This past month we’ve been staying at a place called Michael’s Children’s Village (MCV). It is home to 18 children who have been brought here because they have been rejected by their families. Each child is placed in one of three houses here at MCV. When a child moves into a house he or she becomes part of that family. Each house has two house parents who treat the child as if they were their very own and give the child a safe a family friendly environment to live in. There are kids of all ages here with the youngest being around 1.5 years and the oldest around 15 years old.
A lot of our time at MCV was spent getting to know and hanging out with the children. Some of it was organized and other times it was doing whatever and having fun.
We also did some projects around MCV. A couple days were spent working in the garden, one day we picked up trash on a piece of property that was previously used as a dump site, other days we cleaned and organized random closets and sheds.
When we weren’t at MCV, most of our time was spent in a city called Back Door. Those days were usually filled with either helping out at a pre-school or else doing home visits where we would walk around the city with one of the local pastors, praying for and encouraging the people we met along the way. There was also a feeding program that took place every afternoon. We were able to help out with this several times as well.
A few days were also spent putting together bicycles that had been donated by some people from Atlanta, GA. The bikes were donated so that pastors would be able to get around the city easier and faster allowing them to visit more people. Isaac (a member of my team, J159) worked at a bike shop on his summer breaks from school so it was really cool to see how God was able to use his experience to help with putting these bicycles together.
That sums up our month here at MCV. It was a great month of ministry and community living with my team and also team Fierce Pursuit. I think everyone will be a little sad to leave this place because we all enjoyed it and got attached to the kids as well. The day we fought the forest fire will also be a day we will never forget (read about the fire in a previous blog). There are so many good memories from this place and our contacts, Johnny and Bex were also great people to work with.
Now we have debrief for a couple days with the whole squad coming together for that. Then we’re all off to different places in Swaziland.
