Hello Wonderful Friends!

I hope you are all doing great! I am writing from the beautiful kingdom of Eswatini! My team and I have been here for about a week, and I want to give a little update on what ministry we will be doing here for the next 7ish weeks!

This is absolutely the most beautiful place I have ever been! I was expecting to be staying in a hut in a dry desert on a safari in Eswatini, and I simply just laughed at myself when we arrived! Eswatini is beautifully green with mountains all around us and beautiful clouds in the bright blue sky! We are staying at a small little college campus/ apartments and are blessed with hot water, a propane tank stovetop to cook food on, mattresses (we were SO happy about having beds), etc.! It’s a little different than Johannesburg as we are getting a little more of a taste of living in Africa. For example, we are hand washing our clothes here (so fun), and often find little frogs or geckos running around our flat :), and I love it! We have bible college students staying right next to us, and many other community members living in the flats around us. After or before ministry and on the weekends anywhere we go there will be someone wanting to talk to us, or little kids wanting us to play with them! Again, just such a wonderful culture where everyone is so relationally focused and oriented, it’s a blessing to be able to fellowship, love and minister to people right outside our front door.

Since we got here last Sunday we got to go through orientation and preparing for our time here on Monday and jumped into ministry Tuesday-Friday! However, our typical Mondays here will be spent in the main town area near us called Manzini. We call these days Ask The Lord (ATL) days because this time is spent seeing how the Lord will lead. There is people everywhere, and a little park in the middle of the town that we hope to spend our time talking with people, sharing the Gospel, building relationships through the weeks, praying with them, and if possible even do bible studies with people if possible! I am super excited for this time, as outreach/evangelism was definitely one of my favorite ministries at Impact Africa in Johannesburg.

Then, our main ministry here is at a care point called Mafutseni. World Race is one of the organizations under the umbrella organization called Adventures In Missions (AIM) that owns the base we are staying at, and runs these care points in Eswatini. In fact, they have 36 of these care points here! We will be at Mafutseni our whole trip here, and I am so thankful because of the relationships we get to build with the children! At the care points from Tuesday-Friday, we spend our mornings helping the Magogo’s (the older women) start the water and begin making the food for the children that will come in the afternoon. We pray together, prepare stories and/or lessons for the kids, and soon we will begin planting seeds in their garden. The mornings are usually pretty slow, but in the afternoon the children get there, my guess would be at least 70 kids, maybe more! They come at varying times after lunch until around 4 or 4:30, full of energy and ready to play! All the kids just want us to love them so much, they stick to our sides like magnets and don’t let go (literally:)! Most of the afternoon is spent connecting with them and playing, although the language barrier is much more difficult here! Just learning their names has been our first task, and that in itself has been challenging enough with all the clicks and tongue movements! It’s hilarious watching our group trying to replicate the unique names! Then a few days a week we do lessons and bible story/skits with the children, and our wonderful ministry partner Sadumo translates for us! After that, all the kids crowd around the little building where the food is made, and we dish out food and wash the container it was made in!

I have been getting used to how different this ministry is than in Johannesburg. Getting to talk to the older kids who can speak English is a wonderful way to minister here, but a huge part of the ministry is simply loving the little children. I have no doubt it is needed, but with the language barrier, it looks like sitting with kids, playing games, and simply spending time with them. It is different than the Gospel and Christ centered conversations and activities that were more of our of focus in Johannesburg. Earlier this week, I struggled a little with feeling like this ministry wasn’t even worth it, but God gave me a few experiences over the past few days in which He told me just how needed we are here. A simple and short one I’ll share is from Thursday afternoon. I was sitting playing thumb wars with the kids, and two little children laid their heads on my lap for a while. I had to get up a little while later, and the one boy jumped up and ran off to go play, but the little girl just hung on to me. As I was talking to one of the other ladies in my squad, she said that that same little girl had laid her head on my teammates lap for almost an hour, not sleeping, but simply being there. That same girl is very timid, quiet, and shy, but she loves being loved on by each one of us. This is a little story, but it helped me realize that I don’t know exactly what families these children are coming from, or what home is like for them, but for the few hours they are with us each day, I know that we get the opportunity to be their home and safe place, and that is what Christ has called us to here!

I am excited as our team is heading off this evening to lead a worship night for anyone that will join from the Bible college students to the people simply renting the apartments in this community. We hope to spend some of our time back at home to build relationships with the community members here, hold worship times, and hopefully start a bible study ! The kids and teenagers here want to be loved and played with just as much as the kids at the care point too. Already I have formed relationships with a few young teenage girls here and at the care point and I am so excited to be a needed friend to them during the next couple weeks and encourage them in their walk with Christ!

I could write about what we are doing here forever, I know that I am going to grow to love it here more and more! In the weeks to come, I will share more ministry moments and what God is doing in the hearts of the people here, in my squads lives and in my life! But for now, text and let me know if there is anyway you need prayer back at home! I love and miss you all!

Love,

Abigail (or Lesedi in Africa :)