OUR TESTIMONY
In 2004 when her younger sister died of hiv/aids and left three orphaned children behind,rudi was made aware of the circumstances in of her home village, kazingizi about 100 miles to the north east of harare, zimbabwe.
her brother took the children in with many others who had been orphaned by aids and it broke rudi’s heart to see the poverty and hopelessness they endured. prices were soaring and goods were becoming scarce. after three years of drought, good farm land was laid waste and people were dying all around them. every face was etched with hopelessness and death was knocking on every door. how could she help her people to survive? what would bring them a hope and a future? she too felt helpless and hope seemed very far away. she did the only thing she could as a christian and set about asking her friends in the church to pray with her and we did.
this is how it began; in april 2005 tariro hope church was born. when pastor roy young went out to zimbabwe the first thing he did was find out who wanted to come to church and a temporary shelter for meetings was erected from a truck tarpaulin.
beautiful as the scenery in this area is the state of village life at the time when garston community church and tariro project first got involved seemed utterly hopeless. when pastor roy young went to see for himself what things were like in april 2005, his report back to us was that if we ignored this situation many more orphans would be left devasted and without hope. a short time afterwards tariro project was born.
In 2005 a handful of people came to be baptised by pastor roy and dedicated themselves to help the people of kazingizi by taking care of the widows and orphans who came daily to their door for help. today the numbers of those willing to work and help has multiplied, but those who need our help increased more and more also, coming to us from all the surrounding villages and even beyond in mutoko and harare.
we have a lot to thank god for! since 2005 not only the needs have grown but the branches of the church, able to reach out with assistance to others has grown also. what is more, the tariro project itself in the uk has grown tremendously and the fund raising has been adequate to the tasks in hand. we are not in the megabucks standard of big charities, but we always have enough for our needs. god is good!
Times are very tough in zimbabwe what with economic disater, poor medical facilities, hunger and disease, particularly cholera and the prospects of another drought facing them this year. with a government that seems determined to destroy its own people and no friends in the surrounding nations to stand up against this awful regime, we paint a very bleak picture for zimbabwe’s future. yet, we have tariro, we have hope. we are so pleased to be able to say that the lord god has never let us down yet. he has answered so many prayers and we trust him to bring our people through this tough time into a brighter future.
In 2008 we look back and see so many things that have sustained the tariro church in kazingizi and the branches in the other villages. they have been given employment in farming, school teaching, building, pig raising, tailoring and transport. the church, which began with just a handful of people now ministers to 15 branches and nearly 400 people. all we can say is praise the lord!