Hands at Work - Mission Partnership

It was wonderful to welcome Becci Leung, from Hands at Work, to speak at our services on 18th January. In case you weren't there, we reproduce her excellent talk below.

You may also like to read all about the community in Zambia we will be working with: Mutaba B Community — Hands at Work in Africa

'My name is Becci, I am from Bristol - it’s my first time in Bedford! I’m really pleased to be here with you this morning. I am from a charity called Hands at Work in Africa, which St Andrew’s Church has very recently partnered with.

This morning, I would just like to share with you about Hands at Work in Africa. The organisation was established by a South African couple just over 20 years ago, in response to seeing the many children who were left without parents and caregivers following the HIV/AIDS epidemic. From its very basic beginnings, over the years, Hands at Work has grown and is now serving approximately 8500 children across eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The charity is now led by a Zambian couple called Levy & Prag, who have a Management Team around them, and they all send their greetings to you this morning.

Hands at Work cares for vulnerable children and families through a community-based approach. This means that volunteers from local churches in these communities gather children each day to provide a hot, nutritious meal. They also support the children with accessing education and support their health care needs. We call these the three essential services: food, education and healthcare. The volunteers also regularly visit the children in their homes, building relationship with them and their caregivers - the caregivers are often older siblings or grandparents. Also at the Care Points, these local volunteers lead the children in play, there’s singing and dancing, and the children learn about the love of God for them. They are seen, known by name, and loved.

The local volunteers are known as Care Workers, and they are supported by Hands at Work teams in each region. Over time, the Hands at Work model sees not only children’s lives transformed, but caregivers strengthened, the local church growing in confidence, and the whole community becoming more resilient. The ultimate hope is that communities reach a point where they no longer need support from Hands at Work, and are able to independently and sustainably care for their vulnerable neighbours.

We heard this morning a reading from Isaiah 49 which was written at a time when faith felt fragile. Israel had been defeated, displaced, and stripped of so much that had once given it confidence and identity. Into that reality, Isaiah speaks this line of breathtaking honesty. Verse 4 says: “I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.”

This is a voice of exhaustion. It is the cry of someone who has shown up faithfully, given themselves fully, and wonders whether any of it has mattered. I wonder if this is something we might relate to.

I love this verse, not only because it feels like Isaiah is giving us permission to name our weariness, our burnout, and this painful sense that our faithfulness hasn’t been enough. It’s so real isn’t it?

But I also love it because of God’s response. And I think we can consider it such an encouragement. God does not deny or dismiss this lament. Instead, God hears it and reframes the situation. You can hear this from verse 6 onwards.

What feels small, unnoticed, or even ineffective is revealed as part of something far larger than Isaiah could see. God meets Isaiah’s weary faithfulness with a larger vision, and invites a community to carry that faithfulness together. The work is not wasted; it is held within God’s wider purposes of restoration and hope.

I couldn’t help but think of the Care Workers in relation to these verses and this story. They show up every day to care for often very traumatised children that others have forgotten. In sometimes scorching heat, or long rainy seasons, every day, the Care Workers are there first thing in the morning starting a fire that will cook the children’s lunch. Every day, they are advocating for children at the local schools and clinics. Helping children take their medication, listening to their worries, offering prayer, dealing with family crises, and often all in the face of their own trauma. That same pattern of faithfulness is lived out each day. Much of this work is quiet and repetitive, and carried out in incredibly tough contexts shaped by poverty and instability.

From the outside, these daily acts may not look dramatic. So much of the world does not notice them at all. But God notices. We hear in these Isaiah verses that faithfulness that feels fragile or unseen is named as meaningful. The sacrificial acts of love offered by Care Workers are not small in God’s economy. They are ways in which God’s light reaches places where hope can feel scarce.

You might be thinking, what does that have to do with us? As we heard, God’s response is not just about those doing the work. It also speaks to the wider community of faith. The vision God offers is not about solitary faithfulness, but about shared participation in something larger than any one of us could carry.

Through partnership, prayer, generosity, and commitment, we come alongside Care Workers - not assuming we have all the answers, but recognising their expertise, encouraging their perseverance, and sharing the journey. By doing so, we take our place in the way God affirms faithful work that often goes unseen. We are a global church supporting one another.

At the start of this year, St Andrew’s Church officially began partnering with a community called Mutaba B, located in Chisamba in central Zambia. This rural area faces significant challenges, including limited employment opportunities, scarce access to clean water, and food shortages. Fifty vulnerable children attend the Care Point in Mutaba B, where they are lovingly supported by a team of 15 Care Workers, led by Coordinator Wilson. The local Hands at Work team in Chisamba, headed by Cecilia, provides ongoing support to the community. We look forward to sharing more about Mutaba B with you over the coming months. In the meantime, we thank you for your prayers for this community, the children, their families and the Care Workers supporting them.

And thank you to everyone at St Andrew’s for your commitment to this partnership. Your faithfulness - like Isaiah’s, like the Care Workers’ - may not always feel dramatic.

But Isaiah reminds us that God is at work beyond what we can see, weaving all these quiet acts of faithfulness into a much bigger story of light, of healing, and of love.'