We have been out at the carepoints, or Orphanages for about a week. I would have to say that my attitude has not been 100% it is hard feeling the burden of all that needs to be done and trying to see the possibilities and not all the problems. Before we left Gary told us that he needed us to be the Joshua and Calebs. The people that would go and scout out the area and come back with good reports. To come back with the answers to how to accomplish the goals. I am now starting to come around and see the possibilities. But it has been hard and confusing. I want to be positive about what is going on, but it is hard when it seems that everything around us is falling apart. I guess that is where it comes down to trusting in God. It comes down to trusting that God is in control and will work the stuff out. I don’t like to just throw a christian answer out there and act like it will all work out, but in all honesty I don’t know what else to think. There is nothing in the world that can save this country but God himself. But I think that is what makes it so confusing. There is no logical answer. There is no cure for aids that is wiping out the country. And so what does one do about that. I DON’T KNOW. I love answers. I love finding solutions to what is going on. And it is hard to trust that anything good will happen when everything in the physical sense is saying the opposite.
We have moved back to the orphanage carepoints I talked about in the last blog. It is in Southern Swaziland near the South African border.
A little more about Swaziland and what we are doing. Swaziland is getting absolutly ravished by the Aids epidemic. The statistics say that around 40% of the population has aids some figures are higher some are lower. A lot of that has to do with poor education regarding aids and also cultural beliefs. Such as polygamy. There is also a belief here taught by some of the witch doctors who are highly prevelant here, that if someone who has aids has sex with a virgin then they will be cured of aids. It is absolutly ridicolous and saddening to think of the bondage and lies the people here live in. There are 60,000 orphans in the country right now and that number is thought to grow considerably in the next few years as more and more people die of aids. The rest of the country just simply doesn’t have food. There really is no work to have and there is a severe drought which means people can’t even grow subsistance crops. Childrens Hopechest an organization we are partnering with went out and found this family living in a little stick hut who hadn’t eaten anything but grass for two months. They have since gotten them some food and our group helped to build them a stick, rock and mud hut. Which we will be finishing sometime this week. It is almost unreal to consider what is going on here. And to know that this family is not unique but there are thousands all over the place without food or shelter. My mind simply can not fathom that a majority of the people I see and meet will be dead in the next 5 to 10 years. Leaving thousands of kids to fend for themselves.
The vision we are working with right now is trying to set up mercy homes for these orphans. Mercy home consist of one or two parents and around 8 kids living in a home. They are also working on making substanable incomes such as vegetable gardens and fish ponds. We are right now working with carepoints that are already developed. They feed any where from 25 to 95 kids each day. We are working on getting them water where right now some of them have to walk a mile or two to a river to get water. And we are working on getting them sponsored to make sure they have enough food. Right now they are getting food from the government once a month, but that is not guaranteed. But things are starting to move in the right direction and we are planning to start building fences to protect the water tanks this week. As well as getting the teachers from the second carepoint which we have named School house due to an amazing retired teacher who works there and is teaching the children to train the ladies from the other carepoints. The other names we have come up with is Field of dreams for the first one and opportunity house for the third one. We are in the process of moving the fourth one to the third one as they are close enough so we can get more work done on them.
We are living at a beautiful spot outside of town. There is nothing there but a bathroom in an office and we are cooking everything with a big pot over a fire which has been a challenge in itself. But the area is very beautiful it is all thorny bushes over african plains with a large mountain range behind us that stretches all along the south african border. We get to see the most amazing orange sunsets over the African Plains. So it has been very peaceful a little oasis away from the harsh realties that surround us day after day.
