After our month at El Shaddai we had two free days in Ezulwini, Swaziland about an hour from El Shaddai before we would head to Cape Town on Monday. During this time we shopped, ate, soaked up the Wi-Fi and had to complete our visa applications for India (where we will be going Month 4). On Sunday afternoon we all headed to the Internet café’. My team leader had completed mine but everyone else needed to complete theirs so I hung around with everyone as they completed theirs. At one point several people were sitting on a bench outside the Internet café so I headed over there. I noticed there was an older Swazi gentlemen standing there. When I arrived he turned to the group of us outside and said, “She is my choice, her hair looks like a horses mane.” At this time I had no idea if that was a compliment or not, after a few minutes of awkwardness I decided to leave and go to meet one of my teammates at a Wi-Fi hotspot and left. It wasn’t until later that night that I was informed of my true worth; this gentleman wanted to purchase me for 30 oxen and had named me Boom Boom. Apparently a princess is worth 25 cows, so I’m worth quite a bit, but not in oxen.
God has called me worthy, worth it, a princess, loved, chosen, beautiful, forgiven, redeemed, a new creation, but never Boom Boom. During all the laughing about how ridiculous this was. I got to thinking the young woman of Swaziland still have dowry’s, they are in essence purchased, traded for animals. I have very strong opinions about dowry’s and what they do to woman and how they make them feel. Do these young woman know their worth? Do they know they are daughters of the living God, do they know how much God loves them, what he did for them, that Jesus gave His life so they could walk in freedom?
Ephesians 1:4-5 Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love having predestined us to adoption as sons(and daughters) by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of His will.
