[So I've been away from the blog for a little while, this is the first time I've had internet for a long enough period to update. I've just posted three earlier blogs here ('Finishing Well'), here ('R&R and the shortest travel day so far') and here ('The truth about me'), so go check those before you hear about where I am now]
As always, the work here is varied and the ministry here is getting its money’s worth out of us 😛
We’re at an orphanage where the kids have been orphaned because of AIDS (only two of the kids are themselves HIV+, but most of them have lost their parents to AIDS) and so the most important ministry for us is to simply love on the kids – play with them, hold them, get to know them. Part of this is also spending allotted time in the baby house with the youngest orphans aged between about 2 and 5. We are also, at any time, able to duck away from whatever work we are doing to spend more time with the other children. It’s really nice to be here because all of the kids speak English fluently (not to mention having at least one other language each – one day I’ll speak a second language, I’m working on my Spanish…), whereas the kids in the Philippines had broken English, there were no few kids we saw in Mozambique and none of the kids in China spoke English (they did in South Africa though). It’s funny to have to remind yourself that the things you are mindlessly saying to them are things they can this time understand, although it’s disconcerting when they start having conversation in Swazi whilst you are there and you don’t know if they’re talking about you or not.
When we aren’t with the kids, or enjoying the landscapes in our own time, we are helping out with some of the improvement works of the centre (as many WR placements seem to have us do – it’s nice to see a bit of the day to day life of a ministry but it’s also great to be able to do something that will last for long after we are gone). This month we have been doing some painting – this has included recoating some of the classroom walls of their school and some of the outside walls of the other buildings, but one of the longest walls inside the cafeteria is also being redone with a huge mural following them having to renovate the previously collapsing wall. Once we have completed the preparations for the school (school starts up on the 24th of the month so that is first priority) we will be replacing the fence that surrounds the property. The fence is currently barbed wire but on wooden posts, and when the grass is dead and dry here (different time of year) fires are prone to happen. We’re told the last WR team here had to put out several fence fires, and so the task is to replace the fence with metal posts, preventing future fires from occurring. On top of this, Ashley, one of the women from another team, is a qualified nurse and so she is spending some of the week manning the clinic here, with one of us as an assistant to that.
Finally, we are also helping out with church services on Sundays and on Monday to Thursday evenings we have a half hour slot with the kids teaching them a bible lesson. It’s really cool to be involved in so many ways with the lives of the children, staff and missionaries that live here and be part of an on-going work.
