A NOTE FROM ZIMBABWE!
An email from Les and Sheree Hobbs regarding the use of Purity Paradigm materials...Growing Families Zimbabwe
ISAIAH 42:3a A bruised reed he will not break
2007
Dearest Rod and Heather,
We so enjoyed catching up with Heather briefly at the recent Growing Families conference (in Australia) – so impressed with all your material...
We have been back home now for 2 weeks, and have more than enough to put our hands to, with challenges of every day life in Zimbabwe. We are down to a couple of hours of power a day, and the power we are getting is less than 100 V (we are 220 V here), which means we cant run anything other than lights which are so dim we have to use candles with the lights to see what we are doing. During our trip to Australia, the bad power cooked our fridge, vacuum cleaner, stove, stereo and washing machine, which is a BIG problem! We have had 2 days of water this week, 3 hours the first week, and that I find a greater challenge than the power shortages. There has been no milk since we arrived home, and bread is scarce again. In fact for the first time I am struggling to find decent fruit and vegetables too! But in all of this, God is so faithful to us and we are getting through each day with happy and grateful hearts.
I want to make sure you both know what a blessing your material is being to Zimbabwe, and how we are using it. In June a year ago, Joan brought over to us a package of “Does a Fish know its Wet”, Purity Paradigm stuff and 2 story and colouring books. We enjoyed reviewing the material, and let our children’s pastors (we have about 2 000 children per service on a Sunday) and school principle have a look at it all. Once they had finished, it went straight off to our friends, pastors of another local church, Gary and Sarah Cross. This couple had been asked to speak at a parenting seminar at Gateway Primary (where we run 3 courses a year for parents and all the teachers do GKGW every 3 years), on the topic of sex education. Sarah enjoyed your stuff, and I also gave her a copy of ROMI to look through. She was completely taken back at the solidity of the material, and said it changed the way she had thought up until then, about the whole subject of Sex Education. We attended her presentation, and it was based on your work, and she gave credit to you for the research and material you had produced. Then the material went to the teachers at Gateway who have been working tirelessly over the past 6 years on the Sex Ed program at Gateway, which has become a model in our city. I explained to you at the conference how limited we are by the government with regard to syllabus, and how their mandatory sex ed program delivered to 10 year olds lumps sex with Sleeping Sickness, Bilharzia, Malaria and HIV/AIDS. We have very beautifully been able to extract sex from the infectious diseases (J) and deal with it separately in the third term, using the ROMI principles. After having seen your material, we are now working on developing the teaching to extend to the 11 and 12 year olds, and put “purity” back on the map. In our context here, incest and rape are very common, and 1 in every 7 people are HIV+. We have been recipients of “condom dumping” for decades now, and if we could only get some honest statistics, it would blow your mind. Many of the Christian doctors we know personally are very involved with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Just before we left to go to Aussie, we passed your material from gateway back to our church, to the youth (about 1000 young people aged 13 – 18 weekly) and young adults (1000 18 + yr olds, weekly). We started a program called “The Sex Files” some years ago, and we run this over a month annually in our youth, young adults, women’s and men’s meetings, and I hope that we will be able to incorporate some of your material in to our program too. It was compiled by our friend, pastor Paul Nyamuda who is now pastoring one of our churches in South Africa, and he used ROMI as well as other material to compile The Sex Files. Since we have returned, we have been able to share your preteen boy and girl material with three families, all of whom will email you personally to thank you, and that’s just because they are friends who happened to ask for advice with preparing their preteens in the past few weeks. We have not decided exactly how we will promote it yet, and its already having an impact!
Please pray for us, as we explore the possibilities of reaching out to the rest of Africa – we have had folk from several African countries contact us this week, and we are working on a strategy with the Ezzo’s and Grossers to reach in to these places with a message for families.
With our love
Les and Sheree, Kylie Michael Aimee and Ben Hobbs
Growing Families Zimbabwe
REFERENCES
Growing Families
The Australian branch of Growing Families is the Parent Ministry of Purity Paradigm - providing resources and courses for parents. You are encouraged to be in touch with your GFA State reps (in Australia) to ask for a catalogue or enquire about courses. Go to the CONTACTS page at www.gfi.org.au for details of the Australian office, Australian State Reps and International contacts as well. Bill & Joan Grosser (Joan mentioned above) are the Australian National Directors. Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo are the GF International founders and authors.
ROMI
This is an 8 session parenting course from Growing Families. Recently renamed “ALONG THE INNOCENT WAY” it is a study in the basics of human sexuality, especially the developing sexuality of our children. Authored and presented by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo who believe it is right to let children be children as long as they can, and believe it is wrong to rush children into adulthood through the medium of premature sexual knowledge. There is no faster way to rob a child of the innocence of childhood than inappropriate sex education. Children only get one childhood.
This series discusses the practical how-to's of sex education and much more. By the end of this series you should have the confidence of knowing how, what, and when to communicate biological truth to your children with biblical values attached without fearing that you are giving your children too much or too little information.
GKGW
A core parenting program from Growing Families.
Does a Fish know its Wet?
Foundational resources of Purity Paradigm.
· 5 CD plus outline version $33.00
· Booklet version $15.00
· CD Rom Powerpoint presentation version $10.00
Blurb: Do you think a fish knows that it’s wet? How could it with no comparison? Have you ever wondered how modern values became so messed up? With ‘soft porn’ on our billboards and every kind of ‘sexual preference’ evident all around us, how do we raise our children to value purity?
Just as scary… what has determined our own values as adults?
From Anne Marie Ezzo:
With our children's minds and hearts being assaulted daily in regards to the area of personal purity, the message being proved by Heather McEwan is so timely. As a Mum of six children and knowing how the 'current wisdom' of the day has influenced her thinking in the past regarding the issue of biblical purity, it is with conviction and passion that she delivers a message of warning and hope to the Church and parents interested in protecting their children's purity.
It is frightening to think that the Church has allowed the minds of today's parents to be taken captive by the philosophies of the world. The FISH seminar will not only challenge this man made philosophy, but also expose the evil forces behind them. In addition, Heather offers biblical truth to replace the lies. Be prepared to have your paradigm bumped in a major way and be thankful for the boldness and grace in which Heather presents this timely information.
Anne Marie Ezzo
Co-founder of Growing Families International
Purity Paradigm stuff
Preteen boy and girl material from Purity Paradigm
On the way to…BECOMING A MAN (Father and son pack. Age 10-12)
Contains:
On the way to…BECOMING A WOMAN (Mother and Daughter Pack Age 9-12)
Contains:
1 year cycle record calendar.
$15.00 individually or $26.00 for the pair
