Week 1!!

After lots of twists and turns we landed in Johannesburg on Sunday evening. That next day we drove for around 8 hours from Johannesburg to Eswatini where our base is. This week we have been pouring in and loving the kiddos through children’s ministry. We have been showing them how much they are seen, heard, and valued! There are 12 care points around Eswatini which are places that care for the community around them! We will get to have the opportunity to move around the different care points and serve each of them while we are here! This week we also started putting up a fence around one of the care points to keep the animals out. It has been so sweet seeing the pure joy that everyone in Eswatini has! We have also been able to interact with the leadership school right outside of our home base, which is made up of a ton of 20-30 year old students. We were given eswatini names by Irene, Sharon, and Patience who were some of the women from the leadership school. My name meant “with love” “we all love you”. My name in Eswati is “Siyamthand”. We have been connecting with the community by playing soccer games in the evening! One of the days we went on a tour of the care point. When the preschool kids saw us walking down the road, they ran towards us! They remembered us from the day before and remembered who they specifically played with!! It was the sweetest thing! We hugged on them and loved them for a while before we had to continue with the tour and they had to go back to school. We learned the importance of their need for physical touch. They want to be held and hugged and loved on. Their mothers leave before they wake up to go work in the fields and often get back when they are asleep. They very rarely have a father figure. They need and long for that physical touch and attention. They appreciate consistency! They like piggy back rides because it makes them feel more loved. Their mothers would do this when they were young. They would swaddle them and wrap them onto their back so they could still work during the day. On Thursday part of our team went to a home visit. The family we visited recently lost a family member and so we prayed for them, spent time with scripture, and helped cook and prepare a meal for them! Everybody in Eswatini is so friendly, welcoming, and giving. On Saturday we spent the day asking the Lord how he wanted to use us. We wanted to go where the Lord wanted us to go, meet who he wanted us to meet, and use us for His will. We felt that the Lord was telling us to go to the people farther from the care point towards the mountains. We stopped at many houses along the way. We prayed, sang songs, gave food, and    read scripture! Everyone here welcomed us into their homes with open arms. They were so excited to talk to us and to have visitors at their home. They pulled out what they had for us to sit on so selflessly and welcomed us into their homes. The first group of people we met was 2 grandmas and then family friends visiting from around the neighborhood. They were so unbelievably thankful to have good community and conversations. They shared a song in Eswati with us and then we sang Great our you Lord to them in English! Then the next home we visited, the family was so hungry for the Lord and wanting to know Him! But they do not know how to read so they are unable to read the bible and learn more about God from His truth. We told them we will come back and read more scripture. Our translator came with us so after we would read scripture he would read it in Eswati. Our translators name was Sunday. He was so selfless in giving up his saturday to come with us and translate as we prayed, read scripture, and talked with them. The next house we went to, the mans name was Phineas. He was really hurting. He previously had a stroke that effected the entire right side of his body. We prayed for healing for him and read John 5 to him. He said he has been hopeless and his mind has been wandering so he has been leaning to alcohol (fermented alcohol) to take away those thoughts. It was so sweet to visit him and pray for him. You could really tell that he was longing for connection and for his prayers to be answered. It has been so cool already developing connections with the people of Nsoko! The Lord is so sweet and it has been such an incredible week! Please continue to pray for the people we have encountered and the people we will encounter! Please pray that we continue to listen to the Lord and will be used in whatever ways he has planned! 

Love,

Sarah