We’ve made it.
Swaziland was always come sudered the Promise Land on my squad because we knew if we made it that far then we could finish strong. And we’re here!
When we left Asia we flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and had a 12-hour layover there before flying to Ethiopia. From there we flew to Johannesburg and got on a 5ish-hour bus ride to a hostel where we spent the night in South Africa. The next morning we loaded up the van again and drove another few hours to the base in Swaziland.
Our squad is living together again in a small community called Nsoko. There’s not much around us except for a few grocery stores, and Manzini, Swaziland’s capital is an hour and a half away.
Outside of ministry we spend a lot of time hanging out as a squad, playing games, reading, and finding other ways to pass the time. There’s really not much around us.
In terms of ministry, each team essentially has the same ministry and is assigned a care point within the area. Care points are all throughout Swaziland and are basically all very similar. Each one has a building that can function as a classroom, a playground, and another smaller building that functions as the kitchen. Swaziland is considered a third world country and suffers from poverty and an AIDS/HIV epidemic which leaves a lot of its population as young orphaned adults and children. AIM works with a lot of the care points here by raising up local Swazis who gew up going to care points as children to lead and disciple the kids there now, and to oversee the entire care point.
Care points function like after school programs so local kids can come and hang out, get discipleship, and get fed. The care points that my squad and I are at actually serve food sent by the organization Feed My Starving Children that’s based in Minneapolis. I actually packed meals there 4-5 times when I was in high school and was super excited when I found out that the same food I’d helped pack for my 16th birthday I was now getting to serve to children in Africa as a 20-year-old.
It’s crazy how the Lord works.
Apart from serving the kids their food, we pretty much just hang out with them and do our best to make relationships with them. Each h care point also has a Shepherd, which is someone who’s grown up going to the care point and is in charge of it now. The other people involved at the care points are the “Gogos,” the Siswati word for grandmother. They volunteer their time to cook the rice and beans for the kids and don’t get paid anything for their work, except what they make through sewing projects.
We get to our care point, Joyella, around 10:30 and spend most of the morning pouring into and getting to know our Shepherd and Gogo. Most of our kids are in school until 2:30/3:00 and we only have a few preschoolers in the morning. We stay there until about 4:00 when Jerry our van driver comes to get us. Overall the days do get long in the hot African sun, but it’s really fun to see what African culture is like in Swaziland and love on the kids every day.
Please pray for our final two months that we would keep pressing in to what the Lord has for us and staying present while also thinking and preparing for the transition back into American culture.
We also don’t have regular access to WiFi here so my updates might be a little random until we’re back in America.
Thank you for following me into the Promise Land!
