Ministry pretty much remains the same here in Africa and looks similar each week. Tuesday-Friday we are at our Care Points hanging out, loving, and making relationships with the kids who come consistently, and pouring into our Shepherd and Gogos, who spend every day at the care point taking care of the kids, making the food, and making sure things are running smoothly. Apart from that we also attend Swazi church on Sundays as part of our ministry. Because church can last anywhere from one hour to four hours, we have Saturdays and Mondays as our days off. We typically hang out around the team house, take public transportation to the closest grocery store, or sometimes a friend of one of the full-time missionaries here opens his home to Racers so we can use wifi, read some books from his library, or swim in his pool. There’s not a ton of variety here, so we’re all learning to find rest and enjoyment in the little things, like reading, playing card games, cooking meals, learning some of the musical instruments we have with us (a guitar, mandolin, cajon, & a few ukuleles), or writing.
David and Jenna are one of the AIM missionary families that live in our community of Nsoko which is about a 10 minute drive from our team house. They set up our Care Point ministries, spend a lot of time pouring into us, go to the grocery store +5 times a week for us, and are kind of like our base mentors who live on the field with us. They have two little boys (a 2-year-old and 5-month-old) that we also get to spend a lot of time playing with and occasionally babysitting.
One of the really incredible things David also does for us is a worship/writing meeting every Monday morning. Essentially it’s a time for us to practice and learn to be creative in our worship to the Lord, specifically in writing. We started as a group of about ~20, but we’ve split it into two groups, one is more focused on writing poems, spoken words, rewriting scripture, and simply just writing in itself. The second is specifically for intentional song writing. I’ve been going to the first group just to get better at writing in general, and because writing as a form of worship has been something I’ve really come to love on the Race. During our first month in Guatemala one of my squad leaders said that spending time with the Lord should look different each day, because if Jesus is really someone we spend enough time with as if he were a close friend, doing the same things over and over every morning (like praying and reading your Bible) gets a little boring. Writing has definitely been one of those things that I like to do with Jesus to keep our time together fresh, and it also acts as spiritual and mental discipline for my flesh. Writing can be difficult, especially creative writing. I used to be pretty good at it before I started college and had to write +10-page research papers. My whole writing style changed into a super technical, formal, and word-y format that I’m still trying to break out of. For me writing with and to the Lord is an expression of prayer, and just like “normal” praying, it’s easy to get stuck in the same type of format where we pray for the same things in the same ways using the same words. Similarly in my writing style I’m trying to write about different things in new ways with words that are fresh but don’t sound like a Thesaurus. In both my prayer life and writing I’m trying to break out of my cycles of routine, but it’s definitely not easy.
Today we had our worship meeting and were asked to rewrite the story of the woman at the well in Luke 4, and it was super hard. We were given 20 minutes and asked to have it rhyme so it would seem more like poem or piece of writing rather than just a summary of scripture. I spent the first 10 minutes trying to find a part or perspective of the passage that I cared enough about to write about that meant something to me, and it was really difficult. In the end I wrote about how the woman’s five husbands were her label even though the Bible doesn’t go into detail about them. Essentially my point behind it was that the woman is labeled as a sinner and adulteress because of her five husbands and the man she was currently living with but wasn’t married to, but even though we’re all sinners our sin isn’t our label. I wrote it in about ten minutes and haven’t finished it yet, but plan on posting it once it’s done so you’ll have a better idea of what I’m actually talking about.
For now I just wanted to share what the Lord has been teaching me about worship in writing since being in Swaziland. If you’ve never written poems or letters or spoken words or honestly anything for the Lord before, I think you should try it. Even if it just begins with rewriting a Psalm. It opens a new door of intimacy with the Lord, and as I said before it’s a great way to worship and spend time with him.
Let me know how it goes!
all the love,
e
