Visiting Beautiful Gate

Posted on | October 4, 2009 | 1 Comment

We traveled through the central plain of Cape Town to the communities of Crossroads and East Philippi where Beautiful Gate has established their work. We’ve included more about this ministry on a page in our South Africa section of Teamwynn.com, so I’ll just include a few highlights.

We saw the nursing suite there where they take care of the orphaned HIV children. This station served the children brought to live inside the walls of Beautiful Gate. The model for loving these children is wonderful, but they have said they would not do it the same way if they could start over. Though it has helped many children, they instead have adopted a method of placing the child back into the community, and paying a local mother or grandmother to raise the child. This keeps the community in tact (a key thing in Africa society), gives the child a community, and puts the money back into the community. Win, win.

Needless to say we loved the philosophy of the ministry.

At the back of the Beautiful Gate compound, we saw a soccer field full of people. Local teams played against each other, and dozens more sat around the side lines talking and visiting.

Imagine living in a community, where your house is too small and dark to stay inside all the time, the streets outside are dirt and dirty with trash. There are no parks. No open spaces to play. But then here in the center of it, this outreach placed a big, grassy field for soccer and invited you to come enjoy it. Isn’t that a beautiful thing. It’s it like a small picture of God’s grace.

Kara connected with the director of the facility and chatted about the best way to come and volunteer as a nurse. He clapped his hands together when he first heard Kara was a nurse that was considering helping. They are so understaffed for these skilled positions. There are a couple roads she could take with transferring her licensing.

Off the record: For Kara, I believe, the question is not could she do what she wants in compassion work, it is rather how much, how soon, and with how many needy ministries in the area.

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