Swaziland provided many opportunities to grow for the teams stationed in Nsoko. Team Manna ended Month One in Mozambique on a high of community, family, dance parties, love and passion to see what God had prepared for us next. We brainstormed ideas to deepen our experience such as a week-long electronics fast, morning devotionals and regular worship to listen and hear more of Gods voice. We. Were. Pumped.
Our entire squad then reconvened from our various ministry locations in Mozambique and drove across the border to Nelsprit, South Africa for 5 days of rest, toilets, malls, fresh fruit and vegetables, showers and space for processing. If you are ever in South Africa (you should make that happen soon) spend a few days at the Old Vic Travelers Inn! It’s a magical hostel that is home to friendly cats and an atrium filled with colorful birds, turtles and bunnies. The property provides dozens of cozy jungle corners to rest, read and recharge but also provided spa treatments, horseback riding and access to Kruger National Park.
We have a few more of these All-Squad Debriefs planned every few months throughout the year. Our squad leaders, our squad mentor from Georgia and our squad coaches from Greece fly in to listen, encourage, rebuild and refocus our squad for the months ahead. As an introvert, it provided a needed combination of intentional alone time, spiritual rest and community energy. As my team and I were praying about Month two and what waited for us in Swaziland, God said, ‘It’ll be hard; press in.’
Driving across the border from South Africa to Swaziland did not prepare us for the spiritual landscape we found once we arrived. The crossing reminded me of Norway and others of Ireland – curving roads cut into the sides of lush green mountains providing a constant view of breathtakingly beautiful landscape. After splitting with three teams who lived in the bigger city of Manzini this month, four teams headed to Nsoko. Physically beautiful but spiritually dark, we each began to experience a dry, desolate, slow drain of spiritual warfare. That first week was akin to living on top of a magnet that slowly drains your energy, positivity and mood.
For weeks, it was a fight to seek his face, to find alone time or quiet time while sharing a living space with 27 other people, to stay focused on why we are there instead of escaping or numbing the discomfort in unhealthy ways. Nsoko is considered ‘the bush’ in Africa. It is the forgotten part of a forgotten country and when we arrived it was blazing hot. The first week, one of the most repeated requests by the community was prayer for rain. They told us that an entire dry season, rainy season, and a second dry season has passed without rain, killing the agriculture and cattle their economy lives on. In this second rainy season, the country needed rain and we committed to praying for it with them and by ourselves.
One day we were helping in the preschool with adorable and rambunctious 5-year-olds and the most thankful teacher ever. The kids screamed numbers and colors and shapes at us and squirmed in their worm out uniforms and little plastic chairs. After lunch, the teacher asked us to watch the kids outside while she wrote letters to all the parents explaining that a cyclone was coming and the school would be closed for the next two days. After AID’s, lightening is the biggest killer in the country so any sign of a storm is taken very seriously. So the kids weren’t coming to school and all of us Americans sorta shrugged and thought ‘We’ll see’.
Let me explain our response. In Africa any plan you attempt to make is guaranteed to be ruined before you’ve even said it out loud. Every trip to the store that no longer carries the very thing you came for; every ATM run that ends in an eaten bank card; every laundry day prevented by missing buckets or full lines; every time you arrive at preschool to help and the teacher doesn’t show; every 5k walk to ministry whose gates are locked, every time the water or electricity unexpectedly shuts off right when you need it, or the toilets fill up the first day upon arrival and then you find scorpions in the outhouse or the outdoor bucket showers clog with mud, you can really only shrug and say ‘yeah… Africa’ because plans are changed or flat out destroyed multiple times a day! So yes, the idea of rain sounded amazing and yes, the locals were preparing for rain and we all attempted to be optimistic about it happening but ‘yeah…Africa.’
Once the kids went home from school, we were faced with our own sleeping options. Until that point, we had spent the night in our individual tents in the side yard of the compound near the playground. Out host and the locals were recommending that we did not sleep there that night due to the incoming storm, so here were the options we debated:
- Move our tents to the other side of the building that our host opened for us. This opposite area is under a tin roof but on top of gravel that had trash, sharp wire, glass shards, metal and other things that could rip a sleeping pad to shreds. Ruining your bed during month two means sleeping the next 9 months on hard ground.
- Take down our tents and stay in the bunkbed rooms where we were currently storing all our backpacks and stuff. The bunkbeds provided thin mattresses but zero protection from the bugs. And Oh My there were bugs, spiders, wasps, mosquitos, fleas, beetles, bedbugs, ants – they existed by the hundred and they BITE!
- Keep the tents where they were. Sure, we prayed for rain a few times and a few people were preparing for rain but ITS AFRICA and nothing happens the way it is supposed to. And anyway, our tents come with rainflies for exactly this reason.
As Emily and I attempted to rake glass shards out of the new gravel side, we examined our options in lengthy debate. I was suddenly reminded of a story I had been told a few days earlier about a prayer meeting in the United States. The meeting had been called due to a long drought and the entire community showed up to church to pray for rain. But of all the people who came to pray, there was only one man wearing fishing waders. He explained that he entered the meeting fully expecting God to send such rain that he would be wading through water on his way home.
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14
As that story rose to the front of my consciousness and conviction grew in my heart, I headed to my tent and began packing/dragging it across the yard. When people asked what I was doing I confidently called out “It’s going to rain! We prayed for rain so God’s bringing rain and I’m sleeping under the roof!” I set up my tent, prayed against punctures and a few other tents started popping up near me throughout the evening. That night, I felt the temperature start to drop outside and my prayer turned to praise for his goodness in whatever he would do.
Around 1am I woke up to the faint scent and sound of rain on the roof above me. I smiled and asked God for more, louder, stronger, and then fell back into a deep sleep. The next morning friends told me crazy stories of moving their tents, putting up rainfly’s, moving inside, or sleeping on the ground in the house because the storm had thundered down all night. For days, He sent a beautiful, clean, freeing, life-sustaining rain and more and more tents started popping up in my neighborhood.
Why is it that when we pray, we equate it with wishing really hard and still prepare for it to be ignored? Why do we create a Plan B ‘in case’ God doesn’t answer our Plan A? If he doesn’t grant us Plan A, that’s because he has his own Plan B in mind and it’s a ton better than whatever Plan B we’re clinging to in our false sense of logic, pride and safety. We can live and thrive each day in full communion with a living, listening, loving God who longs to give us the desires of our heart and to expand our narrow definition of life, strength and possibility!
I’m learning to pray bigger prayers, to pray impossible prayers and then move forward in full faith of their answer. As Paul talks about Abraham, “Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promises of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” Romans 4:20. God is waiting for you to give him the opportunity to surprise you, to trade in your optimism for faith and your pragmatism for persuasion. Swaziland continued to battle our spirits and drain our energy, it was overall a tough month for everyone in Nsoko which I may dive deeper into at a different time. But the beauty in the battle is seeing God show up to fight, love and display his glory in the rain, the lightening, the mountains, the wind and in the faces of everyone we met.
Thank you to everyone for your understanding as wifi has been nonexistent for weeks at a time and “yeah… Africa”. Please pray for our time here in this absolutely spectacular country of Madagascar!
Love you,
Hannah
