Maury and Taylor

(Sorry I can't post pictures to this story, blogger is being buggy. You can go to The Smith's blog by clicking the link to the right of the page to see this story with pictures.)

Maury and Taylor are Firefighters/EMT’s from the Denver, Colorado area. They spent last week working here at the shelter with us. We are so very thankful for their time here. They had such great attitudes and worked very, very hard.

Their first project was to plant a vegetable garden so that our children in the shelter can have fresh, organic vegetables to eat. They spent the whole first day turning the soil and pulling weeds. (No one in Rustenburg rents roto-tillers.) This was a very hard day of work which they did whole heartedly.

Their second project was to install cabinets and countertops to separate the kitchen area from the babies in the baby shelter. This is a requirement from the health department. Maury and Taylor had the difficult task of making do with mismatched pieces of donated cabinets and countertops. (As always, money is tight, so we had to do what we could without spending a lot of money.) It was not an easy project, but they put their minds to it and came up with a pretty functional room divider and countertop. We have another team coming in a week that will paint it.

During their time here they also spent time in Phokeng feeding a group of 80 orphans, they visited Freedom Park (a local shanty town) to bring food and water and pray with people in extreme poverty, and they spent the day with Dr. Neil as he visited three local AIDS clinics in some outlying villages. (Click on the link at the top right to read Lincoln and Jenny’s blog for more about these other outreaches.)