Micah 6: 6&8
What should I bring before the LORD when I come to bow before God on high? Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the LORD requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God. [CSB]
and verse 8 in the ICB Bible says: The Lord has told you what is good. He has told you what he wants from you: Do what is right to other people. Love being kind to others. And live humbly, trusting your God.
How astounding and simple that the response in vs 8, to the question in vs 6 is to: do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with him? I find this so beautiful in the sense that as much as it is a defining answer, it is also a thought provoking one, and one that we are invited to respond to. Do our hearts long to do what is right to others, do we want to love and show kindness and do we desire to walk humbly with our God, trusting him in all things?
Let us take a brief closer look at these 3 words – justice, kindness and humbly:
JUSTICE is just behaviour or treatment and its the condition of being morally content and fair.
HUMBLY, if one acts humbly, we act in a way that shows we do not consider ourselves as better than others. Someone once said that showing humility is not thinking of yourself less, its not thinking of yourself at all.
KINDNESS is the quality of being friendly, generous and compassionate or being generous, helpful and caring about other people.
This year Father God has gripped my heart with the reality that one small act of kindness can change the world and it has turned into a desire to be part of sharing kindness with others. I have had the privilege of collaborating and building a relationship with an amazing foundation. I have the wonderful honour of constantly seeing the remarkable opportunities another NPO gives itself to. I have been so grateful to meet and partner in prayer with a beautiful village for children and I am blessed beyond measure to now work and give what I’ve got for a phenomenal non-profit organisation. This year for Advent, I would like to introduce you to these groups of people and perhaps give you an opportunity to respond to God’s word to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly WITH God. Perhaps you can even share some kindness this festive season. Let’s be WITH Jesus and BE Jesus as we prepare and anticipate to CELEBRATE Jesus.
The Neema Foundation
I have saved the best for last. The Neema Foundation is a very special organisation with a very special staff team, an amazing group of trustees and a very important team of volunteers. I have the privilege of being a member of this staff team and honestly LOVE what I do!
This organisation brings hope through education by training teachers to teach children our reading programme called Gateway into Reading. This programme was written and developed by our director and some of my colleagues and is a brilliant tool to teach English to learners. Our heart is to support teachers with this programme.
We have 2 main branches of our organisation.
One first branch has two areas of influence. One is our rural school branch. This is the side of the organisation which I am involved with. A team of teachers and volunteers visits rural schools whose learners mostly have only the zulu language as a means of communicating and reading and writing and we teach our programme as well as train the teachers in these schools in our programme. We usually visit the schools once a week and encourage the teachers to practise elements of the lesson with their learners during the rest of the days of the week. We provide all the teaching resources for the teachers. Our programme runs for between 2 and 4 years in these schools, and we are able to equip these teachers to continue with the programme, with our support, once this 4 year project is completed. All the resources and teaching materials are simple and mostly non-colour documents, which makes for easy printing and copying to continue once we have completed the project in that school.
Another way we train the teachers is by holding training days once a term for those educators whose schools we are unable to visit each week. These teachers come in to our Neema offices and we are able to train them for the term ahead as well as provide them with all the resources they require to effectively teach their learners English for that term.
The other area of influence is our afternoon lessons:
We have a wonderful team of teachers who spend time during the afternoons each week to assist learners who have difficulty with reading the English language. Some of these teachers teach via WhatsApp, some over Skype and some in-person which has enabled us to have a far greater reach with our programme. These staff members and lessons are making a huge difference in the lives of these children and enabling them to become independent readers.
In both these areas we also put a lot of emphasis on reading for meaning, and so comprehension skills are incorporated into our programme and encouraged along the way.
The second branch of Neema extends our work to the greater reach of our Country, South Africa, as a whole. What a priviledge it is to equip and impact the lives of teachers, staff and children across our beautiful land.
As an NPO, we rely on donations and funding to keep our programme alive and running. God has been so faithful to us and this year we are celebrating 10 years of the Neema Foundation and bringing hope through education.
Head over to the Neema website https://www.neemafoundation.co.za/ to read more about the amazing ways we are bringing hope through education and ways you can show kindness to us.
Happy Fourth Advent everybody!
Love from my home to yours
xxx
hope of heart 