We spent a week in Nelspruit, South Africa at Old Vics Travellers Inn it was beautiful it backed up to a beautiful mountain and what looked like a rain forest. We got to sleep in beds and shower in actual showers with running hot water. We brushed our teeth in the sinks and drank the tap water. The power only went out twice due to storms and the water only stopped working once because of a pipe that burst in our neighborhood. It was during this time that I realized all the conveniences that people live without all over the world. When in Mozambique we showered with buckets, we brushed our teeth with bottled water, flushed the toilets with buckets and the power went out at least a couple of times a day. Yet at no time while in Mozambique was I anything but grateful for the things I had. I was happy to be sleeping inside, grateful for the fan we had most nights, grateful for bottled water to drink, grateful to be a 15 minute walk granted in 100+ degree weather from the grocery store and internet, grateful for potato samosas and Coca-Cola Light.
“ I was born and raised in the ghetto” was the song playing as I got off the bus on the side of a hill in Nelspruit, South Africa. Our bus wouldn’t make it up the hill so as we danced around and waited for the other bus to come get us before the storm started I was struck by: how often do these things happen in America without a quick fix or not at all? I don’t remember the last time bus travel was a big part of my life in California or even in Oklahoma. My life at home is comfortable if not luxurious, life is easy I’m always sleeping inside I can always eat three meals a day even at a restaurant if I want, I drive the places I want to go in a car that I own. The reality that my comfort is not worth others salvation has stuck with me since October, it is true my comfort is not worth children at El Shaddai knowing how much God loves and cares for them. I’m realizing more and more each day what it means to live this. The children of El Shaddai break my heart and when I realize that I will leave them at the end of next week my heart breaks even more. If this is what ministry is supposed to be like every month then 11 months won’t be hard. But why am I here. I know God brought me to Swaziland to continue breaking down walls (mine) and to open my heart to children and my squadmates but why am I here for them. What impact am I supposed to make on their lives? I realized today as I hugged some of my favorite children goodbye maybe I was just here to impact there lives maybe it was nothing specific maybe I can’t change the world but I can change their world. They can know that someone left there life at home in the United States to come and spend time with them, to play with them, to listen to them, to pray with them, and to help them with their homework because God called me to be there with them.
