Teen Mom - Swaziland Version

It started out like any other home visit...a long, bumpy drive down a dusty dirt road.  I was going on a Saturday with a ministry partner who lived close by because more people would be home on the weekend.  He had warned me that this would be a tough home visit - the family had written a letter to his family, knowing that he worked with the ministry, and asking for help.  We weren't able to go right away, so his father went to check on the family & returned home in tears, telling a story of how they hadn't had any food & were drinking sugar water for a few days because a neighbor gave them some sugar.
As we pulled into the homestead, a teenage boy and girl were working outside, cooking food & doing laundry.  We sat with them for a while on buckets in the shade as a baby sat by the cooking structure & a young boy walked by.  We threw rocks at the chickens that were trying to steal food out of the cooking pot & we gazed out at the valley & the horizon.
This young woman, at the age of 17, had more responsibility on her shoulders than most adults I know.  As she told us her story, I struggled to comprehend the weight of it all.  She is in school, wanting to be a doctor when she grows up.  She makes grass mats to sell to help her family make money, she sells bags of chips at school to earn money also.  The money she earns goes toward paying transportation to & from school & for uniforms or other needs.  

The view across the valley from the homestead & the loom where the 17 year old
head of household makes grass mats to sell to earn money for her family.

This doesn't sound too out of the ordinary for Swaziland, because many young people are working to help their families survive.  But for this family, these are the only sources of income.  Along with going to school & trying to earn money, this 17 year old girl runs the homestead with her 19 year old brother as they care for 6 other children (two 15 year olds, a 12 year old with disabilities, an 8 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old).  Some of them are her siblings, some of them are her cousins, and a couple of them are her sister's children.  Her parents are both deceased, as well as her aunt & sister, leaving her to care for all of these children.  
As we carried the food that we brought into her house before we left, the only things in the room were a squash & a small bag of mealie meal (corn meal to make pap).  Though struggling to survive day to day, she has shouldered this responsibility with grace & says that the Lord gives her the strength to get through each day.   As we talked with her about her life & needs, we were all finding the Lord remind us that He is a God of hope, whose eyes are on those who seek Him.  I find peace in the fact that she is learning to cast her burdens on the Lord & let Him carry her through each day and I take heart in the fact that He is the Father to the orphan & has adopted each of us through Christ to be His child, co-heirs with Christ.

Week 9 In A Picture

Carrots growing in the garden, my Sabbath spot at the mechanic's
while waiting for my car, visiting Spunky on her new homestead,
a gogo with the water containers as kids eat breakfast at Mahlabaneni

Orphan...Let It Sink In

I don't think I have ever cried when singing "Happy Birthday"...until today.  When I talk to people about the population of Swaziland being made up of close to 15% orphans, many times it is easy to overlook individuals & just see a statistic.  But most days, if I let the reality of what orphan really means sink in, it breaks me.  Some are orphans because they have been abandoned by their parents, some are orphaned because one or both of their parents have died. 

Birthday treats - Swazi style
(papaya & rice krispie treats)

   This morning started out like any other - walking around to check on things at the center when I hear someone yelling to me.  As I look over to my side & slow down my pace, almost 3 year old Tembelihle runs to me & stops directly in front of me, saying "mtat" - carry me.  I swing her up on my hip & continue on my way, saying hello to a woman with a baby on her back.  Nearly 30 minutes later, I find out that the woman has come to the center to talk to me.  She has come, bringing with her a young girl from the nearby carepoint she cooks at, asking for help with school costs.  As we talk, I ask her a few questions about the girl & her situation, which she answers & casually throws in that the girl was abandoned by her parents who have both left the country & have gone to South Africa.  The girl (no more than 8 or 9 years old) is now staying with relatives & trying to continue on with her life. 

   A little while later, as I was driving to run an errand, I was praying for this girl & the situation, and let the reality of the sentence "her parents abandoned her" sink in a little deeper.  It brought a sinking feeling to my stomach & tears to my eyes.  I have had friends lose their parents to death, friends lose their babies to death, and have heard their stories of grief, but cannot imagine the grief & feelings that this young girl is feeling.  I imagined my own niece and how she would react if her parents decided to leave her one day & it stings.  Yet this is reality for this young girl here in Swaziland & so many others.

   As I came back from running my errands, I had brought treats to celebrate one of our ministry partner's birthday.  He turned 24 this weekend & when we pray, he is often the first to be thankful for his life.  Which sounds glib until you realize that he is the only living family member left from his nuclear family.  He has out lived parents and siblings and now stays with extended relatives.  We wanted to celebrate his life & his birth today, to let him know that he is loved by his Christian family.  I pulled up to the team house, and he was walking with a rubber storage bin & gloves.  He told me that Tembelihle needed a bath, so he would bathe her.  She had obviously not been bathed in days & had the stains & smells on her clothes & body to confirm this.  Her father has died & her mother is sporadically around, leaving her in a situation comparable to many other children who aren't officially orphaned but who are left to care for themselves or be cared for by other siblings. 

   Again, the tears came as I watched this orphan taking care of another orphan.  Pouring love & life into one who was missing it, just as he had been poured into.  A while later, as we finished up our lunch and sang Happy Birthday, I continued to be thankful for the lives of these orphans who have been through so much, continued to be overcome by the reality of the fatherless & orphans that I live life with daily...and overwhelmed by the promise that God is the Father to the fatherless, who cares for orphans and adopts them as His own.  Who has taken us & grafted us into His family so that we will have brothers and sisters around us to care for us & point us to Him.

Week 8 In Two Pictures

Birthday treats, earthbag house with rafters,
Mbutu carepoint being plastered, Myeni homestead crew

Flat tire & blown spare, beets from the garden for carepoints,
peanut butter sandwiches for 19 people, view from Gugu's homestead

Week 7 In A Picture

Roof going on Mbutfu building, picking lettuce for carepoints,
pregnant Phindile playing netball, earthbag house.

New Road...Old Truth

   Where I am living in Swaziland, there is only one paved road, with many dirt roads leading off of it.  Some of the dirt roads are more used than others, and some merely look like a hiking trail.  It is intriguing to see a road & wonder what is down it, but with gas being $5.77 per gallon, I can't afford to follow my curiosity.  Yet this week I was able to go down a new road as we went on a home visit and won't forget how God used that new road to teach me an old lesson.

    The road was pretty good by Swazi standards, meaning not a lot of big rocks & only occasional huge dips.  We still never were able to go over about 25 mph...even on the best part of the dirt road.  As we approached the homestead, you could see all of the extended family's laundry hung out to dry near the few huts where they lived.  There were 2 women hanging clothes, both with babies tied on their backs.  Another woman sat on a grass mat in the shade of one of the huts.  We were here to see a woman in her late twenties/early thirties who is HIV positive and has had a stroke.  We walked over to her hut on the homestead- a modest cinder block building with a metal roof.  As we walked in, she sat up in her bed on the floor with a smile on her face.  Her brother's wife joined us, with a sleeping baby on her back and an abruptly woken, crying toddler ready to sleep on her lap as she sat on the cement floor.

   We entered the home/room, sitting on grass mats & rice bags on the floor, which was wide open and dusty with only the mattress & a shelf in the house.  As we shared bits about ourselves & some Scripture, we asked her if she had a favorite Scripture & in speech, garbled by her stroke, she replied without hesitation, "John 14." 

   Tears welled up in my eyes as we read the truth that Jesus promises us when He said, " 'Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father's house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.  And you know the way to where I  going.'  Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?'  Jesus said to him, 'I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.' "

   I have read these Scriptures many times but they hit at a whole new level when a homebound woman who has no earthly hope of healing or wellness speaks them as her favorite passage.  This truth- that Jesus has prepared a place for us, that He will come back to get us, that He is the only way to get to the Father in heaven- is not just a simple truth to be known about in our heads. It is THE truth- THE truth that cant be improved upon, THE truth that changes our hearts, THE truth that you can build your life on...THE truth that you can count on in your death.

11 Commandments Of Missions

William Carey's "11 Commandments Of Missions" have been great reminders as I start to establish life as a full time missionary.  They are:

1.  Set an infinite value on immortal souls.

2.  Gain all the info you can about "the snares and delusions" in which the people are held.

3.  Abstain from all English (American, whatever culture you're coming from) manners which might increase prejudice against the gospel.

4.  Watch for all opportunities for doing good, even when you are tired and hot.

5.  Make Christ crucified the great subject of your preaching.

6.  Earn the people's confidence by your friendship.

7.  Build up the souls that are gathered.

8.  Turn the work over to nationals as soon as possible.

9.  Work with all your might to translate the Bible into their languages.  Build schools to this end.

10.  Stay alert in prayer, wrestling with God until He "famish these idols and cause the people to experience the blessedness that is in Christ."

11.  Give yourself totally to this glorious cause.  Surrender your time, gifts, strength, families, the very clothes you wear.

Week 6 In A Picture

Bongani, the builder for Mbutfu carepoint with the new building; GFU team's shoes as we walk into a homevisit; battery that exploded in the car while I was driving; Smanga, Mxolisi & Matt with a VERY full truck of supplies