Pastor Frikkie and Juanita de Jager are the sort of inspiring people you meet once in a lifetime,
if you are lucky.

They have been working as Christian missionaries in Zimbabwe and Mozambique for the past 40 years, mainly in the rural areas.

They met when Pastor de Jager was a missionary in western Rhodesia and after marrying, they travelled tirelessly into remote rural areas of Mozambique and Zimbabwe, preaching and working with the small
African churches.

Like many people during the war, they experienced and witnessed violence and tragedy and were brave to stay, feeling their ministry was too important to abandon. The Lord protected them and blessed their ministry.

In 1982, they established a childrens’ home in Eastern Zimbabwe. Today, it is Manhinga Village, which cares for 130 orphans and destitute children in supervised Christian foster families.

Maningha Vilaage has a Primary School and is on its' way to self-sufficiency. It was recently acclaimed as the most successful Childrens homes in Zimbabwe. It reported that the children are the most balanced because they grow up in rural African families and not under western ideals.

Word of their work spread and in 1992 after the civil war had ended across the border in Mozambique, the de Jagers were given a derelict farm.

That derelict farm is now the project, Vila Maninga.