Eswatini

I’m a few weeks into our time in Rwanda, so it seems like its about time I update y’all on month 7 in Eswatini! Last month our squad got the chance to stay at an AIM base in Manzini. AIM stands for Adventures in Missions and is the organization that the world race is run out of. AIM has bases in a few countries and we were really excited for our time there and to be involved in another part of their ministry outside of the world race! The ministry at the base in Eswatini is focused on carepoints for kids in the community. These carepoints have small pre-school programs, some after school programs for older kids, and provide a meal a day for all of the kids. There are currently around 40 carepoints surrounding the city and at each one community involvement is prioritized. Older women in the community volunteer their time to prepare the meals, older kids who have gone through the program can be trained to be small group leaders at their carepoints and eventually to be a shepherd that oversees that carepoint. Many of them are sponsored by different churches that donate money for playgrounds, school materials for the kids, and some run individual partnerships with kids and their families to help pay school and medical fees. It’s all run so beautifully and I really enjoyed our time there!

Last month our squad was placed in a lot of different ministry sites – we had some girls working with the kids, some working in the office creating lesson plans, a few worked at another school partnered with the base creating lesson plans. As the other team leaders and I prayed into ministry placements I felt God calling me to maintenance crew, so I put on my work clothes and got back on the manual labor side of missions! Honestly, there were a few days I wasn’t super thrilled with this directive. I wanted to be with the kids, I wanted to be part of the ins and outs of their program, but I knew there was a lot for me in work crew. God told me at the very beginning of it He wanted me to see the background work of a ministry like this and I got to travel to a lot of different carepoints during our time there. Work crew cleared rocks and layer sand for a playground, we dug trenches and laid tire walls, we painted bathrooms, we measured broken windows, we cleaned out workshops, and we broke down a playground that was falling apart so the kids wouldn’t get hurt on it. We had a lot of long work days in the hot sun, we also got to spend a little free time here and there with a bunch of different kids at a lot of different carepoints. 

It was a fun month even though I didn’t really expect it to be. At the beginning of it I was honestly feeling sorry for myself that God asked me to do something I didn’t want to do that was hard. He did a lot of work in my heart last month in teaching me how to choose His joy. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and because I have the Spirit in me I have this fruit already – its not something I have to strive to learn or become, but it is something I have to choose to step into and learn to walk in. So as my feet were attacked by ants while I raked up rocks on the playground, I got to practice choosing Gods joy. I got to practice turning back to the Holy Spirit in the moments I wasn’t feeling joyful and ask for reminders and for a fresh in filling of the Spirit. I got to choose to thank God for bringing me to Eswatini, for His provision, for His care of placing me in my community. I got to pray over the kids that would play there and thank God that I got to help provide a safe space for them. I got to chat with my friends I was working with and glorify God by loving and being loved by them well. 

As I sit here and reflect on all I’ve learned so far on my race, I think the thing God’s most consistently been telling me is about how everything is a choice. The outcomes of our lives and who we are really come down to what we choose to do, what we choose to care about. Even the things happening around us that we don’t control are reflections of choices, they just aren’t necessarily our choices. That gets into a broader topic though – I have another blog brewing that I think will come back to this point:) But anyway, in our lives we have the choice of a relationship with God. We have the choice to pursue Him and dig into intimacy. We have the choice to access all His power and authority and gifts and beautiful characteristics, but they don’t just magically happen to us. Making the choice to accept Jesus into our lives and inviting His spirit to dwell in us is the first (and probs most important!) step, but after that there’s more. In the hard moments you have to choose to go back to Him, you have to choose to find the blessings and to thank Him in the moments you just want to complain, you have to choose to hand over the flesh reactions and walk in self-control and patience. Like I said earlier, the choice Gods teaching me to make right now is into joy. Sometimes its hard! But ultimately I want to be a person that stands firm in God’s joy. I want to be someone who quickly rejoices in the happy times and in the really hard times. Right now that requires a ton of small choices to be grateful, but I trust that one day I’ll look back and see that I know longer have to push myself into the choice – it’ll just be part of who I am:)