On Saturday, November 10th, fourteen girls of the Ngunya (Na-goon-yuh) care point won first place in the “African Songs” category. Now, this may just seem like a sweet story of the underdogs winning to everyone back at home, but this story means so much more to me and my teammates for so many reasons.
Four days a week for the last two months, my teammates and I have been visiting the same care point and the same kids day in and day out. When we first got to the care point the kids would barely look at some of us and it has taken us a couple months to get the majority of them to warm up to us. The older kids specifically are the more reserved. Nonetheless, we have gotten to teach them Bible lessons ranging from Noah to the prodigal son and so many more in between. Two of my personal favorite things to do, along with the extensive list of things that I love about my care point, is to sit down and talk with the older kids and watch them practice during choir. Even though the older kids are only there for a limited amount of time due to walking from school and needing to get home by four pm, I cherish every conversation I get to have with them. Their choir practices are serious but always seem to fill our tiny room with laughter no matter what. Team Joy has learned the lyrics to all three songs, to the best of our ability since two of the songs are not sung in English, and sings them quite frequently.
The Saturday of the competition, Colleen and I walk up to the church where it is being held dressed in our black bottoms and white shirts, matching the outfits that our kids had to wear, and our Ngunya girls come running up to us jumping and waving all toppling over one another to give us hugs. This was not a behavior that we had seen from them ever before and I can personally say that it melted my heart. We spent the next couple hours talking to them and meeting people from other care points and getting ready for the show to begin. When the competition finally began, two hours later than scheduled because Africa, we proudly stood with our girls as we watched the other care points go before us. (Naturally, to make this story even better God put our care point at the end of the competition so the suspense was unreal). Now, all of my teammates and I have known that our care point was smaller, probably due to the fact that we are about a half hour out and partially up a mountain, but as the show went on we saw just how different our care point was from the rest. The next smallest group performing was a group of twenty-three and they even had a few men in their choir, from that point on the groups only got larger and the number of guys increased.
Finally, the moment had arrived for our girls to perform and they blew me away. I was singing along with them and doing all of the dance moves. A couple local woman were laughing at and with me for my dancing and told me that “I am now a Swazi-woman because I know how to sing the songs and dance like them”. We had a short intermission and there were a couple of African break-dancers, then the girls did their other two songs and finally it was time for the judges results. First they announced the second and first place winners of the “Praise and Worship” category and then the “African Songs”. They announced second place and it wasn’t us so we held our breathe as the announcer said she was going to finally tell us who won and she said “It is N…G…U…NYA, Ngunya!”. Suddenly everyone was on their feet screaming, all of my girls stood up and pulled Colleen and I up to the front by the stage with them to receive the trophy.
That day was by far one of the best experiences that I have had so far since being on the field. Being able to build those relationships outside of the care point and letting those young woman know that they are cared for and loved was one of my favorite things that I have ever done.
Please continue to pray for the girls and everyone at my care point that they continue to come to know the Lord.
Love and miss you all,
Liz
