I am going to the HIV capital of the world.
I am going to a nation that will probably not seize to exist by 2050.
The life expectancy is 29 years old.
People are hungry there.
I will not have internet anywhere close to me.
Gulp...
Just entering into this land you are handed condoms for AIDS protection. As one could imagine, Swaziland was not the country I was most excited about on my route. “God I can not make a difference there?”
“But I already am making a difference”, God
After days of traveling in taxis, buses, and vans I simply could only laugh when I found myself in the trunk of a packed truck, at midnight, slammed in with my teammates and backpacks. It was raining and windy. We were clearly on a uphill climb with spinning tires, trying to make it through the muddied clay roads. Teammates were praying, others where screaming. This is what I signed up for….
We made it to the top of the mountain. Clumsily stumbling into my hut I went straight to bed. I actually fell asleep in my rain jacket on top of my belongings.
All I could think was that this was going to be a long month.
It is a literal running joke on the race that sorrows may last for a night but JOY does come in the morning. El Shaddai (God Almighty) Children’s Home was our destination….
We are in elevations so high that literally clouds end up in our living room. A place were children from horrific backrounds call home. A little boy who were Sodomized by his father and then found hanging upside down in a tree where his dad would bite him. A baby girl addicted to alcohol when she arrived because that is all she has ever been fed. Little ones who arrive here so malnourished that their little bellies are expanded. Others suffer from the HIV passed on to them by their own parents.
It is not to late for them here, unlike the dying adult generation. God is redeeming them.
My favorite part about missions is that I simply get to watch what God is already doing around the world. The babies once starving, now fed. Children Schooled. The ones abused now loved and show the true love of the father. Everyday I watch these kids sing the Fathers praises.
They are the next generation of Swaziland. Children’s homes across the nation teaching kids about the love of Christ, literally they have been brought out of death into life.
Psalm 105:8-9 “He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac.”
God remembers His children. God is not finished with Swaziland… He is building up a generation who loves the Lord.
This place will be restored.
Goodbye Dessert, hello promise land.
PS: My last day of ministry here I prayed with a little girl to receive Christ as her personal Savior.
Pray.
