Ready-made Garden for Disabled Children

What a joy to be able to continue with our improvement projects at the Sive Nathi Centre for severely disabled children. We’d like to share with you some of the miraculous events that surrounded the getting a hold of and laying the section of turf. (since the centre has no garden and the outside area is mostly concrete, we decided to lay a patch of artificial turf so that the children could come out of their wheelchairs during their “outside time” and enjoy the feel of soft grass, as well as play with toys and each other on the turf)

However, there was a challenge. The artificial turf distributor could only get us a piece of 20 square metres – whereas we needed only 15 square metres for the area we’d picked. Upon praying about it, we felt that we should just go ahead and worry about the off-cut later. (Even though that also meant a higher cost) So we did.

On set-up day, we rolled out the artificial turf, with all our tools and materials ready to cut and place it in the smaller area we had previously picked out. Suddenly, upon rolling it out in the main concrete area outside, in order to cut it, we realized that it fit almost perfectly there in it’s completeness! A quick prayer and discussion later, and we decided that that’s where it was meant to be. As opposed to our original spot, which was sandwiched between two buildings, this spot was right in the middle “courtyard” of the three classrooms, and perfectly suited for our purpose! We had a “why didn’t we think of this before” moment. Then we realized that the Lord knew all along. He was the One Who made only the larger size available, because He knew where it was eventually going to end up.

After laying the turf down, the nurses brought some of the children out to experience it. Oh my goodness, words cannot express the warm swelling of joy in our hearts as we saw their reactions. They laughed, and scooted, and wriggled, and rolled. And we played with them! It was a huge success! Through it all, we couldn’t help but think of our own healthy little children, and how blessed we are in so many ways.

As we got ready to leave, the head sister grasped our hands and said “thank you for always thinking of us”. What could we say in response but the truth? “It’s all thanks to Jesus. He really loves you all.”