We arrived at our base in Nsoko, Swaziland at midnight just one week ago. As soon as we crossed the border between South Africa and Swaziland, something in my spirit felt so… off. I laid in bed that first night, my heart racing as my spiritual discernment wheels were turning in high gear. Thought it was late in the middle of the night, I couldn’t fall asleep with ease as the darkness in the atmosphere hovered all around. When I woke up in the morning, I literally felt heavier—as if weights were on my shoulders, pulling me down. Something wasn’t right.
Our ministry contact, Erica, met with us that first day to tell us about the area and our month ahead. She explained that Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV in the entire world, and it’s even higher here in Nsoko than the rest of the country. There is a “missing generation” here—ages 20-45, who have passed away due to AIDS. This has left many grandparents (who are unemployed) as primary caregivers for their numerous grandchildren. Swaziland is also known to have awful droughts—months and months without rain—and here in Nsoko, it’s even worse. It is therefore difficult for the community to grow crops to provide food. Many of the people who live here claim to be Christians, yet they practice ancestor worship and voodoo. Erica’s colleague went so far as to describe Nsoko as “the place where the devil sticks a drain pipe in your soul”.
As I had already begun to experience the drainage, I didn’t hesitate to call an emergency meeting with my team after hearing all of this. We sat down in a circle, and tears welled up in my eyes as I explained what I had been feeling. This is the most darkness I’ve experienced, and I’m not going to lie… I’m scared. One of my teammates prayed over me, and I instantly felt the weight that was pulling me down begin to be lifted off of my shoulders.
I’ve read about spiritual warfare, listened to sermons about it, learned about it in Scripture, and heard numerous stories about demons and the battle of light versus darkness. I had never felt like I was literally on the battlefront, though. I wrote out the verses in Ephesians 6 about the armor of God and taped it to my bedframe, so that I’d wake up every morning and pray to be fitted with the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit.
We are fighting the Lord’s battle, but it’s more difficult and tricky than I thought… Satan is using cunning schemes. Some of us are struggling with apathy. The lack of joy is tangible in the air, in the faces of the children who withhold smiles and laughter, and the gogo’s (or grandmothers) who lost all 8 of their children to AIDS and are raising their grandchildren without an income. It is easy to slip into the emotion of the place you live in if you aren’t careful in keeping watch and remembering the joy you have in the Lord. Furthermore, many of us are having trouble sleeping at night, and if we do sleep, we are haunted by nightmares and disturbing dreams that target our fears and weaknesses.
The good news is that we are all keenly aware of the battle going on, of the schemes being plotted against us. We constantly check in with one another and lift each other up in prayer. We can take comfort in knowing that the battle has already been won; the enemy has been defeated and Christ is victorious. We have no reason to be afraid, because Jesus is all over this place. When you are in a place consumed by so much darkness, the light becomes even more apparent. The wrinkled smile of a gogo or laughter of a child running after a goat in our front yard are evidence of little pieces of joy, little pieces of light, that Christ is shedding upon his nation.
