This month in Swazi is Woman-istry month for my squad. That means that all the men on our squad are working together at one ministry site and all the women have been placed on new teams for the month. When I first found this out, I wasn’t very excited about it because I’ve never really done things with just women before. In general, I’m just a lot more comfortable around guys than I am women. I’ve always had close friends who were guys and being in a big group of girls has never been my favorite thing. We’ve only been on our new team for about a week, but I already absolutely love it. I love my team and I love our ministry and I never thought, in a million years that I would actually like it.
We’re working with a Care-Point in Manzini, Swaziland, which is kind of like a daycare that feeds kids in the community every afternoon. The care-points usually have teachers that run a program with the kids every day, but ours doesn’t. They told us that the teacher quit a few months ago and they just never found a replacement so our team has been doing our own kind of program with the 30-40 kids that come every afternoon. We sing tons of songs, do a Bible story skit, and play games with them and just have fun.
I know I’ve said this in a few blogs before, but I am not a kid person in any sense of the term. I don’t like babysitting, I don’t like playing games with kids or holding babies or anything, but here it’s just different. These kids don’t care if I don’t have a fun toy for them to play with or if I don’t know what else to do besides spin them in circles until they’re so dizzy they fall over. They don’t want me to entertain them; they just want me to care about them, even if it’s only for a few hours a day. At home kids want to be entertained and I don’t even know how to entertain myself half of the time let alone someone else. But these kids think everything we do is great. They love singing crazy songs and playing tag games and listening to a story or just getting tickled for 5 minutes straight because that’s the only thing I know to do. I’ve learned that I actually love acting like a crazy person in front of a room full of kids because it makes them happy and it doesn’t matter that I feel like an idiot.
It’s also been such a blessing that this ministry has come during the month that I’m on a completely different team too because I honestly don’t think I would have “bought in” so much to this ministry if I was with my regular team. I love every single person on my team with my whole heart, but we all know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and if I was with them, I know that most of them could do a better job at leading a skit or singing a song or explaining a game and I would have let them do it without hesitation because these kids deserve the best and I know that’s not me in those situations. But because I’m with a new group, I think it’s easier for all of us to step out of our comfort zone more because we don’t really know what we’re all good at or comfortable with.
On a side note, I am still in need of a little over $4000 to be fully funded to finish the Race. If you would like to help me out, you can donate online by clicking the “Support Me” tab on the left of the screen.
God Bless!
