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MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Linkey Jones is known in the Mossel Bay community for helping children.

Her work involves all manner of activities: collecting baby clothes for a teen mom, taking foster children on fun outings, counselling the brokenhearted, running Christian weekend camps. 

And Linda Sparg discovered Linkey has plans to broaden her ministry even further.

Photo gallery: Linkey Jones ministry growing

What is your special focus?
It is to offer Christian help, guidance and counselling for children who have experienced loss or trauma. We also feel there is a huge need to equip young teens for high school, so they know how to make better choices and withstand peer pressure. We hope to raise a next generation which will not fall into the trap of drugs, partying and sexual immorality.

We focus on the topics of self worth, purpose (born for a time such as this), choices, why bad things happen to good people, surrender, purity, forgiveness, facing giants and legacy. 

We do all this in a few different ways:

• Ntombi and Impi camps. These are weekend camps for either girls or boys, where we discuss the topics, but also have different activities to “cement” the message.

With the girls we do scrapbooking, they make mosaics of their journey on the camp, we offer beauty treatments and on the last day we have a princess ball.

With the boys we rough it and work with power tools, but also teach them how to cook. We also focus much on teambuilding.

• Ntombi and Impi class lessons: we offer these in schools. They are basically the teachings of the camps, but in broader strokes and intended to identify children who need more counselling and also to equip them for their futures. They can be used for children from Grade 6 to 12. Our target group is Grade 7, before high school, but they are good for all ages
• Leadership lessons in schools
• Online courses: we’re busy turning these lessons into online courses, so they are more accessible. We do outreach programmes and horse-assisted therapy and riding for the disabled and learning disabled.

Before lockdown, we did praise and worship sessions in schools, where we do exciting worship with dance moves added and bring a message. Since the lockdown, we started making videos of these sessions, so that schools can use them as a daily devotion. All of our courses, which have been written by us, are available free of charge to anyone who would like to offer them. The courses are complete with worksheets for the learners and facilitator guides for leaders.

Do you have an NPO?
No, we had one, but felt the Lord nudged us to close it. We never want to be in a position where we look to people, institutions or the government for provision and funding.

God has taught us to plan and do the work and He will provide. A bit of our funding comes from individuals and institutions who contribute when we have an event coming up, but our work is mostly funded by our horse riding school, Souled Out Stables, on Louis Fourie Road, opposite KwaNonqaba.

Our everyday lives are a combination of working for income and doing God’s work. We’re tentmakers, like Paul in the Bible.

How many are in your team?
Our “team” is really only my husband Warren and myself, but we have so many people who have bought into what we do, that we always have plenty of volunteers who step up to help when it is needed.

I also have a ladies’ Bible study group.

Do you fall under a church or umbrella body?
We are members of a local church and we have its blessing and spiritual support for the work we do, but we are not part of its social justice arm.

Which miracles have you seen in the work you do?

Shew! So many…. Because our hearts are really for discipleship, we love to journey with people, to build relationships and support them.

We have seen people pulled from the gutter and standing in absolute victory after a few years of journeying with them. Spiritual bondage and oppression broken. Physical healing. Supernatural provision, over and over and over.

But to us the biggest miracle is to see the Light in someone’s eyes when they fully surrender to Jesus and start living in the purpose He has for them.

What are your plans for the future?
To finish our online courses and distribute them all over the world. We want to give them away, free of charge, so that as many people as possible can have access to them.

Our prayer is that God will allow the news about the courses to spread far and wide, via social media, so people will know about them in every country on our planet.

I’m busy writing our girls’ course into a ladies’ Bible study guide, which can be used in the future.

How can people assist you?
If anyone would like to get involved, they can contact me (083 304 1564) or Warren (083 442 6778).

We always need volunteers. We appreciate them so much and can never have enough volunteers.

We would love to have people with social media influence help us spread the word about our programmes and we would be so grateful for assistance to start a website. We are slightly technologically challenged.

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