EVENTS

SEMINARS & OUTREACH

FAMILY RESPONSE

MEDIA

RESOURCES

"Participants... not Spectators"

Sincerely

Dr Amon Kasambala
Chief Executive Officer

We are so appreciative to all who gave financially to support one of the four main target areas listed below. Within the content of this newsletter are stories and reports from various Focus departments involved with these projects. As can be seen from the following information, we calculated what was needed, and believe that with your help we can manage to reach the targets:

	PROJECT	TARGET	%
1.	Reaching the Unreached Youth	R400 000	14%
2.	Radio Broadcasting	R360 000	8%
3.	Counselling Centre	R120 000	38%
4.	Family Outreach	R80 000	77%

“…I expressed how impressed I was by the significant accomplishments you
(Amon Kasambala) and your team regularly achieve with a relatively small staff and budget - the Lord is using Focus Africa to make an incredible impact, and it was a privilege to again see this firsthand!”
~ Jim Daly, President & CEO
Focus on the Family, US.

If you identify one of these areas as being close to your heart, and would like to make a once off donation, you can make a direct transfer using the following bank details:-

Acc Name: Focus on the Family Africa
Bank: Standard Bank Durban
Branch Code: 04 00 26
Acc No: 050 183 540
Reference: JD(project number: surname: initials)

As an alternative, you may prefer to support the ministry with a regular monthly donation. Give Marge a call or email her at marged@fotf.co.za and ask her how you can become a ‘Friend of Focus’: she will walk you through the whole process, and help you choose the option that suits you best.
Marge is available to take your call on 031 7163317

JOIN FOCUS AS A VOLUNTEER?

Occasionally, Focus on the Family Africa calls on volunteers who are always willing to help with tasks that are relatively simple, sometimes time-consuming, but highly rewarding. Events such as the one referred to before, and the Rob Parsons Events scheduled for September, require an enormous amount of planning, and we want to invite you to be part of our VOLUNTEER DATABASE.
Recently, some of our Volunteers came to the Focus offices as a workparty to pack chocolates and nougat into attractive presentation gifts for the Jim Daly Event at The Elangeni Hotel. What a great job they did, and what fun they all had!

Volunteers tying ribbons around chocolate boxes

Some were really disappointed when the task was completed as they had enjoyed such fellowship, and had made new friends. (They were treated to tea and cake as well, otherwise we could have ended up short of chocolates!!)

Our Wish List would be to create a Band of Volunteers in the main centres around the country. These groups would form a vital part of our organisation when Focus hosts events away from home. We need both men and women, for the tasks are varied and require different strengths. Ideally, each group would have a person who would be the co-ordinator. Your involvement will help Focus on the Family Africa minister to families even more effectively.

If you would like to be a ‘Volunteer Friend of Focus’, we would love to hear from you. Give Marge a call and chat to her about how you can help us Help Families Thrive.

Come join us - https://www.focusonlinecommunities.com/ community/thetruthproject

STATISTICS: October 2008 - March 2009 NO APOLOGIES Student Workshops Number of Students Reached....*1283 Facilitator Trainings Number of Facilitators Trained .... 724 * A further 65000 learners are being trained through educators we have trained PARENTING WITH ASSURANCE Number of Parents Reached........ 1807

God continues to open more doors in schools and churches, where over 100 workshops were held during this period of time. Our facilitators have travelled thousands of kilometres to conduct these seminars, mostly on roads badly eroded by heavy rain, and often on dirt tracks in order to reach the workshop destinations in near and far away places. Working with appreciative people always makes these trips worthwhile, for which we give God the glory.

NO APOLOGIES

March was a ‘more-than-the-usual’ month for us at Focus on the Family Africa! Our dedicated “No Apologies” manager, Nontla Ngcobo glorified God in her marriage to Sipho Mkhabela. We were enthralled as we watched her walk down the aisle in her white dress towards Sipho, who was eagerly awaiting her arrival. He was about to receive a woman who had kept herself, just for him.

Nontla and Sipho leaving the church after their ceremony.

Nontla’s Story: “Sipho is a teacher, who had already been trained as a facilitator for “No Apologies”. We met at a school where I was training, and where he was not even scheduled to be! I could see he was a man of God, and even though we were in different parts of the country, Sipho accounted himself to me every day regarding his movements. He spoke with God concerning me and we were engaged in October, and after I also received confirmation from God, we were married in March 2009”.

We pray that God will bless the many children who have heard the message of “No Apologies” through people like Nontla, and that they too will have the wonderful joy of keeping themselves pure for marriage. If all our people did this, there would no longer be the scourge of sexually transmitted infections, including the dreaded HIV and AIDS virus. And yes, teaching abstinence is realistic; in fact as realistic as teaching a child to cross a busy and dangerous road safely!
‘Wait For Love’ because ‘Love Is Worth The Wait’

Staying ‘near’ to your child
Many parents ask us for advice on how they can keep close to their children and we would like to share the following practical actions we can take to ‘stay near’ to them.

• Start from an early age. The earlier the better.
• Spend as much time as possible with your children – they generally prefer a game outside with you than a computer game or the cartoon channel.
• Make time for outings together
• Switch the TV and your cell phones off during mealtime. This is a great time to communicate about the day
• Watch out for your possible negative body language which could be an indicator to your child that they are wasting your time
• Learn to be an interested listener – find out where your child spends his day, who their friends are, and about their concerns and their joys. Rather listen more and do less telling them what to do
• Listen to what your child is not saying – like “is that injury really from a fall or maybe from a school bully?”
• Probe a little when you see a marked emotional change in your child-it is better to deal with a possible problem early on than to find out bad news a few years down the line.

May we share a concern with you?

We are faced with the increasing need for the services of reliable Christian counselling, and counsellors… countrywide. At our Friendraising Dinner recently, we shared the vision for our own on-campus counselling centre. Many of our constituents can be assisted by telephone or email, but there are those who require face-to-face counselling. Currently, such cases are referred to psychologists in their area who meet our criteria, and who are on our referral base. Many contact Focus on the Family as a result of having heard one of the Focus 25 minute daily radio broadcasts, and recognising a concern in their own lives. In the light of this initiative, we are prayerfully seeking what doors the Lord would open, at the same time recognising that the logistics of such can be complex and can take a great deal of time to implement.

We share this vision with you and request that you please pray for us as we continue to seek God’s direction and the finances for this ministry. In the meantime, if we can assist you in any way with a difficult situation you might be going through, be it your marriage, a parenting issue, an aged parent, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or email us. While we do not claim to have easy solutions for all of your challenges, we’re here to listen to you, and believe that no other investment of our time or energy could be more worthwhile.

Until we meet again! God Bless

[Counselling]

[Radio Programme Schedule]
[Find a Station]

NEWSFLASH..... a planned visit from Jeff Brown (Producer Global Content Creation) from our head office in Colorado Springs, USA, was a worthwhile and valuable occasion.
Jeff focused on mentoring our broadcast team and concentrated on production of local content in the context of global standards. Although we learnt volumes from Jeff, we believe that we sent him home with unforgettable memories of ‘spicy bunny chows’ and also…a whole new vocabulary – ‘Eish’!

 

NEWSFLASH...... the visit of Jim Daly (President and CEO of Focus on the Family USA) was an unbelievable privilege for us. With limited time available in a very busy schedule, we managed to squeeze 5 telephonic interviews with selected radio stations into one hour! To those who were able to call us, thank you for keeping to the time frames and we hope that your 6 minute interviews were as valuable to your listeners as your call was to us. Mr Daly thoroughly enjoyed those moments with you.

 

NEWSFLASH........ February 2009 saw Dr Dobson (after serving 32 years as the Chairman of the Board for Focus on the Family) step down and was elected to the position of Founder and Chairman Emeritus. We are pleased to reassure you that the familiar voice of Dr Dobson, who based his ministry on Radio broadcasting all those years ago, will continue to be heard hosting Focus on the Family radio broadcasts into the future.

 

“Dear friends at Focus on the Family Africa
Thank you for all the great programmes I have listened to for about 15 years. I just love listening to Dr James Dobson and all the wisdom he shares. You know people sometimes ask, ‘which celebrity would you like to meet?’ I most certainly would love to meet the man who shared so much on the radio, which I would never have been able to read as I am partially sighted and it has become a challenge to read, or least complete reading a book.
The radio has become my library….” Andrea

1. Rob Parsons in September 2009

2. The Truth Project in Port Elizabeth in June 2009

3. International Directors Conference, June 2009 in Colorado, USA.