Project Teen Challenge women's home, Kazakhstan

House of Mercy, Almaty

Recently we visited Teen Challenge Kazakhstan. They gave us a warm and very hospitable welcome in the boys home in Almaty and of course the first thing we had to do was to admire the new kitchen. A project that was funded through the Weisssensee action 2016. Wow, they did an awesome job!

We visited several Teen Challenge programs, all founded in the mid-nineties by Doug & Anna Boyle. They came as missionary workers from Australia to Kazakhstan. The women's home House of Mercy is fruit of their labor ...

Tamara Reshe

Tamara Reshe is the director of House of Mercy and has been working there for 20 years. The house is divided into a drug and alcohol rehab with ten beds. They have plans to extend it to twenty beds. The other half of the house is a shelter for homeless women / girls with their children. We counted thirty-five beds there...

Tamara gave us an extensive tour of the house and showed us how they were able to place all new double-glazed windows recently, with the help of the Assemblies of God missions fund (not a luxury in a country where the winters can be bitterly cold).

Sleeping room at the shelter

There are, however, many more practical projects waiting to be done... as soon as funds come in. The bedrooms need to be insulated, especially where the babies and children are sleeping, the floors and ceilings need repair work and some doors must be replaced.

They have made a project proposal and budget quote. House of Mercy needs about 4.500 euro to get the sleeping rooms done. Traveling Light promised to help with fundraising.

We have seen with our own eyes how staff and volunteers take care of these needy women and children with a passion and love that is unsurpassed. Especially the young girls with babies would not survive otherwise, they who would probably die in the streets.

Kitchen in House of Mercy

Let's not make the gospel too complicated... taking care of widows, orphans, the poor and homeless, that makes God's love visible on earth. Whether you live in the Netherlands or Kazakhstan.

If you want to join us in supporting this Teen Challenge program, please make your donation payable to: St. Traveling Light, Papendrecht IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275 BIC: RABONL2U and make sure to mention: Womens home KAZAKHSTAN.

Grand Opening 't Winkeltje

Great meeting place & shop in one

Last April our friends and board members Krijn & Cora Donk purchased a nice real estate property (corner store + 2 garage boxes) in our town Papendrecht. Krijn will use the garage boxes for his business and Cora had the idea to open a shop with 2nd hand stuff for the benefit of Traveling Light projects. A great idea of course!

't Winkeltje (Dutch for 'the shop') already serves as a wonderful place for our prayer meetings and also as the departure point for cycling lessons given to migrant women. Of course we will organize much more in the coming months to bring neighborhood residents, volunteers and supporters of Traveling Light together.

Grand Opening Saturday, September 3, 2016

Saturday, September 3rd we will finally (after much construction and interior work) open the doors of 't Winkeltje for the public. We will celebrate open house from 12:00 to 17:00 hours. Come on over and see for yourself how beautiful everything has become. We'll be serving coffee, tea and cake of course!

Lots of beautiful stuff

We are planning to open 't Winkeltje on Saturday afternoons, for starters. But we expect to be able to add a weekday or two to it. Keep an eye on this blog for more news. We already have a busy Facebook page. The awesome thing is that all proceeds from sales will fully benefit our projects!

Shopping - fun - community - charity ...

it all comes together in 't Winkeltje ... We hope to see you there!

Korenbloemstraat 20 - PAPENDRECHT

Action L@ND

We have just returned from a short trip to Kazakhstan where we visited various Teen Challenge crisis and rehabilitation centers. We will share more about it (and show some pictures of course) in our next blog post. We were able to donate 2,000 euros towards project renovation kitchen Winiarczykowka in Poland. Thank you very much. Funds are also coming in for project campaign Nick Vujicic in Slovenia, so we'll keep that open a little longer.

Earlier this year we started action L@ND, an idea that came out of  our prayer gatherings (Prayer for the Nations) which we are holding every month. L@ND stands for 'love a nation dearly'.

fact sheet

Action L@ND calls families, home groups, prayer groups, churches, businesses and organizations to 'adopt' a country in Europe and to pray specifically for that country. We make sure you will receive a fact sheet about the country you have chosen. This fact sheet will be a reminder to pray specifically for a country (the government, economy, churches, your holiday address, etc.) and for a local Christian initiative run by people we are in contact with. In this way you can zoom in and make you prayers more personal.

We hope that a network of prayer teams will emerge from Action L@ND and that together we will be able to cover Europe with focused prayer. We have no doubt focused prayer will develop a heart for mission and make it possible to see beyond our own world.

Praying for Europe in Intl. House of Prayer, Berlin

Some time ago we gave an inspiring presentation about action L@ND in Christian Church De Hoeksteen in Etten-Leur. The attendees were very enthusiastic about this approach and we hope that many more will follow and embrace a particular country. We are always happy to share our vision and give more information if you desire so!

Our prayers are a huge encouragement, so we hear from our contacts; a network covering over thirty countries. Send us an email or contact our FB page if you want to join!

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples (Psalm 96: 3).