Swaziland has captured my heart.
The people are so loving, easy-going, and so much fun. The children are so sweet and so affectionate. The winter weather is wonderful. The landscape never gets old. And the sunrises and sunsets are breath-taking.
This month my squad has been assisting AIM (Adventures In Missions) with all their various ministries here in the city of Manzini. My ministry assignment for the month is being part of what we call the Flexi-Team, which as you can probably guess means that I’ve been having a flexible month of ministry. I never really know what I’m going to be doing each day, as I jump in and help out wherever I am needed. It has been a bit confusing at times, but the fact that I get to experience all the types of ministry my squad is doing here in Manzini makes it totally worth it.
Care Points
Care Points are the main ministry of AIM in Swaziland. They partner with an organization called Children’s Hope Chest to provide for the children at the Care Points. With so many orphans and such a high poverty rate, the immediate needs of nutrition, adequate clothing, affordable education, and Christian discipleship are what the Care Points provide for the children. The Care Points provide a meal for children six days a week, offered after school so that children who attend school can eat, as well as those who don’t. The preschoolers and children who can’t afford school fees are educated at the Care Points. The Care Points also distribute articles of clothing (such as Toms shoes) when shipments arrive. Each Care Point also has a Shepherd employed by AIM who attends to the spiritual needs of the children, including a daily Bible lesson. The AIM department here in Swaziland is in the process of writing their own culturally-relevant discipleship curriculum, and we got to proof-read and offer suggestions for some of the lessons they are working on. Some of us got to give the lesson to the children a few times. There are thirty-four Care Points in Manzini and they serve seven-thousand children daily. Most of my squad mates are assigned in pairs to serve at various Care Points. I got to help out at the Natabas Care Point my second week in Swaziland. I helped with the preschool in the mornings and helped with sports ministry there in the afternoons. I also got to visit another Care Point one day to replace one of my team mates who was sick, so I got to see how two different Care Points function. It’s been so fun getting to love on the children and to see what organizations are doing to care for the orphans.
Sports Ministry
A few of the AIM staff run a sports ministry for older kids at the Care Points. They use sports like soccer and volleyball as a means of discipling and mentoring the teens. Each day after school and after the kids eat their lunch, the life coaches organize sports practice, and do a discipleship lesson with the kids. The sports ministry is still new and under development, but I got to be a part of some of the things they are doing. One day I went around with Xolani, the head of the sports ministry, and helped put up volleyball poles at some of the Care Points. I also got to join the Sports for Christ Outreach volleyball team for their annual community volleyball tournament. We spent the whole day playing match after match, and we lost every single one of them. But to our credit, the competition was fierce; all the opponents looked like they could be NBA stars, and they are serious about volleyball. I loved seeing how the AIM sports ministry staff incorporated the Gospel into the tournament. During the opening ceremony, the president of the Bible College where the tournament was hosted welcomed everyone, someone shared a testimony, and we prayed, inviting God’s Presence to be a part of the tournament. At the award ceremony, Xolani shared a brief message explaining the Gospel and inviting everyone to begin a relationship with Jesus. It was neat seeing how they use sports to reach out to the men of Swaziland.
Administration
Ashley and Lindsey have been helping out at the AIM office in town, doing administrative tasks. I filled in one day for Ashley, so I got to see what goes on in the office. I loved hanging out at the office and getting to see all the shepherds and AIM staff as they come in and out. Everyone is so nice and they love what they do. We helped update the orphan information system by adding new children and their information to the excel sheets. It made me sad to have to type things like “both parents deceased” or “father alcoholic” or that twelve children live in the household where the grandmother is the primary care giver. Lindsey and Ashley have also done things other things, like typing Care Point attendance sheets and organizing crafts that the children made and preparing them to be sent overseas to their sponsors.
Agriculture
For the last week and a half I joined the “Ag team” doing agriculture projects around the various Care Points. The Ag team had planted lettuce and tomato plants during the first two weeks, and we went back to check on them and to weed the gardens. We also spent quite a few days clearing out AIM’s huge metal storage bins at different Care Points. This entailed removing old tires, plastic tubing, filing cabinets, wooden palates, tools, and other random things, throwing away garbage, then sweeping and spraying termite killer, and organizing the materials as we put them back in. One storage container was filled with thousands of pairs of Toms shoes. Toms is a popular shoe company that advertises their One-For-One campaign; for every pair of shoes purchased, they donate a pair to a child without shoes. It’s cool seeing the receiving end of the One-For-One campaign. AIM is waiting for another shipment before distributing them, so they have enough shoes for all the orphans. They’re expecting to distribute them in August.
Hospital Ministry
This past Monday I got to go to the Manzini hospital to visit with the patients. Many of the patients there are dying of AIDS and the complications that accompany this horrible disease. There is also a tuberculosis wing, but the AIM workers strictly prohibited us from going there. So we spent our time in the children’s ward. Some of my squad mates who had visited before made a special relationship with one mother-daughter family, and they snuck them in some snacks. I brought my guitar and sat down with the intention of just playing some quiet background music for the families to enjoy. While I was playing, I noticed a little boy with a broken arm, sitting on the edge of his bed watching me and swinging his feet to the music. Then he got up and wandered over to the desk nearby and started quietly drumming along. I looked up at him and smiled, and he nervously stopped. I told him to keep going, so he continued with more confidence. Then another little boy ran up to me and stood in front of me, inches away, with his face pretty much in my guitar and just stared and smiled. This gave the first boy confidence to come up to me too, so he joined up close. Seeing their interest, I started singing and playing a little louder. Then the boys started trying to sing along too. So I taught them words to a few simple choruses, and we had a little worship session. It was one of my favorite moments in Swaziland.
I had such a great month in Swaziland, and I love that I’ve gotten to experience so many of the ways that God is using organizations like AIM and Children’s Hope Chest to help the poor and needy there.
We just arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa to meet with our squad for a few days before we head into our tenth month. It’s crazy that I only have two months left on this adventure. Next month we are doing what the World Race calls ATL–Ask The Lord. That means we don’t have a host set up, we just ask the Lord where He wants us to go and what He wants us to do. We got to choose between going to Botswana and Namibia, so my team is going to go to both. Kingdom City, a church we attended in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is starting a branch in Gaborone, Botswana. And some of our friends that we met in KL are in Botswana. So we’re going to spend two weeks in Botswana working with Kingdom City and helping them get the new church started. Then we’re going to Namibia, where we’ve been in contact with a missionary couple who works with children who live in a dump, so we’ll spend the second two weeks with them. It’s going to be an exciting month! 🙂
Thanks for keeping me and my team in prayer!
Peace & blessings.
