5 days in. I love Swaziland. Thanks for reading my blog.
Don’t worry Mom! I’m kidding, I have much more to say than that. But for real, Swaziland is amazing. After only a few days I have grown to love the culture and the people so much more than I would have thought possible. We arrived to Swaziland Thursday night, and have spent the past few days resting from 78 hours of straight travel, getting introduced to how things work and what our ministry will be, and just hanging out with each other.
Although it may seem like it’s just been a few days of mostly nothing, God has already been working in some awesome ways. During training camp, we talked about what it means to listen to the voice of the Lord. This is something that does not come easily to me by any means because I often think that if I am not hearing the audible voice of God, then he is not speaking to me. However, this is something that I have been practicing, and while I was sitting on the side of the road in South Africa waiting for our driver to get another trailer because of a popped tire in the original one, I felt God clearly tell me that I needed to give up music for the first month of the race. If you know me, you know that I love music quite a lot. I listen to it all the time and it often gives me an escape from whatever I’m in. I know that this is going to be hard, but I’m 5 days in and going strong! Not listening to music has made it much easier to spend time in the Word rather than just space out from everything and listen to some Mumford and Sons (which is still objectively the best band of all time).
Along with fasting from music, I am also fasting from breakfast for the first two months of the race. God told my teammate Parker to fast from breakfast so that he could instead spend that time in the word, and as soon as Parker told me that, God prompted me to do the same, so now I can say goodbye to my normal morning PB&J and hello to the book of Romans.
First day of ministry starts tomorrow. Half the guys are going to the local prison to minister and build relationships with all the prisoners there, while the other half of the guys are going to stay back and pray for the prisoners and fruitful conversation. I think I am staying back to pray, and I’m very excited to see how God answers our prayers in the prison as we are praying them.
Also, Parker just reminded me of the dang rooster that crows every morning. I hate it very much. This morning it was 6:40 am and I knew I had to wake up by 6:50, so naturally I was going to get another 10 minutes of sleep, until the exact moment my head hit my pillow that stupid rooster crowed for the 10th time since I had been awoken. Just kidding, the rooster isn’t actually that bad, we just like to joke about it. But it actually is the worst.
Thanks for reading! I should be posting about this time every Monday.
