Preface: This will be the first of several posts about my time in Swaziland. I haven’t had internet all month so the following blogs will come out fast, but know that they’ve been written throughout the month.
Africa is the one continent on my World Race route I’d never been to before (I had been to Europe and Asia before). Everyone I know who’s been to Africa before always catch what seems to be the “Africa bug”. It’s just something about this place that makes people fall in love with it making them itch to hop on the next plane back. I didn’t think I’d catch it, but it guess it is as contagious as people make it out to be.
Our squad arrived at El Shaddai Children’s Home late one night. It’d been a long couple of travel days coming from Europe and we were excited to arrive. Our buses took us STRAIGHT (and I do mean, straight. I thought the buses were going to give out and we’d all plummet in reverse down the mountain) up and through the mountains to a high peak where the children’s home sits and overlooks the vast mountain range and valleys below.
Though it was dark when we arrived, all the kids were up and waiting for us. When we stepped out of the buses they all came running toward us, super eager to help us with our stuff, play, and get to know us all! Having World Racers is nothing foreign to them. I was wear wearing my infamous Iron Maiden shirt, compliments of Jake, and every kid that approached me, the first thing they said was, “who’s that?” (pointing to the scary robot skeleton dude on the front). It was in the moment that the name “Gerald” came out of my mouth. Now when the kids see me they ask, “where’s Gerald?” hahaha.
These kids get a lot of love, and rightly so. The 60ish kids that live here range in age from 1 to 16 years (in addition to high schoolers, but they live off the mountain during the school year). About 75% of the population of Swaziland is infected by HIV/AIDS. Multiple wives, sexual promiscuity, and marijuana are huge problems that corrupt this kingdom. The children who live here are either orphaned or have been removed from troubled households. Many of the kids have a history of sexual abuse. They need a safe place to be loved, nurtured, educated, and discipled.
After getting grounded and introduced to the property, kids, and ministry, the day came to pick our “buddy”. Something new they’ve just recently started for when World Racers come is to assign each Racer to a specific child that is theirs for the month to help and love on. Everyday M-F we have “Buddy Time” from 3-5pm which is an awesome time where we get with our buddy one-on-one and help them with their homework and hang out. Followed by Chapel, which we get to lead.
People who know me well know I’m not a big kid person (at all). I was super excited to come here for this ministry though because past Racers have just had nothing but good things to say. But I was nervous with the thought of being around kids all the time and then having required “buddy time”. I really prayed about who God had for me and who I should choose as my buddy. I prayed that He would give me someone that I could genuinely love, who I could relate with, and who could relate with me.
He gave me Wendy.
Wendy is a beautiful 15 year old girl who has the brightest smile, loves God SO much, enjoys singing worship songs, reading, and talking (yup, this girl’s mine). It’s crazy how fast I fell in love with her. But God answered my prayers and I am just smitten with this lovely.
Although she’s failing school at the moment, I delight in getting to help her with her homework everyday. She’s extremely smart, diligent, and our homework sesh is never short of sing-a-long and prayer time.
Aside from buddy time, our ministry days are busy and awesome. There is so much going on at this place are there are areas of service for every gift, interest, and talent.
During the day everyone is kind of split up doing different things. There’s the baby house, preschool, manual labor (working in and expanding the huge garden they already have), clinic, organizing, kitchen crew, and other misc. I’ve spent my time between organizing thousands of donated books and clothing and doing manual labor. The organizing is tedious, but I love organizing and am good at it. Plus, we all get some good laughs sorting through the most ridiculous and sometimes outdated books. Work in the garden is physically hard, but incredibly rewarding getting to actually see the physical results and knowing that all the plants are going toward feeding everyone who lives here. Not to mention, the physicality of it all is good for my body! 😉
The days start when the sun rises just above the mountains and end when we exhaustedly lay our heads on the pillow no later than 9pm and pass out.
It’s “Manistry Month” for the dudes, meaning they’re completely separated from all of us women so they can get some much needed bro time and just have a month together doing ministry with each other. I mean, the 8 guys have been living amongst 34 women for the past 9 months. They’ve needed this month.
And for all of us women, we also get our special time together to pour into and encourage each other. So it’s super different this month being with the whole squad and being taken out of our typical teams, but it’s been cool. Every night all the girls eat a delicious dinner together and then have some sort of worship and devotional time. This is a super unique a criticial time for us all as the end of our journey together is literally a month away. So hard to believe. But the Race is not over, and THE RACE doesn’t end after the “World”. We’re just trying to soak in these last amazing moments together atop this mountain.
There is nothing like the African night sky. Nothing compares to the picturesque view of the mountains that await just outside my window and at every turn. The sun sets in just the right spot every evening at 5:30pm between 2 mountain ridges. The kids are always around, but they’re never bothersome. The children are happy, joyful, content, and so beautiful. God made a ballin’ place up here on this mountain called El Shaddai.
It’s given me the bug.
