My last days in Swaziland

First off, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone that contributed to my trip through finances, prayer, gifts, and encouragement. It was time well spent getting to know more about Swaziland and specifically more about the ministry opportunities for me there.

During my last week, I got the chance to go to a new carepoint, I drove in with the discipleship team. The goal of the day was to get profiles on each of the children so that we could eventually be able to get them sponsored by someone  so they would be able to go to school and have some of their basic needs met.  There was about  25 children there that day and  to  get the profiling done we needed a good distraction for the kids that were not being talked to.  The discipleship team had done this before and so  they were wise enough to bring along  a jumping castle. It takes a bit to set up, but boy was it worth it! The kids loved it, we had a hard time getting them to stop jumping so we could gather some information about them.

We spent about 5 hours there that day. I tried to teach an older boy (maybe 9 or 10) how to spin a ball on his finger and he tried to teach me to play soccer, we both did a terrible job but had fun trying. I played catch with some of the small children. This particular carepoint had a single swing hanging from a tree, so one of my new little friends, Cebiso, insisted by pulling my hand, that I needed to push her on the swing. I didn’t understand anything she was saying to me up to that point and then clear as a bell she said push in English, I think it’s one of the few words she knew in English, because she was maybe only 4 years old. As soon as I started with one kid, swarms of kids came up to be pushed on the swing, i managed to convey to them that I could do 2 at a time and they had to wait their turn. It all worked out okay in the end.

Right before we left we took the children inside and sang some songs with them, they didn’t know any of the songs I knew, but one of the older girls started leading songs they knew and I wish I had video taped it, because Swazi’s just love singing. I said goodbye to the kids, it was my last full day in Swaziland and I wouldn’t see them again for a long time, or so I thought.

The next day we had to go back and I got to spend time with my friends again. Cebiso came out and greeted us as soon as we pulled near the school. She had a nasty oozing wound on her stomach so I got that all cleaned up and bandaged, I made sure she understood not to take the band aid off and when she got the message, she went about playing, she fell asleep about an hour later so I checked to see if it was still there, thankfully it was. I hope it heals well.