Another Wonderful Week of Ministry

Hello again everyone! I am having a wonderful time in Eswatini, and I’m really trying to post these blogs as quick as I can with this rough wifi we have. Last week we spent some time on Monday meeting with people from a different squad who is also in Eswatini and having a sermon given to all of us from the people who run the program here in Eswatini! So that was exciting to meet more people who are doing some good mission work for God! Tuesday through Saturday we went to the daycare that we’ve been at the past month or so and continued to love on the kids and cooks! One day when we got there, we were met with a group of people trimming all of the “bushes” (they were really just a bunch of small trees) with machetes to clean up the area around the daycare. I offered a hand, and next thing I knew I was cutting down multiple trees for three hours. I was blistered to bits on my hands and they started bleeding, but I didn’t mind at all. I was just happy to be there and lend a hand. However, it did remind me of my mission trip rule to always bring a pair of gloves… and I did not unfortunately. Their machetes were not particularly sharp, so basically you just beat the tree branches until they broke off, so you can imagine how much force I had to put in this. I was with two Swazi men who were helping me, and I when tell you for every three or four medium sized branches I cut, they cut down three or four trees haha. I was helping, but they were much more skilled than I. I would start on a tree, and they’d let me do it, but cut down two trees on both sides of me as I finished up with that one. It was a fun cycle though. Later that day I got a chance to fix their playground, which is something we’d been talking about doing all month. So I jumped on the opportunity. Some of the posts were falling because they didn’t have the bolts anymore, so I was given a pair of pliers and a long string of wire to fix it. They tried to find bolts but I guess that wasn’t a thing. But that’s no problem because we will always find a way. I started working on it, and a bunch of kids were crowding around me wanting to help of course. This next description I know will be appreciated by my mom, uncle Don, and uncle Lowell in particular, but at one point I was using the wire as a mail and a mid sized rock as a hammer to hammer a dowel that was shoved in one of the bolt holes in the post. I used to pliers to bend the wire at a 90° angle to create a head for my makeshift nail so I could hit it to push the dowel out of the hole with my makeshift hammer. One of the boys, maybe about four years old, came up and started hitting my makeshift nail head with his little tiny rock. It was quite cute. Was I right about the three of you enjoying that description?? I figure you have a great picture in your head of what that looked like! Throughout the time I was fixing the play ground, I was also bending the end of the wires back so the kids wouldn’t cut themselves on it. Well, in the process of doing that my grip on the pliers slipped and I cut myself on one of the wires that I was trying to bend back haha. What is amazing about that though is that my smile never left my face and all the kids were super intrigued. Never got mad and didn’t let it discourage me, and that was all the power of God working through me with that. I got myself bandaged up and got back out there. I had a great week and can’t wait to see what more is to come! Have a great week, I’ll check back in with you guys later!