For month three in Swaziland, our teams had the opportunity to work alongside Adventures in Missions, the organization responsible for the World Race. AIM mobilizes missionaries to go all over the world, including some of their bases in other countries. AIM has several bases in Swaziland, but the headquarter of AIM Swaziland is in Manzini, which is where we were.
AIM has care points, which are basically feeding sites for children, spread out throughout Swaziland. Sponsored by churches and individuals in America, each care point serves at least one meal per day to about 250 children. Kids come from all around – from school, from their homes, over mountains – to eat at the care points.
Adventures in Missions employs a discipleship team to pour into the kids, and many of the “gogos,” or grandmothers, and ladies in the surrounding communities help cook the food. AIM has both city and rural care points.
Our job was basically to come alongside of what AIM has been doing here long-term at the care points and assist them in any and every way needed. We did everything from packing candy to praying for the sick.
Below I go into further detail about everything we’ve done over the past month.
Candy Packing
Our first day of ministry we spent the entire day packing almost 3,000 bags of candy, cookies, and chips to bring to the care points. This extra man-power was really helpful to AIM to get these bags knocked out for the Christmas parties.
Care Point Christmas Parties
Yes, that’s right. Christmas. In November. Schools are out of session in December, so the care points don’t operate during the holiday either. But AIM still wanted to do something special for the children at the rural care points for Christmas, so several days per week we went to various care points to help with the Christmas parties. Basically this meant we gave the ladies who cook some relief from chopping vegetables, played games with the kids, helped serve the meals, and handed out the candy bags and tons of cabbages.
I actually wrote another blog about this – read Cabbages for Christmas.
A lot of the time we also got to hear the children sing, and we saw several traditional Swazi dance shows from the children. It was such a treat!
City Care Points
The city care points operate a little bit differently than the rural care points. They actually have pre-school for the younger children at the care point and then the meals are served later in the afternoon to all of the children in the area. Our two teams separated between four different city care points that we also went to at least once or twice per week.
Two of squad mates and I were at Murray Camp care point, where our job was basically to assist the two pre-school teachers in their lessons and assist them with the students’ graduation.
My favorite part of this experience was getting to know my teacher. We really bonded and were able to encourage each other in our faith and ministry.
Another highlight was that we got to attend the graduation ceremony for the pre-schoolers. It was absolutely precious, and amazing to see how much the children learned during the year.
Hope House
Every day that we had a Christmas party, we spent our mornings at a local faith-based clinic called Hope House. We spent an hour there about three days per week, and had conversations with the patients, got to know them, and prayed for them.
Patients at Hope House ranged from those with HIV/AIDS to car accident victims who were paralyzed from the waist down.
God definitely used us all in a lot of ways there, but one of my highlights was having a really good conversation with one of the car accident victims I mentioned above. He is a Christian, but had been very discouraged recently and felt like he was alone in His situation. God used me and my team mates to speak truth into him and lift his spirits. I definitely saw a shift in His spirit between when we first met him and when we said goodbye.
We also intentionally ministered to the care givers who attend to the patients and made sure to pray for and get to know them as well. Again, God really used us to bless and encourage those care givers who constantly pour out to help at Hope House.
We did a few other things like hand-print cutting and Christmas card sorting. They don’t seem like a big deal, but I know they saved the employees at AIM a lot of time and really helped them focus on other aspects of their ministry.
I’m really thankful for all of the ways we got to serve in Swaziland this month, and I really enjoyed working with AIM Swaziland.
