My time in Africa has been a challenging one, one with a lot of ups and downs. Times of hardships and just being annoyed with everyone on my squad. Questioning God (which is never fun) and questioning myself.
We started Africa up in the mountains of Swaziland at this Ministry site named El Shaddai complete with a breathtaking view. I was paired with a buddy named Verner and honestly he wanted nothing to do with me. Every attempt I made to talk with him just seemed pointless, most of the time he would just walk away from me trying to ignore me. It seemed the only way I could hang out with him was through baking pancakes with my team once a week. When the time came for me to leave El Shaddai I can honestly say I was ready too. I was ready for a new style of ministry and a new place to live in Africa.
So my squad boarded another bus and we all drove down to Manzini the capital city of Swaziland and it was for a lack of words; pathetic. The city was so simple and small it reminded me of back home. The city had two small malls in it and some clothing stores and a market, and the very popular KFC. We stayed at an office that AIM has just next to the city that had bunk beds and a kitchen we could use. Our ministry that month was Hospital ministry, it wasn’t too bad. I met this cool man named Dave, he was originally from Scotland. He had so many great stories he told my teammates and I. It was fun just to spend time with him and he appreciated us being there.
February came and the guys were invited back to El Shaddai for two weeks of Manistry. Manistry meaning what it sounds like man-ministry, we all headed back up and I didn’t really want to… like at all. I didn’t want to be paired with a buddy for the two weeks I returned, and I wasn’t. Instead this time there was no buddy system because there were only ten guys and fifty kids. For the first week in the morning we would walk out to the massive corn field that last’s the kids at El Shaddai around eight months! Then we would pull out all of the weeds around each crop and after a week of working with ten guys in the field we just got maybe an eighth of the way done. The second week was a little different, a group of seven contractors from the US came. They started doing a ton of construction work to help complete the Pavilion, we started helping them right away. We moved around 500 cinderblocks and helped move dirt and planks of wood around, we also carried many bunk-beds into the rooms for future worldracers and volunteers to sleep in ( your welcome). Manistry has been a great time for us guys to grow and come closer together and also be able to share our testimonies with each other. Manistry also had soccer and lots of it, we would play Americans vs. Swazi’s sometimes day after day. I’m not the best with soccer but I’d like to think that I got better ( I must of). Manistry in all was exactly what I needed, a great group of guys seeking after Christ.
Now It is almost time to leave El Shaddai and I can say that I will be more sad this time to leave this mountaintop home. But I am excited to see where God is taking me in Nicaragua. It is crazy to look back and to realize that I have already gone through two thirds of this trip. I have been growing far more than I could have imagined in Christ and learning so so much.
