How God is using the team in Eswatini.
Monday:
We start the week off with ATL day in Manzini, the main city here. ATL day, short for ask the Lord day, is a weekly ministry day where we split into smaller groups & walk through more populated areas of town, asking the Lord how he wants to use us. Lead by the Holy Spirit, we create relationships with the people there, opening doors to evangelize. We pray over the city & with/for the people.
Tuesday through Friday:
We leave in the early morning to serve through care point ministry. Care points are centers planted throughout Eswatini by our local ministry partner, AIM (https://www.eswatinirising.com/programs/carepoints/). Partnering with local staff, we help provide meals and clean, safe to drink water –which many children do not have access to at home. We play with the children, help with child sponsorships, & teach them about God’s word. Our days consist of a lot of loving on the kids here & helping the gogo’s (Siswati for grandmother) by cooking, sewing, & devotional. We uplift the shepherd there (the leader of the care point). We stay flexible & ask God to use us according to his will daily. God is moving in us and in the people here.
Our Daily Schedule typically is as follows:
- We leave for our care point.
- Upon arrival we greet the staff—the shepherd & gogos. We encourage each other & partake in a devotional lead by a member of our team.
- Next we grab shovels or machetes & go about the sweaty business of clearing out the densely weeded areas of the carepoint.
- The gogos are currently teaching some of us how to harvest from their garden & cook dishes like soft porridge or maize over an open flame. We then help serve it to the preschoolers.
- At this point most of the preschoolers have arrived & we split up between holding/cuddling the younger ones & teaching the older ones in the preschool.
- We help with organizational parts of child sponsorship.
- Between 12:00 & 1:00 we leave for a team lunch of pb&js where we plan a Bible story skit for the older kids when they arrive.
- The older children get out of school around 2:00 & Begin to trickle in around 2:15–3:00.
- We play, run around, dance, & sing with the kids!! (Yayy!!!)
- We help serve them a meal cooked by the gogos & our team.
- Later in the evening, we all pile into the local church building to pray, worship God, & learn about Him.
- My team’s transportation arrives between 4:00 & 5:00 & we begin the tragic ordeal of saying goodbye to everyone. Every single little pair of arms wants to hug every single one of us goodbye. We pile into the van for our 45 minute bumpy, sweaty ride back to the homestead.
