Hi there! We know that communication has been limited this month. There isn’t wifi available where we are staying, so we have to pay for data or go to the wifi cafe in town. Neither of them offer great service or fantastic speeds, so it’s been easier to go without for most things. It’s also been a unique opportunity for us to kind of refocus on being here and being present with our teams and our ministry hosts. We’re now more than half way done, on our 3rd continent, getting into the rhythm and routine of our second team, and coming off of so much travel and logistical duties in the last few weeks, it seemed beneficial to refocus, re-dedicate ourselves to our mission, and spend some extra time with the Lord and our teams.
Ministry:
-Ministry seems to look different every single day. We are partnered with a local church called Harvesters. They seem to have a spoon in every pot possible which is great but also confusing and hectic to manage. With them, we have been working in their new garden located at their school. The intent is for the garden to provide food for the boarding house located at the school. They currently have ~100 students from all over the area, and 10-12 of the girls live in the recently constructed/still being constructed boarding house on site. Some of the girls are orphans and some of them have families who sent them here to have better opportunities. Most days we work in the garden, we water the half that is planted, we have weeded and prepared the other half for planting, and we have put up a fence and barb wire around the whole thing to keep animals out.
-On Wednesdays, we go to the local prison here in town. They have ~80-100 inmates, mostly men. We all meet together as a big group and sing worship songs, give 2 testimonies, and someone shares a message. Our first week we had 15 men come forward and pray the prayer of salvation! It was so beautiful! 15 men and 15 of us (because we are working with another team this month). We each prayed over a new brother and asked the Lord to bless them and grow them in their relationship with Him.
-Other days of the week, the teams go to 2 different soup kitchens. One is here in town and is associated with the hospital. People come from miles around to get receive poor treatment here, but it’s better than nothing. With that, they oftentimes have no where to stay or food to eat while trying to get into the doctors or to be with a loved one, so the church provides lunches to the people there. There is another soup kitchen at one of the church plants in the surrounding villages that works with a clinic. Our teammates who have been there have really enjoyed loving on the children there and just being a light in the darkness.
-Every morning Mon-Fri, 3 of us go to the hospital to do a short 15 minute devotional for any of the patients or staff who are waiting for the clinics to open at 8. It has been so encouraging to hear from people who were touched by the Word or who have been prayed over afterwards. We have been able to pray over so many people here, and it is definitely an area that needs the love of the Lord. So many hurting, sick, and impoverished people here. We keep standing firm on the power of prayer though!
-With all of the fluctuations of the schedule, every now and then a visit to the local school gets worked in where we play games, sing songs, and tell a short Bible story with the kids. They can be quite the handfuls, but we all know that Jesus has a soft spot for the children. While they surely do have different lives than our kids at home, kids are just kids everywhere and it’s been one of the constants on the Race. They just want to be wanted and loved. It’s nice to be able to love on them without needing to know the language or the perfect words; oftentimes we just sit and play with them.
-Church! On Sundays our group breaks apart into smaller teams in order to go to 3 of the church plants. There are 5 of us that go together to one of the churches where we are expected to have 2 testimonies and a sermon. While it’s sometimes slightly overwhelming, it’s been so neat to see everyone grow in confidence in their speaking abilities and to share the Lord through either their stories or from the Word. Also, African church worship is something you’ve never experienced before (unless you’ve been web to a church in Africa)! It’s fantastic!!!
-It’s been a great encouragement to the church staff here all of the work we’ve been able to come alongside of them in. They have felt supported and uplifted in the work they are doing here by having us here, pursuing the same things they are striving for in their community.
Our Accommodations:
The place we’re staying is quite nice by most standards. There are 4 bedrooms total with several bunk beds in them. There are 2 girls rooms, 1 for the guys, and 1 for us as a married couple. We all share a set of bathrooms with 2 toilets and 2 showers. There’s a kitchen and a dining room in the “main house” where we spend a lot of time together.
There is a kitchen staff of 3-4 local ladies who prepare almost all of our meals for us. There’s normally always potatoes, rice, or pasta at lunch and dinner and breakfast is normally toast of some sort. So many carbs! But we walk them off throughout the day up and down the mountains.
The water goes off here A LOT. We’re not sure why exactly because it goes off city wide. It’s pretty common though and everyone has large storage tanks that you fetch water from. So we get a workout getting water for showers, to flush the toilets, to wash the dishes, to do all of the things throughout the day. We haven’t run out of our tank yet with our longest outage of 7 days, but we got close.
Miscellaneous About Mokhotlong:
The town we’re in is pretty isolated from things around. It’s tucked in the mountains, and it’s beautiful. We’ve never really seen mountains quite like here, and it’s definitely a show off of God’s handiwork. We’re in the end of their summer here and it rains a good bit a couple of afternoons a week. The weather has been nice with temperatures probably in the 60-80 range. The sun is brutal here though! It’s quite easy to get a sunburn just from walking around throughout the day if you don’t have on sunscreen, which they don’t sell here so sometimes we just have to wear hats and long-sleeves to beat the sun.
Well that’s about it! Pictures and videos coming soon when we access strong WiFi. We head to South Africa on Monday to start month 8!
