I am leaving Africa tomorrow to head to Europe. I can’t believe it. Time has flown by. But I realized I never blogged about what I did these past two months for ministry (service work/outreach). So here is what I did in Swaziland and Botswana:
Swaziland:
You probably have never heard of this very small country. It is located in the middle of the country of South Africa. It has the highest percentage of citizens with HIV in the world (over 25%). That means that every 1 in 4 people are infected with this potentially deadly disease. Adventures in Missions (AIM) has a long-term missions base in this country out of the city, Manzini. They seek to reach out to primarily the children and youth of the country through several small community centers that they call “Care Points.”
Care Points provide free preschool classes to toddlers five days a week with a free meal and also another free meal to older children when they get out of school each day. They also provide discipleship opportunities everyday for the kids who come to the Care Point for the free meal and to play. They teach them lessons about who Jesus is and how much He loves them several times a week.
A teammate and I spent the entire month at one Care Point near where we were living in a community just outside Manzini named, “Timbutini.” We helped teach the preschool class that consisted of about fifteen to twenty toddlers Monday through Friday. They were the cutest little ones ever. I got to hold them and love them and play with them everyday. On top of that, we would read them Bible stories, sing songs with them, and help them practice writing the alphabet. Being with them was such sweet time. After talking to the leader of the Care Point, I learned about the backgrounds of some of these sweet babies. Some of them were living with grandparents because one or two of their parents either abandoned them or had died of diseases like AIDS. These kids were from very poor families and had tattered clothes and inflated bellies due to malnutrition. It was enough to break my heart for these little ones. It made me hug them a little tighter everyday.
In the afternoons when the school kids would get there, we would help serve them the afternoon meal (which was usually a cooked protein pack from a nonprofit like Feed My Starving Children). We then would hang out with them, play games, and help teach the afternoon Bible lesson to the older kids. Overall, it was such a rich month. I loved those babies and made some good friendships with the older students. Praise Jesus for month 8 of the World Race.
Botswana:
This past month (month 9) my new team and I were in the country of Botswana, which is directly north of South Africa. We worked with an organization called Window of Hope located in the village of Ghanzi. Botswana is kind of like a desert in a lot of the country, especially where we were staying. We lived right outside of the African bush.
Window of Hope is started by a couple from Botswana who desired to reach out to orphans and poor children in the community. They receive donated food, which they cook and feed to local street children on weekdays. They provide training to teenagers and local mothers so that they will learn the skills necessary to get good jobs and provide for themselves. They also have an after-school program they call “Kids Camp” three times a week whereby they play with the kids and teach them valuable lessons about Jesus and life in general.
A lot of the month, I was helping out with the kids’ camp and creating relationships with a couple of the local teenagers. Two of the teenage girls became my friends, and we were able to spend good quality time together. Also, my team and I were able to visit a very poor people group who lived in the community a couple of times. These people live in houses literally made of sticks and mud. They have tin roofs held down by old tires thrown on top of them. And they have flies everywhere due to poor sanitation. These kids in this group are some of the most malnourished and poorly clothed kids I have seen on the entire World Race. It was gut wrenching to see. We were able to sing to these people, share an encouraging message about Jesus’ love for them, hold the kids, and then pray over everyone we could. It definitely made me count my blessings and pray even harder for more help to be sent to people groups like this one.
To learn more about this organization, their Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/pages/WindowofHopeCentre.
Also, my teammate Katy made this video about Window of Hope in order to bring more attention and hopefully funding to what they are doing for the Kingdom of God in Ghanzi, Botswana. Enjoy!
Above all, Africa has been a wonderful experience. The few parts I have seen have been absolutely beautiful both in the landscape and in the people. God is doing crazy awesome things to help His children here, and I can’t wait to come back to this continent someday to continue being apart of it.
