Aunt Terry helps the community

POLOKWANE – The mother, wife, pastor and community builder has a love for people that will make her go through hell and high water for her people.

She is originally from the Eastern Cape and initially came to Polokwane to visit her cousins. She decided to stay longer and look for a job and now, 21 years later, she considers Westenburg her home.

Terry arrived in Polokwane with ambitions to become an actress but was discouraged by the language barrier.

“Where I am from we spoke isiXhosa and I remember one of the agencies said they wouldn’t be able to help me because I can’t speak Sepedi. I decided to put my focus elsewhere,” she said.

Terry shared that she instantly connected with the people here, and this is why she started to play an active role in the community through different projects.

“I cannot put an exact time to when I got involved in community work, but from the time I arrived here, I connected with a lot of people. I would have people come and ask for help, be it with food or just to talk, and over time my passion for people developed,” she explained.

Terry took the decision to work on herself to become a better person in order to be in a better position to do more for the people around her.

Her love for people betrays her own struggles. She survived five miscarriages and was at a point where she almost lost hope that she will never have a son who she desperately prayed for.

A miracle happened and she fell pregnant and carried her son full-term. Thereafter she had another son and her boys are her miracle babies.

“I asked God to give me something to hold onto and to show that He is with me. I was blessed with a boy and a year and a half later, I was blessed with another boy. That strengthened my faith,” she said.

Terry studied Christian counselling through the University of South Africa (Unisa) and felt empowered to work with the young girls in her community.

She is an advocate for the empowerment of young girls and has hosted a pageant for fuller figured young girls after she realised there were a problem with young girls who struggle with Bulimia at her church.

“I wanted to show them that their beauty doesn’t lie in the size that they wear,” she explained. Among other projects she hosted a pageant, Miss Congeniality Mommy and Me Fashion Show, which was to empower the single mothers in her community and show them that there is hope for greater things waiting for them.

Terry offers counselling services to women and young people, as well as runs a youth centre and aftercare for the young people in her community.

Whitehead is also a councillor candidate for the Patriotic Alliance and added that although people feel that religion and politics don’t go together, she prayed about it and through her work in the community, she decided that she wants to be the agent of change.

She preaches on Sundays at 10:00 on the Mount Sinai Ministry Westenburg and her sermons can be watched on their Facebook page.