Dear Friends and supporters

Once again the unexpected has surprised us from behind and our village Bulwer was directly hit by the recent violence and looters. All the businesses in our usually bustling village, a place where the people from neighboring communities bought all their supplies and many had some form of employment, were looted and burnt . Anything you might need could be found in this village. Now it is a ghost town. About 20km away the next village, Donnybrook which sported a big supermarket and hardware shop shared the same fate.

Now many people have to stretch their already meagre means to travel much further to get their daily needs, and many won’t even be able to do that because their jobs were annihilated in a matter of a day.
The only bank in town, Ithala, (left above) is merely a shell, the ATM completely destroyed.
Many little shops, typical of rural villages, are no more. These were not the type of businesses that had insurance. Also many of the shop owners and their families lived in this complex of shops(left) and they have lost more even than just their businesses.

HNO escaped the looting as we are a little out of town. We are so grateful that God protected the centre, and because of that we were able to welcome our disabled children and young adults back again last Monday after the mid year break. In the meantime of course, the pandemic rages on although the figures seem to be dropping a little now and we have hope that our third wave is on the decline. We will increase our intake and plan to be full house again by the end of August, all things being equal.
We have also been busy trying to identify families who were hard hit by the looting and assisting where we can with bags of mealie meal. We want to thank Creighton Farmers Agency and Underberg Spar for assisting us with getting hold of these bags of staple food. The groceries for the centre is also now a problem as we can’t just pop down to get our daily bread, and other needs and again Underberg Spar has committed to help us in any way they can. We praise God that the people of Underberg, businesses, farmers, ordinary citizens and taxi owners banded together to protect the village. This was one silver lining in the dark clouds that hovered over us these past two weeks.

Please pray for Bulwer, for KZN, for our country and especially for those who will now suffer the greatest.
God bless
Conny