Africa - Swaziland
Mission Providence
Swaziland, Africa
Stephen Sheasby
Executive Director & Founder
PO Box 2166
Cypress, TX 77410-2166
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Stephen and Esmé Sheasby with children, Cloe & Joseph, are former members of WHCC. Stephen was on staff as Minister of Technology. Stephen and Esmé Sheasby co-founded Mission Providence in August 2008 as a way to begin changing lives and communities. The HIV/AIDS pandemic that has swept through Africa in the last decade has left in its wake unto
ld wounds, trauma and challenges, mostly for the children. In December 2008 the Board of Directors sent the Sheasby family to Swaziland to start their humanitarian mission. The immediate need is to expand the feeding efforts in Manzini and help families improve their vegetable gardens to better provide for their own families.
Mission Providence is a nonprofit, faith-based, humanitarian organization whose main objective is to build self-sustaining communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, beginning with widows and orphans affected by HIV/AIDS.
Scope:
Mission Providence recognizes that a human being, created in the image of God, has more needs than being fed and clothed. Our focus will be on the whole person, recognizing that these facets interrelate in all of us:
Spiritual:
Believing that God is the source and sustainer of Life, we seek to share the Good News of reconciliation through his Son, Jesus Christ and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual challenges and bondage in Swaziland is great; such as polygamy, animism and incest to name a few. We believe that modeling and teaching God's laws for living will lead to an abundant life full of hope in this life and in the life to come.
Physical:
Assisting communities with food and clean water, by teaching gardening skills, mending dwellings and fences, and so on keeping in harmony with current cultural norms. Eventually we envision providing basic medical help.
Emotional:
Providing professional counseling in native language (Siswati) to help all those traumatized by the effects of AIDS in their immediate families and communities.
Educational:
Educating communities in basic life skills and later job skills such as farming, brick making and so on. Host “traveling” pre-schools teaching local people how to use what they have in order to teach basic early childhood skills. In the future we would consider opening a school with individualized curriculum that can identify and correct learning gaps in all ages, especially helpful to those who have not been able to attend public school.
