Hello family and friends!
Last week was the official launch of our gap year program 2013! As
you can see by the title, we are in the process of changing our name. There is
another church in our area who runs a gap year program called "Year of
Your Life" and they have kindly asked us to change our name. Our slogan
for the last year's team was "Sold out to Serve", so we decided to
adapt this as the new name for our program (S2S for short).
The structure of our team is slightly different this year. At this point we
officially have three students (all guys!). We also have the leaders: Piet,
Cindy, and myself; as well as two girls, Cassandra and Maxine, who work full-time in children's ministry at our church. These two ladies help out quite a lot in our school ministry and other aspects of children's outreach with the team.
We took our team to a Christian campsite in Hartebeespoort for an
orientation week last week. We did lots of team building games and sessions regarding attitude, values, leadership, diversity, trust, and conflict management. This was a great time to connect with the team and hear everyone's stories. 
This week we have started up working at the primary school, high school, youth group, and kid's club. We will also be working again with the retirement home, a baby shelter, after school playtime, and we also hope to start up an initiative in the informal settlement (township).
We are excited about this year and anxious to see what the Lord will do.
We are still praying about our future and feel that the picture is slowly coming into focus. We will be thrilled to update everyone when the time is right.
Thank you for all of your support over the years. The other day I realized I have been in South Africa for 4 1/2 years! I can't believe how the time has flown.
God bless, dear friends
Love,
The Bakers
