This past month in Swaziland has been amazing. We started the month off with the Parent Vision Trip in Manzini, where about 15 of us racers had our parents come out to meet us for a week of them getting a tiny taste of what the World Race has been for us in 8 month prior. I love my parents so I obviously had an incredible time with them but it was a lot harder than what I thought it would have been. For the week of PVT the racers who had parents come basically ‘left the race’ for almost a week. We were doing something completely out of the ordinary from what we’d been used to for so long, all the while being in the presence of our parents who we hadn’t seen in so long; then at the end of the week we jumped back into regular world race life just as quickly as we had left it. Nonetheless, it was worth every moment and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
After leaving Manzini about 10 of us traveled to our ministry location for the rest of the month which was at an orphanage on a mountain right outside of Mbabane known as El Shaddai. I honestly wasn’t really excited about it, I like kids but I’m usually better with adults, so I stayed skeptical.
We arrived at the orphanage and I immediately fell in love with the view God gave us for the month. I could literally walk outside my door and be looking down into a valley with a winding river in the middle of it, all the while seeing the mountain ranges on all sides of us. And then the girls from my team who had already been on the mountain for a week told us what our ministry was. Teaching. I was not excited for this and for the first week had a crappy attitude about it. This would be the 6th month on the race that I would be teaching and I was over it. I am not a professional primary school teacher, I have no idea what I’m doing, other teams were working in the garden, why couldn’t I just work in the garden? Why did I have to be one of the ones to teach?
I asked the Lord about it; did I have to keep teaching? He told me to keep going, to keep teaching, to invest, he promised he’d make it worth my while. And so I did.
About half way through my second week teaching I found myself not wanting to even think about leaving. Our fourth grade class had grown to love us and we had grown to love then and to teach them. My last day of school there I almost cried because I realized I would miss all of my students so much as well as the entire place.
God truly blessed us at El Shaddai this month and I am so glad to have had that entire experience.
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