On the morning of Friday, April 5, at 5:30am, Team Abide and Team Nissi departed Swazi for Lesotho. Emmery, Emma, Lianne, and I were in the smaller van while the rest were in the bigger. We were running slightly behind schedule, but what’s new on the race? We were supposed to stop at the grocery before heading up but we weren’t going to make it in time. So our small van left the big one behind and we started booking it to get there before it closed. Emmery woke the three of us up to explain what was happening and what the game plan was going to be. We fly into the parking lot, jump out the van, and start sprinting through the mall to get to the grocery. We made it with 10 minutes to spare. We each grabbed a shopping cart and started throwing mass amounts of food in each. I had an overflowing cart consisting of 17 loaves of bread, 60 rolls, and 35 bags of chips. Nothing like four white females walking through a mall in Africa with four overflowing carts of food. After a long drive up the bumpy mountain while holding the eggs down, we finally made it to our base around midnight. After unloading, we all jumped in bed, not knowing what we would see when we woke up.
I woke up around 10:30 the next morning and was absolutely shocked when I opened our bedroom door. In front of me was the most beautiful mountainous landscape I’ve ever seen. I walk to the kitchen, which is on the other side of the building, to see an even more grand view. Later that day, it started to pour and hail and it was so powerful. And then out of nowhere, all the rain stops and we see two of the most vibrant rainbows I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s the moment I knew this was going to be a special place. All day, you’d hear a faint cowbell sound coming from the cattle and sheep walking around. And there they would be, with their shepherd, just grazing the fields. Psalm 23 has always been a favorite chapter of mine, but it became more real in this country because every day, I would see an actual shepherd in action. And every day, I was reminded of how the Lord guides me and protects me. I finally understood the meaning of the staff AND the rod because we don’t just need guiding, we need discipline. Some of the coolest moments were when we were able to talk to the shepherds and bring up Psalm 23. And if you asked any of them if they would leave all their sheep for just one, or if they would die for their sheep, they would say no. And that answer makes so much sense when you see an actual shepherd interacting with his stupid sheep. Yet the Lord sacrifices everything for us. It’ll never make sense, and that’s the beauty of it. “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”
The first type of ministry we did in Lesotho was to paint a nearby school. You should’ve seen those outfits. It was really cold AND we didn’t want to get paint on the few clothes we actually liked, so we all wore the most outlandish assortment of clothes you’d ever see. A nickname I picked up was “Subway Surfer” because I looked like one of the characters from that game, especially with the cornrows and beanie. No shame because you gotta do what you gotta do on the race. The painting started off pretty well. That is until we took a break and ALL of our brushes were taken by the kids. Goodbye perfect walls and hello chaos. Since the top was painted beige and the bottom was dark green, it was very easy to see a mistake. My eyebrows probably looked like a heart monitor from all the twitching because I was so stressed. But I learned to let go and let them have fun, and I walked away knowing that we did the best we could do. For the record, the school does look a lot more fresh now, even if the beige wall has some green on it.
The second type of ministry we did was house visits in the surrounding villages! We would leave at 9:00 every morning to begin the trek throughout the mountains to visit different villages. Sometimes we split by teams, and other times we decided to switch it up and intertwine a little. It was always quite the hike, but anything for the gospel. If there’s one thing my perspective changed on, it’s that I should be thanking the Lord that I have an able body to be able to carry this amazing news to the unreached. One of my top house visit stories has got to be this one…while visiting a family, an awkward silence was growing. So I asked the wife what she was cooking, just trying to make it less awkward. Well. She asked if we wanted to try some to which I repeatedly said no since it was for her family. But she insisted so I submitted. And then she grabbed six extra bowls. So I, along with all of my teammates of the day, had to eat porridge. I think my favorite house visit of the entire race was probably the one we did on our last day of ministry. I was with just my team and we only visited one house for two hours, when we usually visit two or three a day. Anna and Maggie helped the wife wash her clothes, and then we helped hear clean up some of her crops. And for the first time of the whole race, the husband was home. He had great English so we were able to have some great conversations with him about his faith and his beliefs in ancestral worship. The family was so overjoyed that they even asked us to take a picture with them. Our cups were very full as we walked away from our final day of ministry as a team.
We would get back to the base sometime after noon for lunch, and then we’d be at the base for the rest of the day. And that’s when we started the garlic job. Our host has a very plentiful garden overflowing with garlic, so we had the opportunity to peel hundreds of pieces of garlic. It wasn’t hard, just tedious. And we peeled garlic for three hours a day for five days. Just another random ministry on the race. To this day, we probably still smell like garlic ahahah. We painted or did house visits from Monday until Thursday, had Friday and Saturday off, and then Sundays were for church. The church is part of the base, so we never had to walk on Sunday, but we always got an experience. There truly is nothing like a traditional African church. And they love love love their worship. For over an hour, we would stand for a song, sit because it was over, stand again because a new song was started, sit because that song ended, stand because a NEW song started, sit, stand, sit, stand, etc. You can’t help but laugh every time, but you really can’t help but close your eyes and listen to the beautiful way these people praise the Lord. Some of the team even had the opportunity to speak some Sundays! What’s the rush and who cares about all the up and down when it comes to being with the Lord and His people?
I had a total of one adventure day in Lesotho, and that’s when we all went horseback riding through the mountains. Just another causal Friday on the race. It was an absolutely beautiful ride. We rode to a waterfall and we got to hike down to see it and that was gorgeous. Other “adventure” days in this country looked like laying in the sun with my best friends, doing absolutely nothing, while looking at the most beautiful view, that being God’s creation.
On the night of Monday, April 29, the base dogs were barking maniacally. We figured something was off so for the first time since being here, we locked our bedroom door. I wake up the next morning to cook breakfast with Skylar, and I go into the pantry to get the oranges and I notice something strange. There were only two boxes of bananas on the table when yesterday, I could’ve sworn that there were over twenty. So I call Sky and we’re looking everywhere for these bananas. We thought we were delusional so we stopped looking since it mustn’t have been that big of a deal. Well we mention it to our leaders, who noticed that there were some other things missing as well. And after some investigation, we put it all together and realized that the dogs were barking at the people who had stolen our food. The loses included lots of bananas, potatoes, two cartons of milk, and some seasoning. Word on the street is that it was me because I don’t like potatoes and bananas all that much. But I say that if it was me, I would’ve left the milk and taken the cheese so we didn’t have to eat that. Just another random experience on the race.
If I had to use two phrases to describe my time in Lesotho, I would say we were “off the grid” and “living off the land.” When I say we were “off the grid,” we were quite literally in the middle of nowhere with not a drop of phone service. Most of our electricity came from a solar panel and there was absolutely no where to go. So the best thing we could do was be together and be with the Lord. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Now let me tell you about living. To get hot showers, our host would have to put a fire under the water tank, so we only got showers every once in a while. To be exact, I showered 6 times in 30 days. That was the least of my worries. The only pure water available was from the well a little ways down our road. And don’t think there’s a hose connected to it to get to the base. We’ve got these two water jugs that someone has to fill when they are empty. So you put them in the wheelbarrow, roll them to the top of the hill, carry the jugs down to the well, unplug the water source to fill them up, put the plug back in, carry the jugs back up the hill, put them in the wheelbarrow, and roll it back to the base. Easy, right? Nope. I went one morning with Lianne and Emma. Already a bad idea. While trying to carry the jug up the hill, I started to laugh, making me completely useless to the world. So Lianne and Emma both grabbed a jug and in return, I said I would roll them back. Well. The wheelbarrow got caught on a rock and it started to tip over. And I fell over with it. Into the mud. PV, the wheelbarrow, and the two water jugs sitting in the mud. A very humbling experience indeed. We were fortunate when the well was working because we crossed a time when it stopped. So we had to boil the tap water so it was at least somewhat better to drink. All you can do is pray at that point. The Lord must’ve done something to that water because we all made it out with no problems.
The Lord’s hand was all over our time in Lesotho. We experienced His voice and His favor every single day. I had heard that Lesotho was a place to really hear the voice of the Lord, and I can confidently say that it’s true. There is a peace and stillness to Lesotho that is unmatched, and I wouldn’t have wanted to finish my race anywhere else. What I thought would’ve been my least favorite country of my race very quickly became one of my favorite months of my entire life.
