

One afternoon we were given the opportunity to prepare a Bible story and some crafts for the children. One of the teachers translated the story of Noah and the flood into the Zulu language as we told it in English. The children all listened very attentively during the story. Afterwards, we did a craft with the children in relation to the story. They were very excited to be able to make something and take it home with them. While working, we also took the time to teach them songs and some simple English phrases. Children of all ages are simply fascinated with cameras. They never failed to flash bright smiles and pose happily for a picture. These children loved any attention we gave them because they receive so little.

It was difficult to communicate with the younger children as they do not yet know English but speak Zulu. It is in school where they learn to speak English; therefore the older children were able to speak to us. However, even though many of the younger children could not understand us and we could not understand them, we could still communicate love and compassion to them and it was readily received.

Nakekela Care Center (an MCDC project supported by Word & Deed)

The Nakekela Care Center is a clinic where people with AIDS are treated. Regular rounds are made in the clinic every day, where Dr. Sonja Miskin and her dedicated staff talk with each patient, discuss their treatments, and offer encouragement. Dr. Sonja Miskin also makes home visits to people who have AIDS.

The severity of the AIDS disease ranges from Stage 1 to Stage 4. One will not find a person with Stage 1 AIDS in the clinic as symptoms are not yet visible. Most of the patients in the clinic have Stage 4 AIDS, and treatment is mostly not effective except for a few cases (mortality is presently around 60 percent). The discovery that a person in the community has AIDS often brings a lot of shame and pain to the sick individual. It is vital that visitors and caregivers are sensitive to strict confidentiality. Such fear, however, presents a problem: by the time someone dares to seek help, the disease has most likely progressed and may have been transmitted to others.

A number of us were privileged to visit the clinic. We had the opportunity to make meals consisting of some meat, vegetables, and pap for the patients. In addition, we cleaned the clinic, visited with the patients, and helped them perform various exercises to loosen their limbs, as many suffer from strokes which are a result of having AIDS.

The effects of this disease are readily seen. AIDS patients are very thin and suffer from strokes, blindness, cancer, and seizures, and have difficulty walking. Many are so weak that they need assistance in even the simplest tasks such as eating their food.

It is difficult to comprehend the reality of what is really going on in many of the homes in South Africa. Those that are treated, and continue taking their treatments, are able to live at home and carry on with their daily lives, yet thousands do not receive the necessary care.

Personal Thoughts and Reflections

We were eager to go on this mission trip for the opportunity to provide help for the people in South Africa and make even a small difference in their lives. The trip itself was a humbling and eye-opening experience. We now have a much greater sense of what life is like for those who have much less than us, and how we should be ashamed for continually looking to materialistic things to make us happy and comfortable. It was especially humbling to see how thankful and content the people are with the little they have.

We are truly grateful for the opportunity to have been able to reach out to those who are less fortunate. It was an unforgettable experience, well worth the time to put a smile on the face of a child who has only known sadness and poverty, and many of us would consider visiting again. Pray for these people, that they might receive physical aid, but also that the Word, being brought with the deed, would be sanctified in their hearts.

Jennifer Byl lives in Burgessville, Ontario, where she attends the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation.