I’ve been in Swaziland for 11 days now and the routine is starting to set in. Not in a “I feel like we’ve already been here for months” way like some of my friends feel, but in a “we’ve been here for 11 days” way. My team was assigned to the Anchor Center. That just means that the Care Point we’re working at is right off of the base. I would definitely say this is a growth opportunity for my team since we all had a feeling we’d be here everyday as a challenge since we normally get stir-crazy being stuck in the same place all the time. So growth opportunity.
But we’re also excited because this Care Point includes some different kind of ministry, in addition to normal Care Point work. These ministry opportunities include: a pre-school, cooking dinner for the entire squad on the week days, working at the administrative office, helping in the garden, seeing people we know on off days, and I also get to help with inventory! All of these ministries hit me in different ways.
Helping at the pre-school during the day can be pretty tiring. But we realllly get to love on these kids. I mean when we walk up to the play ground they get so excited and they just want to be held and played with so bad. As the days have gone on it’s been really sweet to learn little things about them. But to be honest it’s hard. The younger ones English is few and their names are all new to my brain. Some names even have a tongue click in them and it will not come out of my mouth right no matter how hard I try. But they’re just soo happy to see us it reminds me that we do have the chance to bring love to all the people here.
Cooking is also great. The best part is spending time with the cook, Dolly. Since my team gets to work with her every weekday we already have a good bond. She helps us with names and greetings and is very fun to dance with. And I’ve always liked cooking (and watching food network) but my Mom can confirm I do not like cooking for everyone. But now it’s something I always look forward too!
This next part is weird but… since sophomore year, I’ve had this joke that I wanted to be an “international farmer”. It’s just something I made up in math class to justify that I didn’t need to know trigonometry…yeah. The idea was that I’d move to different countries and farm things and then do art about it. AND NOW I’ve gotten to help farm some onions in Swaziland. Who would’ve thought anything like that would actually happen? The admin side of things is good for me too since I’m planning on studying business in the future (Thank you DECA and FBLA!). This is a pretty generalized account of the work I’m doing but it’s fun how it’s important and significant to me in different ways. As I spend more time in ministry I’ll be able to write more details about my experiences.
One week to my 19th bday!
