So I’m a little behind on my blogging. My apologies. I will go back to what we did in Swaziland. Swaziland was a great, but also hard month. I’ll start with my living conditions. We lived in a house. Which was very nice, because some of my squad mates had to live in a hut. We did not have a kitchen sink so had go outside and get water from a water barrel and wash our dishes outside with cold water. We took cold bucket showers, which I actually enjoyed for the first time on the race because it was so hot in Swaziland. Our toilets were outhouses. They were the worst “toilets” I have used on the race so far. I won’t go into detail, but I’ll just say there were flies, maggots, kerosine, and smells you never want to smell.
During the day, my teammate and I worked at what are called Care Points throughout the city of Manzini. Me and a teammate worked at a Care Point called Ngwani Park Preschool. These care points are for 4 and 5 year olds who can’t afford to go to public schools and who come from broken homes. So I got to be a preschool teacher for a month! It was fun, hard, a learning experience, exhausting, and sad all at the same time. I was able to connect and form relationships with the children as well as the teachers. So many kids come from single parent homes, or they live with their grandparent because their parents either passed away or do not want to care for them. Many of their parents are also affected by HIV. Some also live with their older siblings. Although I was teaching them, they taught me so much more. These children have so little. We went on a home visit to a grandmother who has 6 children living with her (some of the kids she took in because they had no one). They lived in an 8 foot by 6 foot concrete room with nothing in it. Their only source of income for the 7 of them was how much fruit their grandmother could sell on the street that day. Yet, despite how little they have (they don’t even know where their next meal will come from) these children are so happy. They are so satisfied. They don’t need or want more. They even consider themselves blessed.
Being with them has made me learn a lot about myself. I have learned how unsatisfied I am and how I am wanting more. Some months I am even unsatisfied with our ministry or where we are living. I look at my squad mates’ pictures on Facebook, and, although I am living in a house with a fridge and a fan, I find that I am unhappy that I am not on the team that is living in the desert in their tent, that has to cook over an open fire, and doesn’t have a fridge. But then I think to myself, if I was there, I would probably look at the pictures of the people in the city and wish I was here with the fan and fridge. We were in Hyderabad, India and didn’t leave that city. I really wanted to leave the city and see the country side and northern India. I want to be able to do everything and am looking for more instead of being content in what I have.
But the children in Swaziland are so satisfied that they just have a roof over their head. They are so satisfied that they have 5 other brothers and sisters that they get to share their food with. Being with them has really help put my life into perspective and has helped me to think not of myself and what I am missing out on or what I don’t have, but how can I be a blessing to others and how I can use what I have to help others.
Philippians 4:12 says “I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed, or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” God has really been laying this verse on my heart. He is teaching me what it means to be content and what it means to find all my satisfaction in Him. And these people here in Swaziland are living out this verse. The overwhelming joy they have and their selflessness when they already have so little is such a testament to the faith they have in Christ.
I am continuing to pray that God works in my heart and creates a selflessness in me hat was shown to me in Swaziland. I pray that I am content in each and every circumstance and always give God the glory, even for the small things. I am so thankful that these children have taught me such a big lesson and am so thankful for the time that I was able to spend with them.
