Our time in Lesotho has come to an end! This month has flown by. Time really does fly when you’re having fun! We loved this month; we loved playing with and loving on these sweet kiddos. We had daily dance parties and coined phrases like “chalk ministry,” “Snapchat ministry,” and “selfie ministry.” I believe that these kids know – really know – that we love and care for them.
At the beginning of the month, our team, Wild Fires, sat down around our kitchen table and talked about the impact we wanted to have on Tholoana ea Lerato. We talked about laughter and fun. We talked about wanting the kids to know that they are loved and important. We wanted them to know that we love them, but even more than that, we wanted them to know Jesus and His love for them.
We noticed after our first week here that there were no Bibles here, and it stunned us. During church, the children sat as close as they could to us and read over our shoulders. They asked us if they could see our Bibles and they were so careful with them and so gentle with the pages and so eager to share with their friends. They loved looking at our Bibles. Malehloa, the oldest girl, has a Bible. She told me that it was given to her by one of the previous World Race teams. She told me about how the other kids love to borrow her Bible. Though she has had it for years, it is still well-taken-care-of and still in great condition. She loves her Bible, but she was the only child with a Bible here.
When we sat down and talked about these things together, the Bible Project was born. We felt a tugging on our hearts. We wanted these children to know how loved and important they are, and we wanted them to know Jesus and His love for them. What better way to leave a lasting impact on their lives than to give them personal, intimate access to the Word of God? We did research. We researched how to set up a crowdfunding campaign through Adventures in Missions. We researched where to buy Bibles in Maseru (incredibly, there is a Bible warehouse in town!). We crunched numbers and figured out how much it would cost to buy Bibles for all of these kids. We let our dreams get bigger and imagined raising enough money to buy Bibles for the house mothers, the office staff, and future children to come through Tholoana ea Lerato.
These kids have it hard. Their stories are heartbreaking. They have experienced more in their short little lives than any of us have combined, and nothing a child should ever go through. They have been rejected, cast aside, neglected, forgotten. They live in a part of the world afflicted with heavy spiritual warfare and the influence of witchcraft. And they are in battle without a weapon. Ephesians 6:17 calls the Word of God “the sword of the Spirit,” the only offensive piece of God’s armor with which we withstand the evil one. These children need the Word of God!
We applied for the crowdfunding campaign through Adventures and got accepted the next day. We were short on time; most crowdfunding pages need to be set up at least 10 days before leaving the country, and ours would close just days before we left. We had six days to raise all the money – $505.
We were fully funded within four hours of posting about the campaign – it wasn’t even noon back home yet!
We had nearly doubled our total in 8 hours, and after 9 hours we shut down the page so it would not accept any more donations. We had enough money to buy Bibles for every single child and staff worker here, and enough to get Bibles to give to new children for years and years to come!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!! It is because of you and your support that these sweet kiddos now have their very own Bibles!!
As soon as the money was transferred to our card, we walked a mile and a half to the Lesotho Bible Society and bought 75 Bibles!!!! We carried them home in our backpacks. Each Bible was given an inscription that read, “Keep the Word of God close in both good times and bad. May it bring you closer to the Father.” We also made bookmarks with verses in English and in Sesotho for every Bible. Each child currently living at Tholoana ea Lerato from ages 2-16 and every staff worker now has a Bible with their name in it, signed with love from our team.
Our excitement to give these children and the staff their very own Bibles could only have been matched by God’s excitement for them to have access to His Word at their fingertips. The morning of the distribution ceremony we brought the Bibles out to the kitchen table – where the Bible Project idea was born – and laid our hands on them and prayed for them.
That afternoon we gathered the children together and told them that we had a surprise for them. We told them that we noticed that something was missing here and that we wanted to bless them with the gift of the Word of God. We told them that our friends and family back home had raised money for them to have their very own Bibles! We called them up one by one and gave them their Bibles. From the oldest to the youngest, they were so excited! The little ones hugged their Bibles close to their chests. The younger children were eager to sit down and read through their Bibles – in Sesotho, their language! The older children showed off their English bibles to the younger children and there was even some trading happening haha! Here are some pictures from after this sweet event:
Thank you again, friends and family, for your support and contribution to this project. We spent a month here with these sweet kids and part of our hearts will always be here with their shouts of “ausi!” (meaning “sister”), their raucous laughter and giggles, their big goofy grins when they see us after school, their incessant request to “come!” when we are inside finishing up team time, their love of selfies and Snapchat, their next-level dance moves, their love for giving us silly hairstyles, and their sweet sweet hugs.
We loved them well this month, and with your gift of the Word of God, their lives – and this place – will never be the same! Like wildfire, the Spirit of God leaves nothing unchanged when He touches it. The sword of the Spirit is now very present here, and nothing will ever be the same!
Be looking out for a video about the Bible Project coming soon from my teammate Ally!
All glory to God! Jess
