Swaziland. Here are some of the things that have happened in month 3.
This month I've been able to preach on a Sunday to a Swazi church. I've had the opportunity to do devotions with Swazi staff members and patients at the Emkuzeweni hospital near by. We've had the joy and privilege to meet pastor Florence who has been so encouraging, full of laughter and joy. She is on fire for the Lord and loves people with a passion that I fall in admiration of her. We've laid our hands on the sick and dying, had the chance to hold new borns, hear the laughter of small children, hear both young and old raise beautiful songs to Jesus. We did manual labor – weeding, putting up a fence, planting, hoeing, mudding huts at our location which is a community center for the surrounding village. We learned small but helpful words in Seswati such as hi, how are you, I am/we are well, and the word yebo which means yes, ok, great, doing well, good. It's probably the squad's favorite word. One of the most memorable things we got to do this month is go to a wedding. It wasn't a traditional Swazi wedding, but it was very lively, colorful, joyous, long, enjoyable and fun wedding. We were invited because of a young man named Welcome. He always came to our place after school to hang out (along with half the school that was down the street). Some of my teammates went to his house to visit and through that relationship that was built, we were all invited to the wedding. It was Welcome'sparents who renewed their vows. It was beautiful.
We had the chance to go to the Emkuzweni Primary School to help out. I occasionally went on Fridays to their assembly to help with teaching them English worship songs and to do childrens devotional through short stories. For the most part, I was at the hospital or doing manual labor. At the hospital, we would visit the wards and go meet the patients. Some could communicate with some broken English (most Swazi's know some English. It is taught in school and signs all over Swaziland are in English).
I was deeply impacted one day when we went into the wards. A mother, 22 years old is sitting on the bedside of her dying, malnourished baby. He was so sick that his little cheeks and eyes sunk in, showing very clearly his bone structure. My heart broke for the mother and child. I couldn't think of anything to do but to hug the mother, cry with her, hold her, grab the hand of this little baby, stoke his head all the while singing and praying over them. We got news a day or two later that this baby passed away. We didn't see the mother again.
We pray for healing, but sometimes it doesn't happen. It's all God's will. It's all God's timing. He is Lord over all. We don't always understand. I don't think we ever will, but I trust that He is good and that He always has purpose for the things that happen.
Another patient that we met was a man whose name is hard to remember, but had left an imprint on me. When I first met him, the first thing that I saw was his gigantic smile. He is physically and mentally disabled but I loved coming in to see him because he has a joy that is contagious. He loves laughing and even though I'm sure he didn't understand English, he loved hearing us read scripture. One day we decided to go into the wards to sing some Christmas carols. He was our first audience. We sang and he smiled, laughed and clapped his hands. We took some pictures with him – which he loved and prayed over him. He was my favorite.
There are a couple of more stories to tell, but of course, you can't really encapsulate all things in one blog or even several. Guess you're going to have to wait until I come back for those other stories. 😉
