Why Africa?

So many people ask me, why are you going to Africa?  You want the honest answer?  I have to..........

I first went to Lesotho in 2007 with Craig,  a colleague from my school, and Jo ( my oldest daughter). My school had had a visit from Julian Bullen who has been a missionary in Lesotho and he was encouraging us to support a school that a church was building.  He invited my head teacher at the time to go and she invited me. 

As a child I had always played with dolls and my friend and I had spent many happy hours under the dining room table playing at being missionaries. We had a pretend school, I even had an African Doll,  and we taught our dolls all sorts of complicated mathematics and English as well as singing and playing games with them!   The chance to go to visit Africa seemed like a dream came true so off we went. I fell in love with the continent, the people, the country of Lesotho, every aspect of this amazing and huge place. 

I then had the chance to go back in 2009 at which point I took my younger daughter Emma and went with another group, again from River Church in Maidenhead.  For the second time we visited Beautiful Gate and I once again met up with Ray and Sue Haakonsen there.  I returned home knowing that I would go again and knowing that a large part of my heart had been left behind in Africa. 

Ray visited England twice over the last couple of years by which time I seemed to have become the UK rep for Beautiful Gate almost by default.  He and Sue had founded Beautiful Gate, an amazing place which cares for orphaned and abandoned children, many who are HIV+ in Lesotho.  On his last visit which was in May last year, I knew that I had to go and revisit them.  Subsequent to his visit to England, he and Sue knew that they were called to leave Beautiful Gate, a place which they had given their lives to for the previous 10 years.  This seemed to put an end to my plans to visit and spend a week with them in February half term. 

However the call to visit Africa became even stronger and I knew that despite Ray and Sue not being there, I still had to go and I started to make all sorts of excuses e.g there is no way I could a) afford to go or b) get time off work as I knew that going for a week was not going to be enough. When I asked my head teacher if there was any possibility of taking an extended time off work I was very shocked when she said 'yes' with no hesitation!  I had been saving up for a while knowing that I would be going to Africa this year in some way, shape or form. 

When I mentioned to Steve that I wanted to go and spend a month in Africa his first words to me were 'can you afford it?' and without hesitation I said 'yes' not really knowing that I could.   I 'um'd and ar'd' before booking my flight and was in conversation with Ray who by now knew that he would not be in Lesotho at the time I wanted to visit.  I browsed around for flights and they were prohibitively expensive until one night I was browsing the websites and a direct flight to Cape Town came up at a very cheap price with just '2 seats left' . Fortunately Ray was on-line and I checked dates with him as my plan was to go and visit him and Sue and family on route and he told me to go ahead and book!  I booked with fear and trepidation on my credit card and then later checked how much money I had saved up for my flight. The two figures were within £10 of each other!   This confirmed my  thoughts that I 'was meant to be going'. 

I am still not sure of my purpose for going except, I believe, to build a relationship with the new directors of Beautiful Gate Lesotho so that I can continue to support and fund-raise effectively for them. Many people have told me that I will know why I am meant to go when I get there! Who knows? I hope that answers some of the questions in your mind. When I know why I am going, I will endeavour to share that with you. All I can say just now is that I know I have to and I am going in faith knowing that God will lead me and show me what He has planned.

Thank you for signing up to my blog.............it's great to have you on board.
Jenny x