Visit to Kanana

Yesterday morning after helping out in the baby room for a couple of hours, Nomhle, the managing director of Lighthouse, drove me out to the Assemblies of God church (where the Lighthouse staff and kids attend church each Sunday) to meet Noel, the youth pastor. Noel takes some of the young adults in his youth group each Wednesday out to either Freedom Park or Kanana, which are both very poor areas just outside Rustenburg.

Janis put this on my weekly schedule for Wednesdays, and I agreed to try it to see if it was something I wanted to continue doing. I got to meet 4 young people from the youth group: Lou Ann, Andre, Stella, and Steven. All of us piled into Noel's truck (here called a bakkie) and headed out to the village of Kanana.

We stopped first at the Kanana Clinic to drop off food and blankets donated by the church. The clinic has limited resources but tries to help the many people of the village who are sick and dying of AIDS. I'm not sure about Kanana, but Noel told me that in Freedom Park, over 70% of the people are HIV positive.

We drove through the village stopping at several houses to visit the sick and pray over them. It was really neat. We prayed with one woman who was very sick, lying on an air mattress covered in blankets, and dying of AIDS. She asked to receive Jesus in her heart, and we helped her pray to accept Jesus.

As Noel drove me back to Lighthouse, I told him I definitely want to join them when they go to Freedom Park next week. Kanana was definitely a poor village, but Freedom Park is considered a squatter camp, and the people there are even poorer and sicker than the people in Kanana.

Please be praying for these people that even if God does not heal their physical bodies of disease that they will have the opportunity to hear about Jesus and accept Him into their hearts before they die.