Ministry here in Lesotho has been starting off pretty slow. Back in Swaziland, we were working 8-5 Tuesday-Friday, so coming to a new country and only working half days has been a little hard because I’ll fell like I’m not really doing anything for the country, or I’ll get bored really easily. There was one day I walked up the hill to use the restroom and when I came out, I noticed a girl sitting on the hill playing with some rocks, so I sat down and started to play with her and start a conversation, but she wasn’t able to speak English at all. My heart was really broken at this point because I realized that it’s going to be hard in this country to communicate with people. The next thing I notice, she walks over to another house to grab a girl that is 4 years old to play rocks with us. Playing rocks consists of us kinda like juggling with 2 rocks but in one hand. It’s really hard for me. And she just laughs and says it’s difficult isn’t it? And I said yes it is, and I start to try to say some small talk with her. She then ran back home to grab a ball and we start to play this game called “whatcha” and it’s where we run around in a circle throwing a ball back and forth. I then got called to go to ministry, so I had to leave. When I got back from ministry, I went back up the hill to see if the girl was there to play. And she was! This time when we started to play whatcha, so many of the neighbor kids noticed that we were playing and came down the hill to play with us. By this time there were at least 9 kids when it was just us 3 the last time. These kids that came down looked a little bit older so I wanted to see if they could speak English. They were only able to tell time, their name, and how old they were. Which helped, but I really wanted to get to know them. After playing with them I came inside and started to share my realtionship with the kids up hill to my roommates that I’m living with for this month. One of them had mentioned that maybe I should pray about getting to understand their language or them getting to understand ours. At first I was like oh ok thanks ya I’ll do that. But in my mind I was thinking ya that’s not gonna work, they’re just giving me that Christian advice again that I never want. But I took consideration about it and prayed. And when I prayed, I prayed hard because I really wanted this. I really wanted to understand the kids and grow a relationship with them. I’ve been going up the hill everyday for the last 5 days and I just really want to talk to them besides hi, how are you, so I prayed and let God in on how I was truly feeling and wanted to see this happen. The next day I went up the hill to play with the kids. We lately have been coloring my post cards that I’ll be sending out to my supporters. The kids started talking in their own language and I just sat there with my head down coloring. One of the kids said “hey you don’t talk much” and I said well it’s hard for me to understand you, and she said well we can speak in English. And I respond it’s hard for you to speak in English just as it’s hard for me to speak in sesotho. And the girl goes “oh” and we carry on with our coloring. Then they all ask to play watcha agian so I get up and start to play with them. I literally don’t know what it was, but we stopped playing watcha and sat down and just started talking. It was amazing. I could understand the girls and they could understand me. It was a miracle. The Holy Spirit was totally there. The girls were telling me their favorite subject, food, color, how old they were, about their family and much more. I honestly didn’t notice what was happening until later that night when I came back to my room and looked over each one of their pictures and the notes that I have added about each one of them. That’s the moment where I realized that God had answered my prayers. He knew my heart for this situation. I truly love hangouts with the kids up on the hill and I’m super excited to see all that God is gonna do in each one of these kids by the end of my time here in Lesotho.
