Going into Swaziland, there was this little part of me extraordinarily excited not just about coming back to Africa, but going to a place I had never been before, one that would change even my perspective on the Africa I know…in a more personal way. With our squad divided into three different locations in Swaziland, my team was blessed to be in a little big village called Ezindwendweni, out in the bush. It was a very cool experience of going back to the basics, no electricity and all the distractions that can come with that, no good source of clean water and basically just learning to live a simpler life.
Our ministry here was relatively straight forward, build relationships and point our new community to Christ. We did a lot of this through our conversations, through skits and bible teachings, singing songs with the kinds, sharing life bringing stories from the bible, like those of Daniel being spared in the Lions den, and of course the great story of David knocking down the giant Goliath. With some others, we taught on the sin and consequence and what it means to rest and be still before God and seek His face…amongst other things.
We got great opportunities to visit the local junior and high schools and share our lives and God’s passion for them, had home visitations, where we were able to share a word and just soak them in prayer as well as pass out personal invitations to women, children, youth and other type events held at the small church compound we called home.
It was so amazing to see how open and interested the community was in building relationships and learning about the outside world. A lot of things were fascinating to our new friends, camera’s(still fascinating to me), head lamps, even my guitar. Oh yes, the guitar was a BIG hit, and I don’t know if it was my charms…probably just the guitar, but it made me close to a local celebrity. But really when you think that this village had only really began to get a good amount of external influence in the last 15 years, it kinda puts things into perspective. What were they doing in the early 90’s and the 80’s and even the 70’s? What did life look like. There are still a good amount of homesteads (a group of small huts usually belonging to a family head, usually representing one family that often includes immediate family and their individual partners and kids) that can only be reached by walking. The dirt roads for cars, will only take you so far.
Anyway, it was a good time of just loving on them, and sharing God’s love with them. I even got the go ahead to give up my guitar, with an awesome opportunity to bless another. This kid Tse Tse (his Swazi name and pretty hard to pronounce, even for an African like myself) completely fell in love with the guitar and would play it every second he could. He had made his own version of a guitar with some wood, an aluminum type drum for the body and carved woods for the pegs and other nifty ideas to get it to play some type of a tune. It was pretty impressive, and I’m sorry I don’t quite have a picture of it right now…I’m sure I have one somewhere, I’ll have to dig it up. But anyway as time went on, I just felt it would be an awesome blessing for him. It was always very kool to sit and see him play some very aw
esome African songs on my guitar that he had learned from his fabricated guitar. He had no clue what a chord was or the progressions for that matter of fact, his finger just randomly switched up onto different strings and made sweet music. I presented him with the guitar on my last day there, and he was so excited, he kept playing for hours.
Swazi was an awesome country to be in, beautiful landscape and even more beautiful people, with a lot in area
s like Ezindwendweni that lack so muc
h of a lot that is so basic to us. You see the lack of rain seemed to be a major complaint for not being able to grow crops, plough, cattle dying and more. It made me t
hink of what a small irrigation type project would do for a community like this.
Here’s a caption of my thought….provid
ing water sources(wells, boreholes) strategically placed, with the necessary water transmission lines(tubing) to farms, providing water as needed, and not completely having to rely on rain. But with that incorporating a micro loan aspect to the project where the farmers can invest in the infrastructure themselves to get it setup, possibly being provided by a little more fortunate individuals like you. From the profits of the sale of their harvest, they can begin to repay the micro-loans. Still have a good amount to think through, but just a general caption of the idea. I can really see it being a real blessing to the community.
We are currently heading out to Mozambique for a month, yep, camping the whole time, more fun :). Keep us in prayer, and my team as well. There has been a few more changes, we have a new team leader change yet again, and very unfortunately, lost one teammate, asked to leave the race. I’ll have to share in another blog. Love you guys, and appreciate the constant support.
