“We first visited the Masoyi Home Based Care project in 2006, staying at the Africa School of Missions (this was before the Hands at Work base in South Africa was built) for a month. We were inspired by the people we met, both in the community and at ASM:
• A young Zambian nurse called Levy, who was visiting those dying of AIDS in the daytime and running a youth group in the evenings,
• A young woman called Busie, who was running a group for young mothers in the community,
• A Care Worker called Vusi.
When we returned the following year with a team from our church, it felt as if we were coming back to be with friends. Over the years, as Masoyi Home Based Care has grown and developed to become Hands at Work in Africa, an annual visit, sometimes with a team and sometimes not, became part of the rhythm of our year.
Eventually, George Snyman challenged us and asked us what we were going to do with this! We realised that a commitment to the poorest of the poor is about more than just an annual visit; if it means anything, it has to include the whole of our lives. And so, in 2015, we both gave up the jobs that we loved and committed to volunteering full time for Hands, whatever that meant. We worked for Hands in the UK and were challenged by the Gospel imperative to offer hospitality to the stranger, which is lived out so powerfully in the lives of our Care Workers, our long-term volunteers in Africa, and many of our friends in the International Offices. We became aware that some of the poorest of the poor in our community are those who have had to flee persecution or danger in their own countries and now live in the limbo of a displaced person.
In 2018, almost by accident, we took in our first refugee. This was counter-cultural, both for our society, and the comfortable and private way we liked to live. We have now had four young displaced people living with us. Each brings their challenges and blessings, but we both agree that we wouldn’t have it any other way and that we would never have started this had we not first visited Hands in 2006!”