Sawubona!
Two weeks ago I made it to Swazi after 75hours of travel… An exhausting couple of days but I’m so happy to finally be here. Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the entire world. This can leave many children as orphans and/or uncared for.
For ministry, each team has their own “Care Point”. This is a place where kids of all ages come from miles away to get a guaranteed meal for the day. My team’s Care Point is actually on the compound where we are all staying. I love that it’s a 2minute walk because all the kids that come are the same kids we see around the village and at church. In the morning, our Care Point Leader usually has an odd job for us. Things like pulling weeds, moving bricks, redoing a shade covering, cleaning the preschool and anything in-between! We look pretty comical doing manual labor in long skirts haha. Then the kids get out of school for the morning and we play with them until they get their meal. Loving on the kids and playing with them is the majority of our job each day. This can seem trivial but some of these kids have never been held before or shown compassion. It’s such an honor to just be their friend. To spin them and help them hang on the monkey bars and hug them tight when we say goodbye. Showing them that they are worth loving and they deserve to be treated with kindness and gentleness, it’s a big deal.
In addition to playing with the children we also help cook and serve the meal ( usually around 60 kids each day, over thousands of kids between all the care points), teach English at the preschool, do house visits or go to the local community to evangelize.
My team also helps cook dinner for the entire group of 50 people that we are here with. At 2pm, three of us head in from the Care Point and help Dolly, a local woman, cook dinner. It’s fun problem solving to make enjoyable meals with limited kitchen essentials and weird African groceries.
The other half of my ministry is to disciple, encourage and love on my team of 8 girls. I do ministry alongside them and support them in any way I can. We meet nightly to talk about the Lord, what he’s teaching us, how to study the Bible, or to worship. I love getting to walk this journey with these girls. Helping pour into them, lead them, encourage them and ultimately love on them how Jesus would. It’s been really cool to see how sharing my past experiences has helped them not make the same mistakes I did last year.
It’s weird how normal this lifestyle seems. The power goes out, sometimes the shower water shuts off too. There are ants EVERYWHERE. We hand-wash all our clothes and hang them to dry on our fence. The red African dirt is everywhere, even after you just swept. Your feet are always dirty. We eat a lot of bread. We catch local transportation that definitely shouldn’t hold all of us but we make it work. There isn’t a bus schedule, sometimes you wait 5 minutes and sometimes one doesn’t show up when you’ve been sitting there for an hour. The kitchen is always a lake because the pipe leaks. Church lasts at least 3 hours. Goats roam around our house. We burn all of our trash because Swazi doesn’t have a trash system. Kids get snot and spit on you. None of it seems out of the ordinary. Just another day in Africa haha.
I’m about halfway funded to continue leading here for 3 months. Please be praying for me as I continue fundraising (with little WiFi access). Also be praying if you could financially support me spread the love of Jesus. Even $1 helps! It would mean the world to me to get to continue serving here.
Thank you to everyone who is praying for me, who bought a fundraising shirt or has already financially supported me. Your help means so incredibly much to me and I’m so thankful!
Sending my love from Swaziland,
Grace
