Gerhard and Tammy Uys have been working with the Royal Rangers since 2001.
Tammy is a German missionary who started to work in the Cape Flats in 1996, an area notorious for high poverty levels, gangsterism and drugs.
She began ministering to people in the community through healthcare and counselling.
Soon she discovered the amount of little children doing nothing all morning as they had nowhere to go and no one to care for them. She started a group with the children to provide some structure to their lives - teaching them songs, dances and telling stories about Jesus. Soon the older children joined in and after 6 months, Tammy had a group of 40-60 children regularly attending her group. In the following 2 years, children’s home cells were founded out of this initial group and more adult leaders out of the community started to join in.
In early 1999, Gerhard and Tammy met at the Lighthouse church in Parow. After a short engagement, they got married in December 1999. At that time, Gerhard still worked for a Canadian company building houses. Gerhard joined the ministry fulltime in 2002 as the workload was increasing every month and has excelled in this role.
Through the help of Tammy's German sending church, Royal Rangers Western Province was birthed in April 2001 through the first National Training Camp (NTC) and grew impressively from 100 children in the first year to 500 children in the 4th year. Now, Royal Rangers Western Province ministers to more than 500 children in 9 outposts all over the Western Cape.
In 2010, Gerhard and Tammy Uys became National Leaders of South Africa through Royal Rangers International. Later that year, they started an outpost in Swaziland in an Aids orphanage where there are currently 200 children in an outpost in the various age groups; ministered to by mainly young adult leaders and Junior Leaders.
In 2011 Royal Rangers Western Province celebrated their 10th anniversary. It was a festival event in which all outposts participated (You can see our festival poster and beautiful photos by following this link.)
Soon Gerhard and Tammy will release the Western Province leaders into their own identity and are equipping them to lead Royal Rangers Province to new heights.
They are currently preparing relocate in order to more effectively promote Royal Rangers deeper into Southern Africa.
They will also help other African nations in their training and curriculum development. Their vision is to use this as a base to further equip other provinces and other African nations to join the Royal Rangers adventure.
We are also excited to announce that as of 2015 Royal Rangers South Africa has joined Royal Rangers International, using their curriculum but contextualizing this for the whole of Africa. We are excited to see what the journey into the future will bring!
