Hello faithful readers! Sorry for the long break from blogging. My team has been extremely busy and I have been slacking in writing. So…I’m taking you back to Swaziland and some of the stuff we did there. Enjoy! See you soon!
We have 15 different ministries going on this month. One of my favorites is visiting the Hope House. Hope House is an organization that provides residential medical care for people with advanced illnesses. It’s run by two adorable little Indian nuns who were kind enough to let us come there and hang out with the patients and caregivers. Many patients are there because their families can’t take care of them or don’t have the resources too or think they are going to die, so they bring them to Hope House. Hope House is there to help people get better or to prepare them for death. Many of them get well enough to return home. We met people there with anything from TB to Aids to strokes, mental illnesses, etc. Most days I visited a man named Philemon and his care giver Joseph. Philemon had suffered from a stroke; he didn’t talk too much, but he was a joy to be around. Joseph was from Malawi, our last country. He left his family and country to come here in hopes of a better life for him and his family back at home. He goes back only a couple times a year to see them. Joseph is a jovial fellow and he enthusiastically greets us each time we come, especially when we bring bao, the national past time and game of Malawi that he hasn’t played in years. Joseph wins every single time we play, but he thoroughly enjoys teaching us the rules and strategies of the game…I’m assuming he doesn’t hate that he wins all the time either =).
Sometimes it’s hard to see what you are actually accomplishing in ministries like this, but a lot of times the language barrier gets in the way of deeper conversations about God. So we always pray with them, sometimes we read the Bible to Philemon, and the rest of the time we hang out and play games. And all of it is important because people are important. Every day we take the time to visit, they see that they matter to us just how they are. It gives them joy to have visitors and someone to talk to. As missionaries we feel like we need to bring God into every conversation; but here I am reminded that my only agenda is to love the people that God puts in front of me, whatever that may look like.
We have a lot of other ministries going on here in Swaziland. Check out this awesome blog from a previous teammate!
http://andreawassink.theworldrace.org/?filename=give-us-this-day-our-daily-bread
