CEDAR Report

This is a report that was recently published in the Zimbabwe Newfrontiers magazine.

The majority of families in Zimbabwe have been affected in some way by HIV/AIDS. We currently have 1.3 million orphans in a population of 12 million, and more than 3,200 people die from AIDS related infections every week in Zimbabwe. 75% of patients in hospital beds are AIDS related. As a result children need substantial support to cope with the crisis they are facing.

As a church, River of Life’s response to this crisis has been to adopt an holistic approach to HIV/AIDS, and orphans and vulnerable children, by ministering to families through CEDAR Family Care.

At present CEDAR Family Care is working in 65 communities across Zimbabwe, and impacting 2061 families spiritually, emotionally and practically. Our site coordinators come to Harare quarterly for training at the Reach the Nation conference, and receive training in psychosocial, medical and facilitation skills. We are also training the pastors at each of the 65 sites how to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis in their church and community.

The areas where we have seen the greatest impact is in the reduction of stigma, as people are now more open to speaking about HIV/AIDS, and as a result of community workshops held quarterly at each site, there is now greater knowledge and understanding about HIV/AIDS. We have also seen people who are seriously ill give their lives to God.

ARV’s are expensive and out of reach for most of our beneficiaries, so we are in the process of establishing a health and nutrition centre, where we will grow a variety of herbs and medicinal plants to supply the sites and churches, so they can treat beneficiaries infected with HIV/AIDS in a sustainable way. We are also empowering our beneficiaries by teaching them healthy eating.

Quick update

This is just a quick update on what we have been up to.

In September we had our Zimbabwe New Frontiers Conference called Megavision, which is held annually at the church we attend. There were almost 1000 people there, and the speakers included people from Ghana and the States. Sean was videoing the whole thing so we spent much of our time behind cameras, but we will get to relive the whole thing many times once Sean starts editing, so we don’t feel like we missed out too much.

Sean was in Zambia for a few days at the beginning of November. He went with two other guys from church to visit church leaders there. He says it was a challenging time but he learnt a lot!

After that we attended a friends wedding that was being held in a place called Hippo Pools, which is in the middle of a National Park. Everyone was camping there for the weekend, but as we don’t have a tent we slept on the back of someone’s pick-up truck under a mosquito net. It was very hot so sleeping in the open was probably the best option anyway. It was great to be out in the middle of the bush and we heard the hippo’s munching grass all night a few feet from where we were sleeping!

We heard recently that the owner of the house we are renting is hoping to sell it soon, so we are making plans at the moment to either get a mortgage from the UK, or look for somewhere else to rent. Buying a house would be the best thing for us in the long term, as we feel Zimbabwe is where we feel we should be for the next 10 years at least.

I can’t remember if we had heard about my visa before we sent out our last newsletter, but in case we hadn’t. I was granted a further 3 years residency!! We had spent many hours sitting in immigration while they looked for my lost file on several occasions. But when we returned the last time we were directed straight to a different office, and my file was sitting on the lady’s desk! At the time I thought she was just giving me another 30 days extension as they had done the previous 3 times, because they hadn’t processed my application yet. Then when we left the building and checked the passport we saw it was 3 years!!!

Finally, we would like to thank you all very much for your support both financially and in prayer. If you have supported us financially by standing orders through Oasis, we trust you have received a letter from them a few weeks ago. As we are now working full time for Operation Joseph and CEDAR, Oasis UK will no longer be forwarding your support on to us, but have requested that you cancel your standing order, and set up a new one with Stewardship Services. (A form should have been enclosed in your letter). At the moment your support is going towards the general work of Oasis, so you will need to cancel your standing order through Oasis if you would like to continue supporting us and transfer your support to Stewardship Services. Or, if you would prefer to continue supporting the work of Oasis, but specifically the work in Zimbabwe, you will need to inform Oasis UK by sending them a letter or e-mail informing them of your wishes. Hope this all makes sense!

photos from site visit - finally

Sorry for the delay - was having problems putting photos on the site, but it appears to be fixed now!
These photos were taken at the home of one of our Operation Joseph resident site coordinators. One is of us interviewing the site coordinator. Alan - the project director is on the stool, Senzeni - the project accountant and me are on the mat and Sean is behind the camara. The other photo is of the site coordinators family.

latest newsletter - Oct 06

We hope that you enjoyed the hot summer in England, and any holidays that you may have had. We are just coming out of winter here, which is quite a relief as the houses are not built for keeping the cold weather out! Last night was the first of many to come where we were kept awake with the sound of mosquitoes buzzing around, and wondering where they are going to land!

It was our 2-year wedding anniversary last month, so we had a great weekend away in the eastern highlands. There is amazing scenery up there, and it is very peaceful. As well as celebrating our wedding anniversary, it was a nice break as we had just had two conferences one week after another, which we were both involved in.

The first conference was the Farming God’s Way Champions conference, where people come from different countries around Africa to learn more about Farming God’s Way and how to teach it in their own countries through the church that they attend. Sean has been putting together a DVD training series, which will be completed very soon and distributed to churches and organisations around the world who are interested in using this a tool to alleviate poverty and teach biblical principles of farming.

The second conference was the Reach the Nation conference that we have every 3 months. This is where 80 site coordinators from around Zimbabwe come and receive training in farming God’s way to take back to their communities and train others.
As part of this project, called Operation Joseph, we are aiming to give the poorest 10% of the farmers who attend training on site, free seed and fertilizer for next season. So my main task at the moment has been to identify the most vulnerable households from a list of 2500!

Church is pretty busy at the moment, as we have our annual conference coming up where all the Newfrontiers churches in Zimbabwe meet together for a weekend of teaching. Sean has been putting together the first Newfrontiers Zimbabwe magazine to launch at the conference so has been working all hours to get it to the printers on time. www.roleastlea.co.zw

I have recently applied for a 3-year extension to my residence visa, so we are hoping to hear soon whether it has been successful. It should be granted, but if not we could be seeing you back in the UK very soon! Currently they have lost my file, so we are going back every few weeks for temporary extensions!

Our other main news is that we are having a baby! It is due at the end of April.

We will keep this short as we hope you have been able to keep more up to date with our news from our web page www.seananddebbiemullens.blogspot.com. This is where we write more regularly about what we are doing and it gets updated about every 2 weeks. There are also a few more photos. It has helped us to keep to in touch with friends and family, without the frustrations of Zimbabwe e-mails!

For those of you who support us financially thank you so much for your ongoing support, we couldn’t do what we do without you! We hope by now that you have received a letter from Oasis with new standing order forms and a copy of our last newsletter. Please let us know if you have not yet received your letter from Oasis.

Would be great to hear all your news,

Love

Debbie and Sean

p.s the photo is of Sean's sister and her boyfriend, Gerry, his mum and us.

Article about Zim on BBC website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5359504.stm

This might give you some idea of what life is like in Zim! It also explains why most of you are not getting our e-mails!

Operation Joseph site visits

Last week Sean and I went on a day trip to the north of the country to Rushinga, Dotito and Mary Mount to see some of the Operation Joseph sites that are operating up there.
We were picked up from our house before the sun was up so got to see an amazing sunset on the road.
The photo below shows the first home that we visited. Alan, the programme director is sitting on the stool, with Senzeni the accountant and me on the mat. Sean is behind the camara. This guy is a resident site coordinator, whose job it is to conduct all the on-site training, and more recently monitoring of the 60 farmers who are part of the programme at his site.
At each site that we visited we checked the farmers records of his yields, rainfall and attendance at training sessions. Sean also had the opportunity to take some video for OJ training videos.
Much of the journey was on dirt roads but as it is winter it was very dry, so no danger of getting stuck anywhere!
At Dotito we visited one of the rural New Frontiers churches, who are also part of the Operation Joseph programme.
We arrived back home at 8pm to find we had no electricity (no change there then!) so had apple pie for dinner!

photos on the way

New Currency!

On the 1st August, the Governor of the Reserve Bank announced that we are going to have a new currency, it will still be called Zimbabwe dollars, but three zeros will be removed from the end. So 1 million dollars has become 1000 dollars (Zimbabweans are calling it the Kilo dollar). The reason for this is that the shops and banks computers were no longer able to cope with the huge long figures now being used as a result of the 1500% inflation.

Most people felt that this would have to happen at some point, but the crazy part has been that the announcement came on the 1st August, and the new money was introduced from the 2nd!

Both types of currency are currently in circulation until the 21st August, when the old notes will become redundant. So we are all busy spending our old money. The funny thing is when you go to a cash point or get change in a shop they give you old money, so you can never get rid of it! It is looking like they haven’t printed enough new currency to go around.

Businesses and banks were thrown into chaos on the 2nd as apparently it is not possible to operate accounts using two different currencies, so they all had to close down for a couple of days while they did financial year ends and wrote new software to handle the new currency! I don’t know much about accounts or economics, but when the 21st comes, it will be interesting to see what happens.

This has happened in a couple of other African countries before, but they were given at least 3 months warning, and 6 months to change over to a new currency!

Well can’t write too much in case I get in trouble, but you can read more on www.thezimbawean.co.uk, or any other Zim news website.

Back in Zim finally!

Our trip to the UK went well, and we managed to see most of our family and a few friends as well, sorry to those we did not get to see.
Sean’s Dr appointments went okay, the tests for his diabetes showed there has been no damage done to his eyes etc. which is good news. However, the condition of one of his hands has deteriorated quite a lot over the last 6 months so he has been put on the waiting list for an operation, so we could be back in England fairly soon.
The New frontiers conference in Brighton was very good, with some great teaching, Sean had flu for half of it, so unfortunately we did miss quite a lot though.

The journey back to Zimbabwe is a whole story in itself. (It’s quite long, so get comfortable!)
We arrived at Gatwick 3 hours before the flight (usually sufficient!), with all our luggage, including two rugs that were given to us as Christmas presents. We were next in the queue to check in, when the Air Zimbabwe staff stopped us and told us the flight was now full! We asked how this could be, when we booked our tickets in January, but the explanation was ‘it just is’. There were also another 50 or so people behind us who also could not get on.
We weren’t worried too much as this is quite usual with Air Zim, and they put us up for a night in the Hilton Hotel. However, the next day all the Zimbabweans were asked to leave the hotel as Air Zim had not paid them! So we all went to the Air Zim desk at the terminal to ask what we should do now, and they decided to put us on any flight they could find to Africa! We were put with a group of 7 others and told to get to Heathrow and fly to Zambia, and we would be able to get a connecting flight to Harare from there.
So we all wait at the bus stop for the coach to Heathrow. When the bus comes the rest of our group get on, but Sean and I are unable to as the coach is full, this was a bit problem because the 9 of us were all traveling on one shared ticket! So they left without us, shouting out the windows that they would meet us at the check in desk. Another coach came along quite soon, but broke down half way to Heathrow! By this time we were beginning to think it was going to be a long day, and a sense of humour was defiantly required! We finally got to Heathrow only to discover that we were not actually guaranteed a place on the flight so had to wait until everyone else had checked in. One at a time, we heard the good news that we could board. In our group there was another couple that were farmers, a lady with her young daughter, a lady visiting her fiancé in Zim, a Yugalslav who owns a bakery in Harare, and another lady traveling to Zim for 10 days for work.

After arriving in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, we found out that the next flight to Harare was in 8 hours time, and there was only space for 4 of us! We considered drawing straws, but then decided to choose who would go based on greatest need to get back! The lady with the child, the Yugaslav and the lady visiting her fiancé were chosen, mostly because they were the most upset about being stranded in Zambia! The rest of us settled into the sofas in the departure lounge at Lusaka airport for the long wait. Finally after 9 hours, some space became available on a flight to Johannesburg in South Africa, from where we were reassured we could get on a flight to Harare. Once again, Sean and I were on the waiting list, whilst the other 3 travelling with us managed to get straight on. Fortunately they had space for us and we all traveled to Jo’burg.
Then more problems! One guy didn’t have a visa for South Africa, so went straight thorough to the transit lounge, while the rest of us went thorough customs to collect all the luggage. There we found that our rugs were missing. We still don’t know where they are, but suspect that may have gone back to the UK!
While we were trying to sort this out the other two ladies went to find out if we were booked onto the flight to Zimbabwe. They discovered that the flight had already left, and there was no way we could have made it in time anyway, so it seems that once again we had been put onto any flight without the connections being organized. Well in the end we finally managed to get on another flight, making it by only 2 minutes, after we managed to find the guy waiting for us in the transit lounge, and then lost him again when he went to find coffee. He had the ticket that we were all traveling on!

Well we made it back, minus two rugs and 3 days late, but happy to be home!

July newsletter

Thank you so much for your support over the last few months. We hope that everything is going well for you.

We have been in the UK for a short visit, attending a New Frontiers leaders conference in Brighton, and for Sean to visit doctors for his diabetes and hands. He has been put onto the waiting list for an operation on his hands so we may be back within the next few months. The conference was great, and 40 Zimbabweans managed to attend. We were involved in organising for them to get over for the conference, which involved booking flights, helping with visas and organising accommodation. It was quite a big exercise, but it seemed to all come together in the end, even with Air Zimbabwe (or Scare Zimbabwe as it is now known) canceling flights at the last minute!

The situation in Zimbabwe – The situation in the country continues to decline, and inflation is now reaching 1500%, with the unofficial exchange rate at almost ZW$1 million to £1. Power cuts and water cuts are more frequent i.e. at least once a day, and finding fuel remains a problem. Sugar is a scarce commodity, which Zimbabweans won’t drink tea without! There will often be long, loud queues outside the supermarkets when a delivery arrives.

Here is just a brief update on the various projects we are involved in:

Church Projects • Operation Joseph
May saw the start of the harvesting period, and we were able to collect data from the various Operation Joseph sites around Zimbabwe, and found that the yields achieved by our farmers, are up to 10 times higher than the average yields achieved in the country. OJ farmers are getting between 2 and 5 tonnes/ha, whilst others are only achieving 0.5 tonnes/ha. As a result of this we have seen increased interest in Farming God’s Way from individuals, governments and the donor community. This year we are aiming to increase the number of farmers in our programme from 4,500 to 13,500.

Just before leaving Zimbabwe we had our 16th “Reach the Nation” conference, where 80 FGW (Farming God’s Way) site coordinators and 65 CEDAR Home Based Care coordinators from around Zimbabwe come together for training. These conferences are run quarterly, so we are already busy preparing for the next one!

Sean has been working alongside a professional video company to produce a series of training videos and DVDs to teach people Farming God’s Way. There has been a lot of interest in the Farming God’s Way initiative, so the video and DVD training series will make it accessible to all. FGW is primarily an evangelistic tool for planting and strengthening rural churches with an emphasis on income generation. FGW is helping to alleviate poverty by improving crop yields and bringing the gospel by teaching biblical principles of farming


• CEDAR
The number of sites we are working in has increased to 62, so now 2232 households are receiving home based care! This last few months CEDAR has been focusing primarily on teaching the volunteers how to care for the orphans, and children infected with HIV/AIDS, as this is an important part of the CEDAR initiative, but the most difficult to see happen because of cultural expectations and pressures.

Here is an extract from a report that Debbie wrote for Tearfund last month on the HIV/AIDS situation in Zimbabwe:

‘The number of people becoming sick and dying of HIV/AIDS does not appear to be slowing down, and as a result of the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe many people appear to be losing hope. We are finding that often people do not value life enough to change their lifestyles even though they know the facts about HIV/AIDS. Even young people are asking why they should prolong their lives as they are going to die anyway. UNICEF has found that “in sub-Saharan Africa girls are getting infected quicker and earlier than boys, as a result of older men having sex with younger girls, and there is evidence to suggest that a large proportion of new HIV infections are due to gender-based violence in homes, schools, the workplace and other social arenas. Forced or coerced sex renders a women even more vulnerable to infection, and the younger she is, the more likely it is that she will contract HIV.”

Personal news
Our church is involved in schools work so Sean has been helping to run weekly meetings at his old school for the CU, focusing on discipleship, and we continue to lead a cell group and help out at the evening service.
We really enjoyed seeing family when we were in the UK especially our nephews Luke and Isaac. Our next visit in July will include Debbie's brothers wedding.

Thank you so much for your support.

photos

Reach the nation conference












Our house!

Reach the Nation conference

This week we have our Reach the Nation conference on, this happens 4 times a year, and all the site coordinators from the 80 Operation Joseph sites and 65 CEDAR sites come together for training. This time the CEDAR site coordinators are being trained in caring for children with HIV, helping children to deal with grief after the death of parents, and how to teach children about HIV/AIDS. As you can see we are focusing big time on children, this is because in the Shona culture children are often seen as not as important as adults so we are trying to address that and help the volunteers to care for the children, especially those with HIV/AIDS or who have been orphaned, and then to encourage families to do the same.
In the Operation Joseph sessions they will be discussing weed control, storage of seeds etc. and working out the details of how to increase the impact of the programme. Sites are being encouraged to set up farmer study groups; so more farmers can receive training. We are being closely watched by DFID, the UK gov development agency because if we are successful this is a model they would like to get all the major NGO's they support to adopt. Quite a lot of pressure to get it right! My (Debbie) role in the monitoring and evaluation will become busier, as we are hoping to expand the programme to include 13,500 families; also we obviously need to do lots of monitoring to ensure the new model is working well.

By the end of the week we should have some photos to show you.

Back from camp

We got back from Zambesi Ministries Camp last week. It went really well, and the boys all seemed to have a good time, there were no injuries or problems like last time so it was a lot more enjoyable, especially for all the leaders! The morning and evening meetings went well and there was a good response to the talks.
It was a boys camp so I didn't have to do too much, but Sean was leading a dorm group (see photo!), doing a few talks and driving the motor boat for the water sports. He also ended up on a team for the Iron Man competition on the last day, so is now aching all over. Not as young as he once was! We are putting together a DVD of this camp to advertise camps in the various schools that the church works in, so will hopefully have a copy with us when we come to the UK in July.

March update

30th March 2006
We hope you are having a good 2006 so far. Time has flown by since Christmas and it’s hard to believe its April already. We are settling into our new home well, and are enjoying life in Zim. We are off to South Africa tomorrow though for a conference, so are in for a long drive, but are looking forward to the MacDonalds, getting fuel from a pump, and nice chocolate! Although as I write this Sean is currently in hospital to stabilize his blood sugar levels, so won’t be joining me for the chocolate! He has been in for 4 days, and the Dr has adjusted his insulin requirements, so he will hopefully be released tomorrow morning.

The economy in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, inflation is now at almost 1000%, the highest in the world. It is making it hard for businesses to keep going, and institutions like schools and hospitals are struggling, so fees are constantly going up. However, it remains peaceful and has been relatively stable politically for the last few months. We have also had a long rainy season this year, which has been good for the crops, and we hope it will bring a big harvest and more food for people in the coming months.

Operation Joseph update
During recent visits to the Operation Joseph sites it was found that the number of people who have died from starvation and poor nutrition is much higher than last year, but there has also been more freedom to distribute food, which has hopefully helped.

At Operation Joseph we are moving away from distributing food, but will help farmers to sell their produce, and or trade it for seeds and fertilizer, which are currently scare in Zimbabwe. By doing this we hope the farmers will become self-sufficient and less reliant on donors. The farmers we have trained are getting better yields than farmers who are using the traditional methods of farming, and many are now able to save money from the produce they sell, and can buy seeds for the following season, educate their children and support their families.

Sean has been involved in a putting together a series of training videos that will be used throughout Africa to teach ‘Farming God’s Way’, which is the method that we are teaching farmers in Operation Joseph. It has been a lot of work, but the benefits will be worth it. Already there has been interest from many African countries, as well as China, Russia, Australia and India.

CEDAR Update
Running parallel to the Operation Joseph project is the CEDAR project, which Debbie is also involved in. It trains volunteers to care for people with HIV/AIDS and orphans. This project continues to go well and expand. It is now operating in over 60 communities across Zimbabwe, and is in the process of setting up a health and nutrition centre in Harare, where we will grow and process herbs that have been found to improve the health of people with AIDS.

Our church recently invited all 60 CEDAR site coordinators, 82 Operation Joseph site coordinators and 82 pastors from those communities to a training conference in Harare, which we call Reach The Nation. The aim of inviting the pastors was to inspire them to teach more about HIV/AIDS in their churches and to take more responsibility for the poor, sick and orphans in their communities.

Oasis Update
As you may have picked up we are working more and more with our local church, and so have reduced the time we work at Oasis. We know that many of our financial supporters began supporting us whilst we worked full time for Oasis, so we would like you to feel able to move your support to Oasis Zimbabwe directly if you would prefer to support their work. For those who wish to continue supporting us personally Oasis UK will continue to send us your support until another route has been set up, and you will be receiving a letter soon letting you know how this will work. Please e-mail us if you would like any clarification.

For now we are still helping with administration, overseeing the Oasis Global Action Teams and running the Youth Leaders Training Course. We will maintain strong links to Oasis so will continue to send you news. Currently the first intake of girls at the Tanaka project are all moving on, most are continuing with their education at local or boarding schools, and others have found work and are moving into their own accommodation. Sadly one girl died of AIDS, leaving behind her 1-year-old daughter who she had named Tanaka after the project. Please pray that suitable guardians will be found. 15 new girls will be moving in at the end of April.

Outside of work we have also been involved in school missions and youth camps. Our cell group is going well and we have just finished ‘purpose driven life’, and are planning to plant 2 more groups from ours in the near future.

It is quite difficult to describe exactly what we are doing, so apologies for the long e-mail! Hopefully we will be able to put some photos onto a website soon, which will help, but we will let you know.

Upcoming dates:
New Frontiers Conference in South Africa - 1st April – 4th April
Camping in South Africa for 2 days - 4th April-6th April
Oasis team arrives – 12th April
Oasis team retreat – 21st April-24th April
Oasis youth workers graduate – 24th April
Boys Camp – 27th April-3rd May
Reach the Nation Conference – 5th June-9th June
Visit to UK – June 29th-July 28th