The Kingdom of Swaziland, my new home.

      Hey everybody! I finally made it to Swaziland on January 7th. It has been very interesting and intense since we got here. The Swazi people are extremely friendly, loving,and respectful. I know that they will teach me a lot and I pray that God will continue to use me here to show them a love from Christ as I serve here in different ministry sites. I don’t have much time to use internet here, but I will try and tell you all as much as I can.

      The past couple of weeks we have been visiting many different ministry sites that we will be able to serve at in the next 4 months. So far we have visited carepoints around Swaziland where kids that don’t have family or enough money to eat come and get a meal of rice and beans. We sit with them and love on them, talk with them, play with them, hold them, diciple them and they teach us so much too. We visited a couple hospitals here in Manzini and talked with some kids and families there. We visit a place called the Hope House for termanily ill people(mostly AIDS and TB) and sit with them and talk, teach them, they teach us, learn SiSwati(the language here), and pray with them. We visited a home for abandoned children and played with them. We visited some homes for street kids where they are given a home and enough money to go to school and then taught a skill such as woodworking, welding, basket weaving, honey making, and car repair to start there own small business, It’s an awesome ministry that this Irish guy started here. Me and some of the guys on my team visited a prison to see how we could serve there, we will be preaching there once a week,  playing music for them, and finding some bibles for them to read. The Chaplain there said they dont have any bibles so we are using some of our ministry money to buy some SiSwati bibles for them. He said that the bibles they had in the past were stolen or had pages ripped out of them, but we thought if they want to read the bible that bad to rip pages from them and steal them thats fine by us, we will get them more bibles to steal and read at home haha. The last place was the St. Josephs school for the disabled where disabled kids come and live and go to school, learn skills to be able to take care of themselves when they grow up, and go through phyiscal therapy. That’s about all the ministry opportunies we have had so far, but i am going to be focusing on a carepoint near our house, the Hope House, Prison ministry, and the St. Josephs school for the disabled. I will be dicipling a couple boys at the carepoint one on one and teach them how to follow Christ with their life. Many Swazi people believe in God, know about Jesus, and confess that they are Christian, but they incorporate a lot of witchcraft and cultural traditions that contradict the bible. So we won’t be preaching the gospel so much as dicipling them and helping them follow God completely!

     I am so excited about working at these ministries full time now that i know where exactly God has called me to work here. I am also very concerned for the people here. The statistics for this country are astounding and heart-breaking. The life expectancy is at 28 years, the AIDs rate is at over 40% and rising, in the past 3 years 250,000 more people have died than been born bringing the population from 1.2 million to 950,000, 56% of kids can’t go to school because they can’t afford the school fees, 40% unemployment rate, and the country is supposed to be wiped out by AIDs by 2025 if something doesn’t change. Dicipling these kids is our best chance of helping them save their people. I was talking with a local pastor and he said he has to hire people who arent even pastors to do funerals for him because there are too many people dying in his area. This country is really struggling and God has to change their hearts completely. Please pray for us as we bring Christ’s love, truth, and hope to them with pure hearts.

    I love and appreciate you all and look forward to seeing u all in May. Thank you again to all my supporters, God is really working here through your gracious giving. I will try to write about what all I have been personally learning here(which is a lot and life-changing) and then update you on how the ministries are going and what God is doing through that. Again I am so thankful for you all and feel completely blessed in my life, God is good and may he be glorified and honored. Peace and Love.

 

 

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