When I signed up for the Race in October 2012, V Squad was supposed to be going to Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan. Unfortunately, due to political unrest, etc., our route changed to Southern Africa rather than East Africa. The specific countries changed a few times, but we ended up going to South Africa for the month of February and Swaziland for the month of March – months six and seven in our Race order.
My team lived in Pretoria, South Africa, working with an organization called Beam Africa (www.beamafrica.org). Beam Africa was going through some changes with their primary service center, so we did odd jobs around the house and spent time with the Beam Africa staff, but we didn’t have many opportunities to meet people in the surrounding communities. Twice, we did get the chance to hang out with some of the kids in a nearby township called Mamelodi. It was so much fun to hang out, play, hear their stories, and just do kid stuff.
The next month, I lived in a house with fifteen other girls from my squad, just outside of Manzini, Swaziland. I spent the month helping teach preschool in one of the communities outside of the city center. There was a fulltime teacher there, so I mostly just played with the kids, supported the teacher, and helped out any way I could. We had 20 five-year-olds, each as crazy as the next. As badly-behaved and wild as the kids were, you could see just how desperately they longed to be loved, and I loved them so much I can’t even explain. These kids didn’t listen very well. They disobeyed. They disrespected. But it was like, the Lord just took away everything that was of me and filled me to the brim with his love for these crazy African children who are so precious to him.
My two months in Africa were wonderful and crazy and difficult and beautiful. I learned even more to continue to let go of the control I cling to and allow God to work in my life. It’s so amazing to see how much our squad has changed the past few months.
I will say that it’s been nice to be in a Western culture this past month in Northern Ireland. I’ll post about our experiences here in the United Kingdom soon!
