Hello to all! I have made it safely into Swaziland and have begun working at our teams new ministry location. Our new ministry is at a location called El Shaddai about one hour outside of the major Swazi city of Mbabane. El Shaddai is literally breathtaking!! It's an orphanage perched right on top of a mountain. Next, to our orphanage is a Swazi school that boasts an enrollment of 300 students. My team of seven this month is working alongside another P Squad team of five, so its been really nice in that aspect compared to sultry Mozambique where we were housed in dorms, sleeping on concrete floors, with 15 other people per room.
We actually have bunk beds here, along with running water that comes from a well straight out of the El Shaddai mountain. Running water is such a blessing! Hopefully, hauling water jugs and taking bucket showers was exclusively a Mozambique thing…hopefully.
In, addition to running water and flushing commodes, our food budget has opened up this month as well! Believe it or not, but our food budget in Dondo, Mozambique was $1.00 a day per person, and now our food budget for Swaziland is a whopping $3.00 per person per day! Talk about a happy camper this month 🙂 So far for our meals, we have been able to enjoy oatmeal and egg sandwiches for breakfast, while having PB&J's for lunch usually, while having chicken and rice and beans for dinner. And we also had the goodness of having our girls here bake a pan of banana nut bread last night. One thing our Father has taught me so far on this mission trip is how to be creative in stretching dollars for sustenance.
As far as our ministry this month, it has been fun and more diverse. The orphanage at El Shaddai is larger than at Jacob's Well last month and the children are, on average, younger than those in Mafambisee. Its been very nice interacting with them though, because they are very fluent in English! Surprisingly, English is spoken by 95% of the people I have met here in Swaziland. Which has made conversation with the locals, teaching the children bible stories, and working out our squads logistical travels much easier. It was like a breath of fresh air to do chapel with the children on our second night here, and be able to go through the book of Genesis with them by asking them questions and then them answering me. Chapel here, is every night from 5 to 6pm and includes singing songs and teaching bible stories. Furthermore, I was stunned at the depth of knowledge some of the youngest children had concerning minutia of the bible. I asked them a series of questions about the names of Jacob's sons, the tribes of Israel, and the types of plagues the LORD sent on the Egyptians and most of them were spot on and eager to answer.
In addition to helping teach the children and tutor them in their studies, we have been helping paint the local school that is nearby, as well as scape the boys dormitory whose walls are beginning to flake of badly. The walls in Mozambique and Swaziland are either packed mud, or a combination of cement and mud with too little cement. So structural work is a seasonal thing here. We also have been helping the orphanage maintain their corn crop. The corn grown here in the mountains is 100% for sustenance with none of it going to market. The corn here helps to feed a constant population of around 100 people or so, and whats interesting is that crops here can usually be grown almost year around, just like in Mozambique. The only drawback to large scale farming here is that the locals have either never heard of herbicides and pesticides or they are too expensive, thus the great war on weeds is waged with the sword, literally. Just check out the pictures below. So a few of my mornings have been spent cutting weeds that are over crowding the burgeoning food supply.
Overall, El Shaddai has been less tiresome than Mozambique and has been more invigorating. We shall be here for two more weeks so I hope that we are able to help in many more great things with God's people here at El Shaddai. I hope this letter finds you well! I hope to have many more pictures from this beautiful place in the days to come. May God continue to bless you!
Brother in Christ,
Matthew
The outside of the girls dormitory
The entrance to El Shaddai
This girl's name is Gift. And she is only on of two people I have ever met who is born on August 18!! She is super talented in singing and has an exceptionally sharp memory for bible stories and prinicples.
Chapel time in the afternooons. Here I stumped the children with a question during on of my lessons and they are trying to find the answer.
Two of the young boys at the orphange.
The inside of the chapel at El Shaddai
A portion of the very large garden at the orphange
