Hello Everyone!
Things here in Swazi are still going very well! Last week we started ministry. Let me inform you about our ministry for this month! All of the teams have been working at care points. Care points are different buildings where children come after school to receive food, health care, and day care. Most children don’t come until about 3 pm. My specific care point has about 70 children that come after school and about 10 little children that stay all day at the care point. The name of my care point is called Joyela.
The first day we arrived to my care point, the only way to describe it was dry. The care point itself does have a very nice playground, but there is a lot of trash and so so so much glass all over the ground! The first day we arrived, a little boy had a wound from the glass. We showed up and played with the children for a while but we were not informed of what to do for the rest of the day. Most of our children do not have shoes, and the meal they receive is potentially their only meal that day for many children.
That night during team time, our team was going over all we experienced for the day. We talk about how ministry felt like we were babysitting rather than serving. During that team time I had a song stuck in my head and that song was “Dry Bones,” by Lauren Daigle. I informed my team about this and we quickly went into scripture. We went to the passage in Ezekiel about Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones. We realized how accurately this related to our situation and realized we are able to bring life into this dry care point because God put us there to do so!
The next day at the care point, I still felt kinda low and felt like I was not doing enough because we were not told what to do. I started walking around looking at the ground and I saw all the glass. God then lead me to a glass bottle that was broken at the top and then God said, “Fill the glass up with the shards.” That’s what I started to do. I started picking up all of the shards of glass on the ground and using that broken beer bottle to hold them. My teammates also helped me with this task when they had the chance. It was actually very satisfying to see all of the glass being picked up and as I was doing it some of the kids took notice and started helping me. I really did not want them to considering it’s glass but it was important for those children to know as they grow up they should strive to have a nice community without glass shards on the ground.
God was still having us serve without us even needing to do much. I did not notice right away because my perspective was not optimistic. Once I realized my team does have purpose at this care point it became alive more and more!
Hey everyone thanks for your support! I am alive and well and currently writing this on my birthday! Swaziland has been so amazing and I am so thankful for the memories I’ve made here and for my squad and my team! Community is living with 51 other people and we all struggle together when the house runs out of water or the bathrooms just smell so rank! Community is impromptu worship sessions with your squad and all of the little kids that want you to hold them while you sing. Community is how God intended us to live as a body and I get a full experience!
Thank you all for praying for me and your constant support! I cannot wait until I can share some amazing pictures! I PET A ZEBRA! (Sorry mom).
I wrote this blog a long time ago and did not have good wifi I am now currently in Lesotho and I am going to start ministry tomorrow! I have not had good enough wifi to post a blog so I am sorry for the delay! I have more blogs I am going to post later on as well! Y’all might get lucky and have 3 blogs to read this week! 🙂
