Last month, I had the privilege to live with the other 11 men on my squad in Lesotho for a month that will forever be dubbed “MANistry month”. Lots of memories were made in the mountain village of Mokhotlong, where we spent the 27 days we stayed in Lesotho.
Our MANistry month did not have a good start. It was originally a 15 hour van ride to where we were staying. However, our drivers did not have passports, and we had no way to cross the border. So it took us 3 hours to find an alternate means of transportation. We ended up taking a 6 hour detour to a more Northern border crossing. From there, our hosts brother picked us up in a tiny 12 passenger van, and we all crammed in, with our belongings packed into the trailer behind us. From the border, it was another 6 hour drive to Mokhotlong. I timed our trip, and it ended up taking over 28 hours to get to where we were staying from Cape Town.
Upon our arrival in Mokhotlong, we pulled up to the mission house we would be staying in. The best word to describe it would be quaint. All of the guys stayed in 3 separate rooms in one building, each having two bunkbeds. The rooms were cozy, all built out of concrete. There was no running water in Lesotho due to the draught, so there was only the worlds largest container of water (probably 300 gallons) to wash yourself with and use the bathroom. For the first week, however, most of the guys only used the outhouses for the bathroom. Showers were freezing cold bucket showers. The showers were not that bad, especially if you showered after working in the hot sun all day.
Lesotho is an interesting place. The entire country is situated in the mountains, so it gets quite chilly during the night (which is a nice change to sweating in my sleep for 4 months straight). Our ministry was pretty different too. The first day, we were told to tear down a wall in an unfinished building to make more space. So we started taking off the top bricks of the wall, when we came up with the idea to push the wall over. A couple of the men started picking at the corners and the bottom to weaken the support of the wall, and eventually we just pushed it over. On Mondays and Thursdays some of our group would go and pray over people at a HIV clinic, as well as serve them lunch. Every Wednesday one of the teams would go and preach and sing worship songs at the local prison.
There is one story from prison ministry that I would like to share. Our first trip to the prison was a very new experience for me. We arrived at the prison, and were told one of us would give a message, and that we would need to prepare 2 songs. Diego stepped up to preach, and Randy led worship. Worship was fun, and Maddux and Matt gave their testimonies. The highlight of this day was Diego’s sermon. He started off with saying “I am Nineveh. But God.” This made no sense at first, but then Diego explained. He talked about the city of Ninevah, and how they had strayed from God and lived in sin. He connected this to our own lives, saying we were all like the city of Nineveh once, stuck in darkness. But Christ showed him the way out, and asked if there were any men that wanted to be saved. 17 men ended up stepping forward and asked to be prayed over and accept Christ. I had the opportunity to pray over a couple of men, and it was an overwhelming experience.
Another cool ministry experience was one Thursday when we hadn’t had ministry all week due to our contact being unavailable, so we decided to have a worship service in the middle of a crowd. We walked down to the post office, where about a hundred people gathered to get their passports renewed for work. David, Randy and Parker all led worship, while Rye, Lucas, Maddux, Matt and Diego all gave mini sermons, all varying in their nature, but all lead by the Spirit. It was so cool to see everyone come together and spread the Word of God in new and exciting ways.
Our final week and a half of ministry was very interesting. We started off by digging 6 foot trenches for foundation from scratch. This was very grueling work, and I ended up hitting several large boulders too large to move while picking at the ground. After two days, some of us split off to go paint the school of the church that our pastor worked at. The principal gave us full creative ability to paint this wall. Our idea of what we were going to paint changed daily. Diego and I were the main painters on our wall, while Mike, Lucas and Rye worked on the other wall. The first day all we did was paint the wall a grey color to make it easier to paint on concrete bricks. The second day, the principal asked us to write a verse, Philippians 4:13 (the school’s bible verse) on our wall. After we finished painting the verse, Diego got the idea to paint a globe next to the verse, since we had a lot of green and blue paint. But, we wanted to do something CRAZY, so we painted the globe with our hands. It was very hard to make the paint stick with our hands, so I smeared it with my palms most of the time. After we had almost finished, Diego kicked the bucket of blue paint and it spilled down eh wall below the globe in a huge blob. Instead of freaking out, Diego suggested we make it a dripping globe, and we proceeded to spill more paint and splatter paint the underside of the globe. The next day Jack painted a bible on the other side of the verse, as Diego and I got started on the school logo , directly above the verse. The school logo was an oval with the sunrise over the mountains, and underneath was the schools name: Harvesters Hillock Christian School. The oval did not turn out the greatest, but Diego made a beautiful interpretation of the sunrise. We also changed the mountains, to make it look like a river was flowing through it, and contrasted the grey and blue at the top leading to the sun. I ended up writing the name of the school, but struggled. The spacing was almost impossible to make even, and I had to redo the words twice. The third time I marked out with tape where every letter would go. It took 3 hours, but I finished the logo and it looked pretty cool.
In retrospect, MANistry was a very fun month for me. Ministry wise it was my favorite so far on the race. But the relationships I build with the guys is something I will cherish for the rest of my life. One thing I will not miss, however, was the food. Every day, we either had corn meal and bean sauce, steamed rice and bean sauce, or mashed potatoes with bean sauce, and the occasional lamb. To get more American food, some of the guys and I would go tot he hotel 20 minutes away to get some mediocre pizza. But, after eating the same food everyday, this pizza was heaven. I probably went to get pizza 7 or 8 times while in Lesotho.
One final memory I want to talk about was while we were waiting to go to the clinic. We were waiting in the church, and some of the guys went up to use the church’s instruments. They had two keyboards, a drum set, a bass, and 5 microphones. Jack went up and was playing drums. After a little bit, Randy went up to play bass. They decided to try and play “Dance, Dance” by Fall Out Boy, and Maddux came up to sing. After conversing, the men of Gap D got their own little Fall Out Boy concert in Lesotho.
Now for a little advertisement, the men of Gap D also made a Calendar for the year of 2017. Please comment me or message me on Facebook if you would like one. Thank you for reading.
