Goodbye Swaziland!

Again, I sit here looking for words to
type as another month of ministry ends. Month 7, done. Today I have to say
goodbye to all the little kids I fell in love with over the past 3 weeks. It’s
not going to be easy. It never is. But I know that God is with them and will
always take care of them.

At the center where the children are,
we decided to paint 4 of the walls that are outside dividing the school from
the house in which the kids stay. We started painting last week. And today we
will finish painting. We themed the walls. We have a “prayer” wall,
“thanksgiving” wall, “creation” wall and a “gospel” wall. I will post the
pictures so you can take part in our painting!

Also, being that our last day of
ministry is today that means we are leaving Swaziland tomorrow. =( I’m really
going to miss this country. We are heading to Durban, South Africa with
Koinonia tomorrow for our debrief. Durban is on the southern coast of S.A. so I
am hoping that it will be a lot warmer weather and maybe I can even go surfing
and get my team to learn how to surf! We will all be staying at a hostel in
Durban for about 3 days. And as we have learned while on the race, changes
take place quite frequently.

So here’s what next month looks like
for us:

My team (the GW’s) will be adopting
Cameron (from Koinonia) for our ATL (Ask The Lord) month. We all prayed into
the month of August and after many nights of prayer we really felt the Lord
calling us to Lesotho. It was a hard decision because many of us were getting
different countries, but in the end we decided that God wanted us to head to
Lesotho. Lesotho is a country much like Swaziland in the fact that it is
landlocked inside of South Africa. It is very mountainous. We hear that you
need 4 wheel drive everywhere you go and if not that, then you need to ride
horses. So we are really hoping to ride horses this month! We also hear that
the weather is freezing and that there is a lot of snow in the mountains. So we
are hoping to play in the snow and maybe go skiing or snowboarding! We have 3
birthdays to celebrate this month: Becca -7^th, Kim – 9^th,
Me – 16^th. We are hoping this month will be packed with fun
adventures and amazing ministry opportunities. The funny thing is that when we
were praying about specific types of ministry and what town or city to head to
in Lesotho, Renee saw part of a word : “Moor…” and when we looked on the map,
there was a city “Moorosi.” Then the following day, she got a random email from
a friend of hers she hasn’t heard from in a long time who sent her an article
about this hospice ministry for AIDS babies in Northern Lesotho. And the lady
who wrote the article or runs the ministry (I forget), her name was Sister
Moorosi. And Renee’s friend had NO clue we (or any team on our squad) was
thinking about going to Lesotho. She just thought it was a cool article to
share. So, it is funny how God works and the signs and confirmations He gives.
We are still unsure of what ministry we are going to do. I think we are going
to start off by going to southern Lesotho and staying there for a few days and
taking the rest of our journey from there. Maybe we will end up at this hospice
ministry. We’ll see what really happens this month though… I’ll keep you all updated!

So, to add to the 8 girls we have
Cameron for just this month only. Our team keeps on growing! We just keep
stealing people from every team to join ours. I love it! lol