Well this has been an interesting month for us. It started off, on the 4th, with us being served an eviction judgement against us for the new land which shocked us as we believe that the new land issue had been dealt with in November 2023, which is why we continued with the buildings. Our land lawyer assured us that he was dealing with the matter and so did our acting Chief, Princess Salaphi, who confirmed that we were to continue building the new ABC home.
Then on the 10th, Rose, our landlady, arrived on our property with 2 men and started hacking at the tall wattle trees in our back year against our neighbours fence. When Gerry approached about what she was doing, she yelled at him that she owns the house and she doesn’t need our permission to cut down the trees. She seemed to have forgotten that we are renting the property and that any work she wants to do needs to be confirmed through our lawyers. These men were hacking at the trees and the trees fell into the neighbours yard and broke our fence. After conversing with our lawyer, we were told to lock her off the property and to get the police to assist us in the matter. She later arrived with 2 men Roses guys up the trees, hacking away. with chainsaws and was very angry that we had locked the gates on her. She went off and got the media and stood outside the gates making false accusations against us, which appeared on the Swazi TV news that night. Later on, the 2 men with the chainsaw arrived back and threatened us that they were going to come back at night with guns to kill us all. Gerry then opened a case against Rose, at our local police station, about this this threat to us. Rose has not returned but there is a court case happening on the 3rd March.
On the 22nd, aunty Fezile, at the end of her pregnancy, was feeling very tired and so Robyn inisisted that she start her maternity leave. Aunty Thulile atarted her annual leave on the 19th and Emmelinah returned to work on the 26th. Because these three ladies are all on different shift teams, we were able to let them take leave and still had enough staff to help us daily.
On the 28th, Aunty Fezile, after a quick and easy labour, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, weighing 3.4kg and we welcomed Esther into our ABC family. Also, on this day, we had the Eswatini Tourism Authority (ETA) present us with many donations of baby clothes, diapers and baby products. The ETA charity committee had decided to take on Aunty Fezile’s baby girl ABC as their charity to support this year and had collected many things for our baby home. We were so grateful and blessed by their generosity.
Also on the 28th, the court sherrif arrived to evict us from the new ABC land. After talking with him, he decided that he would return after the weekend. He was given the eviction orders when he served us the court order on 4 February but he was not willing to exercise it immediately. He now stated that Mrs Shongwe’s lawyers were pushing for him to evict us from the land immediately. Our lawyer hasfiled for a motion to stay but it takes time. The Atorney General is also working on getting Mrs Shongwe’s false papers annulled. In the meantime, ABC is caught up in the middle of this in house fighting between Mrs Shongwe and our acting Chief, who is her mother-in-law.
Prayer Requests: Nothing changes without prayer!
- Please continue to pray for enough funding and materials to be donated to ABC so as to complete the new baby home project.
- Please pray for our land and the court issues. We need this land dispute to finally be put to rest so that we can continue to build a new and safe home for our babies.
- Please continue to pray for good homes to be found for our babies who need to move from our home once they turn 2 years old. We have 4 older ones that need to move to permanent homes.
- Please give thanks to the Lord for His continual provision for the baby home and also for us to complete the new home as soon as possible .
- Please give thanks to God for all that He is doing!
Our words cannot express our gratitude to everyone who has supports us, who prays for us and encourages us to keep on going. We are extremely grateful to everyone and appreciate all that everyone does to assist us with the running of the ABC baby home. Without you, we cannot survive.
THANK YOU!
God bless you
Gerry & Robyn
