I have a praise report; I got a call from my sister last
Tuesday to tell me what the results of my Mom’s last tests were. Although the first tests they took were
showing severe heart damage and most likely blockage of the main arteries, the
most recent tests show that her heart is fine!
They are supposing that the first test results were a false
positive. So, Praise the Lord! Please still keep her in your prayers though,
this was not the easiest thing for her to go through.
Life in Africa is going well.
I’ve spent the last week trying to find what ministry I want to intern
with. At this point I’m still not very
sure. At first I couldn’t find anything
that seemed to be “clicking” with me but now I have 3 different options that I
would like to do something with them all.
The first is called “the rural care point”, it’s a 40 minute Kombi (a
public transportation van) ride away.
Once we finally got there and started down the long muddy dirt road we
were surprised by what we found.
Apparently the care point closed 2 years ago but none of our leaders (This is the mall I am at right now…looks American huh?)
knew that. So we went on a hunt first
just trying to find it and then to try to find out what happened to it. But during all this investigating we were
doing we ended gathering a group of over 20 kids that were just coming out of
the woodwork, so we stopped in the middle of the dirt road and sang and played
with them for about an hour. I really
enjoyed being there, it was surreal.
Here we were four white girls wandering around middle of no where Africa trying to find something that doesn’t exist
anymore but we did find wonderful people.
It’s hard though because since there is no existing ministry there it
would be very trying to come up with what to do there everyday all day
long.
My second
choice is the hospital. They have an
abandoned baby ward with about 5 babies and 8 older children. These children were abandoned at the hospital
and unless they are adopted by someone they will live there the rest of their
life. You all know how much I love
babies so I am very at home at the hospital when I can just hold babies and
help care for them. I love it but I
think I feel God calling me to more work then that. I think I will continue to keep trying to
visit the hospital often to just spend some time with the kids but I just can’t
make that my main internship.
Lastly, I
visited a care point yesterday and I think this may be where I spend most of my
time until May. A care point is a place
that has been established mostly by Swazi’s in attempt to help the community, because of the
Aids epidemic in Swaziland
there are many orphans now. At this care
point there are 149 children that come everyday, most are double orphans and
some are single orphans (only one parent…we don’t know why they are still
classified as orphans if they have a parent but they do…), they come in morning
to get breakfast before school and then they come for lunch and dinner
too. The younger children stay all day
and have classes to teach them the basics so when they take the entrance exam
for school they will be able to pass. The children that will never be able to
go school because of not having the money to pay the fees for school or because
of a handicap also have teaching where they learn the basics for life. They also run a ministry to the Gogos and
Mukulos (Grandmother and Grandfather) for the ones who don’t have family to
help take care of them anymore come there and spend the day and then they give
them food for dinner to take home with them.
Right now there are 46 Gogo’s there and they are hilarious!
Take care, thanks so much for your prayers and support. I love it here but I miss you all and I’m really excited to be able to see you all again in a few months.
(Beeftip and Franey, just thought I would make shout out to you two since I didn’t have time to email you, I miss you guys!)
