We are in Swaziland, a country that I had never even heard of until I signed up for the World Race. There are some startling statistics about the Kingdom of Swaziland. There are an incredible amount of people in this small country who are infected with HIV/AIDS. The population off Swaziland is literally dying off and is expected not not even exist by the year 2050, less than 40 years from now.
We are working with Adventures In Missions (the same organization that runs The World Race) and helping out at the Timbutini and Trulani "care points". Our contacts are an American family that has lived in Swaziland for a year and a half. They are overseeing the 30 care points that are in place around the Manzini area. A care point is a location that serves food on a daily basis to kids in the community. Churches and organizations in the U.S. support the care points and raise the money for the food that is served. We are hanging out at the care points a few days out of the week and loving the kids in the community. The kids are not in school yet as they are on Summer Vacation, so they come to the care point around 11:00AM and help make a big cauldron full of some sort of stew or soup and around 1:00PM lunch is served. There are typically 15-25 kids that show up rain or shine and partake in the big, nutritious lunch that is offered. We organize a Bible story to tell after lunch and hang around with the kids for a few hours. This is what our ministry looks like on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays we are visiting the Hospital in town to get to know the patients there and pray with them. We also have the opportunity to visit the Hope House in town and get to know the patients. The Hope House is probably my favorite part of ministry this month. It is a home where people can go who are very sick and get the care that they need to either healthily recover or to peacefully die. It is kind of like a hospice care center, except a majority of the patients get better and go home. Anyways, we visit the people who live there are get to know them. My first time there I visited a 29 year-old woman named Khosi who I believe is recovering from a stroke (there is a slight language barrier so we didn't really understand what she described was wrong with her). She has been in the Hope House for about 6 months and is well enough to be released at the end of January. We got to sit with her for an hour and talk to her, laugh with her, and show her God's love. It is a blessing to be able to take the time to sit with someone whom the world so easily overlooks.
I have also had the amazing opportunity to get to know a woman who lives locally around us. Her name is Adelaide. She is 39 years old and is not married and has no children. We met her while we were out walking around one day and she was tending to her family's 10 cows. She gave us a pile of mangoes about 2 minutes after we met her and then she walked with us for about an hour while making sure her cows weren't eating where they weren't supposed to. She was so genuinely happy to get to meet us that day. She invited us to come visit her at her house the following Friday, so we went and had another great time getting to know her. I think that this coming Friday we are going to help her milk her cows. I am very excited!
We're having a great time here. We are enjoying the last few weeks that we will spend in Africa before heading to Europe. We had a change in our route happen and we will be spending next month in ROMANIA!
