Hello friends and family!
Wow! I’ve lived in Africa 60ish days now. God is so good! I have seen Him work through so many different people over this past month.
My squad has been doing ministry in town, at the carepoints, and at community members homesteads (homes).
At the carepoints, we have the blessing of being able to feed, play with, and hold the younger kiddos. They are very sweet, polite, and kind. They look out for each other and love to play double double with us (it’s a simple game that involves high fiving in different orders with different words). It is very hot a lot of the time so many days the kiddos fall asleep in our laps, where they can safely and comfortably sleep. While they’re asleep, we have the opportunity to be praying for them and their families.
The first half of the day, most of the older kids are in school. During the second half of the day, we feed the older kids, do Bible skits, play games, and talk with the kids (in Siswati and English because they love to teach us their language). We also sometimes write letters to them that they can keep.
We have a carepoint that we go to about once a week that is designated specifically for home visits. Half of our group of 10 will stay with the kids while the other 5 will get bags of rice, beans, and bottles of oil and hike to one of the kids homes to pray with, talk with, and give food to their guardian (usually a mother or grandmother). One of us will usually prepare a few encouraging verses to read while our translator translate it to them for us. God has been able to reveal a lot about the loving and caring nature of the Swazi people through these home visits.
These last two weeks, we were able to do home visits at the carepoint we go to throughout the majority of the week. It was very special and very impactful because we got to see where the kiddos we spent the last month getting to know live and who takes care of them.
We also got to go visit a Gogo (grandma) and clean her house for her because she has been sick for the last month. We were able to pray for her, and praise God, when we went back a few days later she was almost completely healed!
The other team was able to pray for a little 4 year old girl that was paralyzed from the neck down, and through lots of prayer, she actually underwent a miracle. The girl started to move her legs and was able to squeeze one of the members hands. This was about a week and a half ago, and now she is able to move her legs a bit more, although she still cannot communicate. Prayers for her are much appreciated.
These mind blowing experiences have just reminded me that we serve a living God. Miracles did not only happen in the Bible, they still happen to this day. Our living God is still moving and working on this earth and through His followers. Praise God!
We have seen some hard things here in Eswatini and are doing our best to help. Medicine is not as accessible or affordable here for the majority of the population so we see sores and wounds on the kiddos daily. We all went through a hard experience when one of our beloved babies had a huge sore on his head that we had to clean even though it hurt him greatly. The experience broke all of our hearts and motivated us to do more home visits and intentional help for the specific area we were based. We bought food, clothes, first aid, and more at the stores using money that we raised on our instagram (C squad)! A lot of the homesteads here are child headed, which means there is no longer an active parent. One such case was a 15 year old taking care of 4 younger sibling. We aided her through prayer, clothes, medicine, and some food.
I ask for prayers of physical, mental, and spiritual protection for the homesteads in Eswatini and that God meets the caretakers and children where they need met and provide them with their necessities.
Ministry in town has gone fairly well. We have been able to pray for many people, some that we still have lasting relationships with. Every week, we go and check in with the ladies at the market, our friends working at the grocery stores, some people we have met on the streets, and some people that we want to continue evangelizing. Just today, we had an hour and a half long conversation with three people from the Baha’i faith. Which is a faith I had never heard of, but now know lots about. Today was our last day in town, and this upcoming week is our last week of ministry here in Eswatini.
I’ll post a goodbye Eswatini post sometime this week. I’m super sad to leave all the friends and kiddos we met here, but I’m very excited for our upcoming ministry in South Africa. We are finding out soon where our base will be and what ministry we will be doing. I’ll update everybody when I find out!
I love you all and miss everybody! I am so grateful for all the prayer support, and the financial support that allowed me to be here, have these experiences, and spread the gospel.
God bless!
Kate Bowdoin
