“I feel like I am bigger!
I was feeling I was alone in my problems.
But I know God is with me.
I am very thankful what I hear today.”
That’s what one of our Aunties said after the first day of our Beauty for Ashes Women’s Retreat this past weekend. That’s the mission of this whole Kingdom Journeys adventure: helping women know that God is with them and He is bigger than everything we face.
We’ve been here in Swaziland at the El Shaddai Orphanage for almost 2 weeks now.
And it’s SUCH a beautiful place! Smack on top of a mountain, in the middle of the untouched Swazi countryside.
Over the course of our team hike in South Africa, we felt led to come up with a team name — our Trail Guide, who quickly became ‘Uncle Mark,’ thought we should be named after the rare Herrikwago Trail mountain butterfly that lands only on red flowers during certain times of the year, a butterfly we were blessed to see a few times over the course of our time on the trail– The Mountain Beauty. So, KJ Women’s Team One can hereby be referred to as The Mountain Beauties 🙂
It’s appropriate that our first month of ministry would be on the top of a mountain in Swaziland.
Not only is the rugged natural beauty of this place incredible, we also arrived at an incredibly interesting time for El Shaddhai, their leadership, and the women of the area.
You see, when we arrived there was a huge drama going on between the founder of El Shaddhai and the Swazi education authorities — a drama that started with a girl’s club student group and the male head teacher who largely disapproved of it.
Women empowerment is NOT something Swazi men are a fan of. And so when the GLOW Club (Girls Leading Our World) was started by a local Peace Corps Volunteer at the school here at El Shaddhai, the male head teacher was very against it.
The purpose of the GLOW club was to help young Swazi girls establish self confidence and awareness of what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior (what is sexual/physical/verbal abuse and what’s not). The head teacher both forbid the young Swazi girls from attending GLOW and if they did attend the club meetings, he would have them victimized by the male teachers (yelled at, made fun of, punished).
Finally, he told the female students that if they attend — they would be kicked out of school.
The founder here at El Shaddai has an adopted daughter, named Gift — age 10.
One Wednesday after school, when it was time for GLOW Club, little Gift acted as a bit of an activist announcing that she would not quit GLOW and leading a few of her classmates to remain in the club…right in front of the disapproving Head Teacher and his posse of misogynistic male teachers.
The following day at school, Gift was severely beaten. Evidently a teacher had 2 bigger boys hold her down, while she was beat with a 2×4.
The El Shaddai founder immediately pulled her kids out of this school — her OWN school that she started 10 years before. You see, 5 years ago she allowed the government to staff the school and has since lost control of the school.
She has been back and forth with education authorities, the Swazi government, and the local police, trying to get this head teacher fired and get the school back to being a Missions School. It has NOT been easy.
Last week, she locked the school — with a padlock and chain. Locking up her school got the attention of the necessary authorities. The drama has now subsided and she wades knee deep in the government paper work necessary to get the Head Teacher and the other aggressive male teachers fired. She’s got her hands full.
In the mean time, my Kingdom Journeys Team is here to do Beauty for Ashes Retreats with the nannies of the orphanage (The ‘Aunties’).
It’s interesting because, at first glance, it’s like:
Why are you at an orphanage to do women’s ministry?
Shouldn’t you be doing work with kids if you are at an orphanage?
But it’s been pretty clear to us since Day 1 that God has us here for a specific reason and exactly for such a time as this. My team has a heart for pouring into women and God placed us at an organization where the entire leadership team and staff is ALL women. It’s a female-led missions base in the middle of a country that scowls at female empowerment.
Yes, God has us here specifically to pour into the El Shaddhai staff, leadership, and nannies. And it’s just so interesting that God had us come here NOW – in the midst of this drama started by a girls empowerment club!
NOT a coincidence! 😉
Oh, and the lodge in town where we are hosting our Retreats: also ALL FEMALE RUN.
Pretty cool!
And here’s just another confirmation:
On the second night we were here, Rachel -our contact here at El Shaddhai, said she woke up in the middle of the night and felt a darkness creeping up on her — not an uncommon occurrence in a place with as much spiritual darkness & warfare as what’s going on here in Swaziland.
But before she could get frightened, it stopped. It immediately melted away when she noticed angels sitting around her room. Angels. Just sitting around her room.
The angels said to her, ‘We are praying for you.’
Rachel told us she felt like we were those angels.
(I get chills every time I read that.) Cause you know what? We HAVE been praying for her and for the leadership here non stop since we arrived!
And I THANK all of YOU that have been praying for us, as well!
Your prayers are powerful and effective and we feel their covering. Really.
Side Note on Prayer: If you would like to serve as a Retreat Prayer Partner, please email me!
I have an email list of Prayer Partners for each retreat and I email them throughout the day while we are at the Retreat with Prayer Requests & with Answers to Prayers! If you want to be on the email list for this weekend’s retreat, please email me with Subject Line “Prayer Partner” to [email protected]
We have officially completed our first B4A (Beauty for Ashes) Retreat over Valentine’s Day Weekend and we are now gearing up for our 2nd one this weekend!
The team is doing SO great and so are the Aunties who attended our 1st retreat. The word of mouth from retreat 1 was SO good that we have an additional 3 staff members who will be joining us this upcoming weekend 🙂
3 of the female teachers at the El Shaddai school were so jazzed by what the Aunties were telling them that now they want in.
We are thrilled.
It’s really been so cool to be a part of what God is doing here.
One thing that we kept saying over the past few months as we were planning this whole Kingdom Journeys adventure and deciding where to go was:
“we just want to go where God is lighting fires and just fan the flame.”
When we first got here Rachel told us, “So many of these Aunties have embers glowing inside of them. They know what they are doing with these kids is important. They know that they are investing in future leaders of this country. I think they know that their work could potentially change the future of Swaziland, but it’s like those glowing embers just need a spark. I know that if only we could get a spark to those embers, they’d catch fire.”
Another confirmation? 😉
I believe God IS lighting a fire here. And I am SO excited to be a part of fanning the flame.
Where is God lighting fires around you?
What would it take for you to stop asking God to get behind what you are doing, and start asking Him what He is doing and get behind that?
It’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes (I didn’t expect for my work in ministry entrepreneurship to lead me to living at an orphanage on top of a mountain 1.5 hours from the nearest city), but we need to realize that there’s a difference in asking God to bless our work and asking Him what He is working on. If we can figure out what God is working on, we KNOW that is already blessed!
What fires is God lighting around you?
And how can you fan the flames?
One last side note: I am still support raising to cover the costs of this trip!
If donating to this mission & my ministry was something you had on your heart, but just haven’t remembered to do it yet, that’s OK! It’s not too late 🙂
Whether it’s a monthly commitment or a one-time gift, your donation means a lot and I know that God multiplies EVERYTHING we give to his work. So please take a moment now to give! He’ll give it back to you ten-fold 🙂 Click Here to Support Me! 🙂
