Welcome to Malealea Valley, Lesotho: one of my all-time favorite places on this earth 🙂 There’s a link at the end of this blog to a video I made to capture everything we did this month. It was so much fun for me to make and makes me so happy everytime I watch it, so I hope you enjoy it as well 🙂
This month was definitely my favorite so far. January was full of adventure, love, and lots of new friends. Our daily ministry consisted of a 1-2 hour hike every morning to the different villages in Malealea Valley. We met with all of the elderly people in each village, asking them questions to make sure they’re healthy and safe, and asking if there are any needs that they have. With all of the information that we gathered, I made a spreadsheet (the biggest spreadsheet you could ever imagine) to give to the church so that the members of the church can go out to these villages and fulfill the needs of the elderly and just check on them often to be sure they’re taken care of. It was such a cool experience to hear the stories of all these people and be blessed by their kindness. We would just show up outside their homes and without even questioning why we were there, they would welcome us into their homes and offer us chairs and sometimes even meals. They loved us like Jesus.
Our afternoon ministry was some good ‘ole manual labor. Half of us worked on making a sidewalk outside of the preschool for the kiddos to ride their bikes on, while the other half worked on the cob house that our host family was building. Their goal is to build a whole eco-village, and we had the privilege of helping build the very first house. 🙂 The whole house is made out of rock, cement, straw, and clay. We had so much fun mixing the clay with our feet and slapping it onto the rocks. We may or may not have started a mud fight in the process…
I’ve also included some clips of our adventure days in the video as well; I think my favorite adventure days of the race so far happened here in Malealea. One day we hiked what we were told would be a total of 5 km, but actually ended up being 5 miles EACH WAY, to a beautiful waterfall where we got to hangout and swim (yes, the trek was worth it). Another day we went horseback riding through some questionable terrain to some caves where we got to see some ancient paintings. And lastly we hiked/rock climbed to some rock pools where we had a blast sliding down and jumping off of the rocks. Needless to say, I got my adventure fix this month.
Here’s the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtPIk5iHUmI
ENJOY!
All my love,
Hannah
