Greetings from Maseru, Lesotho! Lesotho (leh-SOO-too) is a country land-locked in South Africa; go ahead and look it up on a map! Maseru is the capital of Lesotho. It’s not what I expected from Lesotho. There’s not as many mountains as I thought there would be, it isn’t cold like we were told to expect, and there is a Western mall within walking distance. I’ve been told it looks a lot like Texas or Arizona.
This month, the Wild Fires are living and serving at an orphanage called Tholoana ea Lerato, which means “Seed of Love.” This home exists to care for, support, and protect vulnerable, orphaned, and HIV-affected children. There are 28 beautiful, sweet, fun children ages 2-16 living here. We have the complete joy and honor to be their friends, playmates, and older sisters this month! We have been here for one week and so far we have played soccer, climbed on the playground, colored, painted nails, had a dance party, learned Sesotho (seh-SOO-too), and formed relationships.
My favorite thing so far has been building relationships with these kids. Their language is really different from English (it has so many different sounds in it and my speech-language pathology brain is having so much fun) and is hard for us to learn, but I’ve been writing down their names and how to pronounce them (shout out to the international phonetic alphabet) because we so long to know their names. The past couple days I’ve been sitting down with the older girls, who were skeptical of us when we first arrived, and learning Sesotho from them and in turn teaching some new English words. These exchanges have really opened them up to us, and we are seeing the fruit of intentionality with them – thank the Lord! I can’t wait for when they fully open up to us and we can talk with them about their lives and their faith.
One of the girls, Melehloa (muh-lay-hwuh), sat with me for hours asking me about words she learned from an English dictionary. She is so smart and she loves to learn. Yesterday she brought out one of her notebooks from school and asked me to help her with trigonometry and percentages! Haha! Studying for the GRE wasn’t wasted as a missionary! 😉 Melehloa is one of the oldest girls here and the other girls look up to her, so her relationship with me has made the other girls open up to us, too.
Eeeee! I wish I could share their pictures and names with you!! But I don’t have any pictures and just their names wouldn’t do them justice! They are so special. I’ll try to get a post about each of them up this month, because they so deserve to be known.
The kids here all have stories. We don’t know them yet, but we know that these kids are here because home isn’t safe for them or they don’t have a home or family. Our goal this month is to love these kids and show them that they are valuable and important.
These children are so content with little, understand sharing, care for one another, and have the most infectious laughs. I want to be outside with them, playing all day. I want to love them so so well. I want them to know Jesus and His love. I want them to know Him as their friend, protector, provider, and comforter. As much as I want these kids to know and love me, I need to remember that I leave in two weeks, but a relationship with Jesus will change their lives forever.
Pray for us as we love these kids and bring the Kingdom to Tholoana ea Lerato. Pray against the heavy spiritual oppression here in Lesotho and the spiritual strongholds on the lives of these children. Pray for provision for the orphanage; money is tight and though these kids are content with little, they deserve so so much more.
Pray for us, the Wild Fires, as we press hard into what it looks like for us to be the Body of Christ, Christ-centered not self-centered, even though we are changing teams next month. Pray for us as we grieve the end of this team and prepare with expectationless expectancy for our new teams.
To God be the glory forever!
Jess
