Dear Friends,

The past two months have been a whirlwind—let me try to catch you up on where I’ve been.

The African (late March) and International (early April) Conferences came and went, and for many of us involved who have been friends for years this happened way too fast! Even for some of our long-time African partners it was the first time to attend our conference, and many have since commented that the experience of seeing partners from across the continent gathered together was life changing and that a huge paradigm shift happened in their understanding of Hands and their strategy to reach the 100,000 orphaned and vulnerable children by 2010.

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Someone once said, “True happiness is when what you believe is the same as what you say and do.” The more one thinks about this the more it rings true, especially among Christians in the 21^st century. So many books have been written on how to be happy and constantly new books reach the book shelves to again attempt solving this topic. Whenever I met with young adults, be it in North America or more recently in Australia I find them caught in pursuit of this very challenge. The difference between them and the previous generation is that they somehow understand it will not happen by accumulating as much as they can. They understand that competing with the Jones’s is chasing after the wind. A portrait of this is drawn so well by the Christian band “Casting Crowns” in a song about the American Dream… a dream that destroyed so many families and relationships between parents and their children.

Watching these young volunteers from the North as they work in the dust of Africa is something to behold. There is a common phrase Hands staff hear from them: “At last I am doing something that actually makes a difference and not just a profit!” What, I wonder to myself, could be more important for a parent for his child or for a pastor for his youth than for this newest generation to feel wanted and to realize they were created to be a blessing! Recently I sat in a meeting with a group of young people, among them a couple from US Peace Corps. We discussed the training of volunteers in our Footprints program and I expounded on the need to explain, through biblical teaching, to these volunteers the lost art of servant hood. The couple was so excited about this, saying they had been taught so many good things, but that they now recognized this was the missing piece: the call to serve!

The call of Hands— to mobilize the local Church in Africa to care and to be a prophetic voice to the Church outside Africa—is burning in the hearts of the Hands team more than ever. It brings happiness to us as we believe it, we speak it and we do it!

As usual, the summer holiday time of our Northern Partners brought a full house of visitors to many Hands at Work projects. It is incredible to see old friends return year after year and new teams arrive from entirely new places for the first time. The orphan camps in Zambia have become an annual highlight and destination for many; other teams worked with our construction crew putting up roofs for our community schools; some trained our teachers; and still others continued the amazing work of visiting our patients in their homes.

The dream of true servants traveling to Africa is actually happening! More and more people join us for longer periods, and Footprints (our Year-of-Your-Life program) is becoming a key vehicle of capacity building work for our projects. Mozambique, Zambia and the DRC have already been impacted greatly by Footprinters.

Speaking of Footprints, our building team continues to sweat out ten-hour days in the exciting task of preparing the Footprints Village for the February intake! We are so grateful to you friends and partners who continue to support us—some with dirty hands stacking bricks, and some financially—in completing this vision of a village.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who so generously supported the feeding programs for our orphans in Masoyi over the past months as we faced financial challenges. Schools, businesses and Churches came together in support. Now, with the end of a difficult time in sight, it is amazing to look back and see how much people stretched out of their usual routines to become part of a new solution. Thank you. When our volunteers in the field see such sacrificial giving from all over the world they become incredibly encouraged to continue.

For me, this is preaching Jesus! As Mother Theresa once said, “one can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving.”

Growing up in the 21^st century doesn’t allow many of us to experience rough new beginnings. Today things are instant, customized and completed by the time they reach us. I firmly believe we are poorer because of this, robbed of many opportunities to experience life and build character. Who among us doesn’t love listening to stories of the older generation, stories about the way they struggled and overcame the incredible challenges they faced, stories of courage and faith? The joy in their eyes as they stare in the distance, remembering how they have come through is something we all long for.

We are only pilgrims in this world. My prayer for Hands at Work is that the leaders will NEVER become settlers but always nurture a pioneering spirit. So I trust that Hands at Work can go through situations where the new generation of leaders can have their own stories to share one day… stories that shaped their character and faith forever.

As you'll read about here, the new adventure of moving onto our own Hands at Work property has all the ingredients and potential to fulfill the above requirements. The Hands at Work family needs your prayers in this regard – not that it should become easier for us but that we would display the character and grace needed for this situation, and that the fruit of the process will be a rich harvest of strong new leaders working side by side with wiser and stronger older leaders!

George