Beautiful Feet

I didn't update my team blog this week because I really didn't feel like thinking of something to write about so this week it's just this blog I'm updating.

So first I'll explain the title of my blog. The phrase at the top of my blog on the mountains was kind of the inspiration for it and on a random note, today a girl on my team said "Jessica, you have really pretty feet." So after thinking about what to title my blog I thought that would be good! In Swaziland, so many kids don't have shoes. They have their school uniforms on but are barefoot (ed). These kids walk miles just to come get a meal at the care point, so their feet are calloused and usually have cow manure on them or just mud. Well, my feet definitely could use a pedicure (Mom) when I get home, but I still want them to be beautiful, in the sense of the verse I have at the top of my blog. "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news." We often walk to care points to meet these kids and spend time with them, and I know that I want my feet to be the feet of Jesus; bringing hope to Swaziland.

I will give you a brief description of what my week looked like. I'll try to do this each time I update, I think it's the best way to let y'all know what has been going on instead of just telling you one story from the week.

Monday - I went with a group of our team to the Primary School in Manzini. Each grade has 2 classes so their are around 40 plus kids in each grade. This school is very nice and the kids are so well mannered. We taught Noah's Ark to Grade 1 & 2, Kaci & I were introduced to Grade 3 because we will be doing a craft with them each Monday, then we went back to Grade 2 and they had to practice reading in English to us so they just had kids books to read and we would sign off on them, then we did the same thing with Grade 4. It was a lot of fun because when the kids come out to meet you they are so polite and say "Hello Teacher, how are you?" and anytime you address them they call you "Teacher" I love it! So I will be doing that every Monday.

Tuesday - I was with a group that went to the hospital. We had gone there our first week in Africa but I had not been back since then. Katie and I teamed up and went into the Children's Ward first. We went into the malnutrition unit which also is the place for abandoned babies. There are 2 abandoned babies there now. Since they are abandoned the hospital staff obviously doesn't know their age or name, so Katie gave this precious little girl who is probably about 4 months old the name "Nothando" which is my S'Swati name, meaning Love. She is the one I have a few pictures of holding here. As soon as I picked her up she started giving me this huge smile and it was the cutest thing ever. Just one more piece of my heart given away here. I don't know if I've written about this in my last blog but I will again. Her mother asked a stranger to hold her while she (mother) went to the restroom, but never came back. So Nothando has been in the hospital for a few months and I guess she is up for adoption or in the process. It's so sad to know that she doesn't have any family. So Katie and I will be her family the next 8 weeks we will be here. We walked around the ward and just talked with kids, they light up when you talk to them, hospitals here are so much more sad than in the States. Katie let a little boy listen to her iPod and he loved it. Then we went to the women's ward. There were probably about 15 women in this area. We prayed for most of them but some had family there so we didn't want to interrupt their time together. The first woman we prayed for spoke very good English. We just started talking with her and in the middle of the conversation she said "will you pray for me?" and we didn't really answer her but kept talking. She told us she has malaria and has been hurting all over her body, mainly her head and back. So then we asked if we could pray for her and she said "Seriously!" She was so excited about it, so we both prayed over her for healing and for her relationship with Jesus and when we said amen she looked up at us and said "All my pain is gone now. It's only in my head now." I like to believe that Jesus healed her and she was so happy, I told her we would be back next week but that I didn't want to see her next week because I hoped she would have been able to go home by then. She said she wanted to see us though, so I will let you know next time if we see her on Tuesday. Then she asked us to pray for the girl in the bed next to her. She said she has just come back from x-ray and cries all the time because she is in so much pain. So we just gently put our hands on her and started praying for healing & peace and all of a sudden she just stopped crying and relaxed. I don't know if he healed her permanently or just gave her temporary relief but either way it was awesome to see Him work immediately and in a way I had never seen before besides in the Bible. So Tuesday was a really great day to see Jesus use me

Wednesday - each week we are going to use this day as a day where we don't really plan anything but spend all morning until noon alone with Jesus and ask Him to show us where He would have us personally serve that day. So the morning was really a nice break for me because we are serving all the time that there have been a few days where I don't even get time alone with Him. So we had a few hours to be alone which I love. Then in the afternoon I went with a group on a home visit then came back and were done for the day. So overall it was a pretty low key day, which we need.

Thursday - this was the best day of my week for sure. I go to the TImbutini care point at our church up the road with just girls on our team, which is a nice break from the boys. There were only about 9 pre-school age kids in the morning so we just held them and some fell asleep, but I started taking pictures with the ones who were still awake because they love taking pictures and seeing themselves, they can't stop laughing when they do. So that's what some of the other pictures today are from. Then while we were at the care point, a huge flat bed truck, the size of an 18 wheeler pulls up and Musa (a guy on the Discipleship team at the church) asks us to help them load like 60 bags of porridge so we can take them to another care point. So 8 girls are picking up super heavy bags and throwing them up on top of the truck, it was hilarious and we were all laughing because Musa told us we were too slow. We spend a lot of time with Musa because he works for AIM as well and leads the singing on Sundays. He is a great guy, and very cute :) Then he tells us all to jump up on the back and go with them to drop the food off. So, in our missionary skirts we jump up on the back of this huge trailer and ride down the dirt roads to Tuwane care point. It was so much fun. Definitely an experience you would only have in Africa and we were all laughing the whole way there. The weather that day was also amazing because it was overcast with an amazing breeze so it was just perfect weather to ride on the back of a truck. It has been so hot every day so we loved the past few days of great cloudy/rainy weather. So we unloaded the bags and then got dropped off back at Timbutini care point. Then, walked back to our homestead and got in the vans to go to Spar, the grocery store in Manzini. We LOVE going to the grocery store. It's a nice taste of civilization for all of us and some people go crazy on buying snacks. Then a few of us went next door to this restaurant that has Wi-Fi, called Ramblas and got smoothies and iced coffee. It was so nice to be in a restaurant at a nice table with real glasses, not plastic. Then on the way home it was raining and we saw a double rainbow. Seriously the day was SO good, we couldn't stop talking about how great it was!

Friday - I go with the group back to the school in Manzini. But Mondays I am there from 8:00 - 1:00, but Fridays we just go from 1:00-2:00 and only meet with Grade 6. We will be doing a 'discipleship' type class/life skills with them. Today we just listened because Christine (the american teacher who also works with AIM that we work with) already had a lesson planned. Then we go to another care point in the afternoon, called Dabas. Katie, Stephanie & I are the 3 girls in this group and at this particular care point there are a lot of girls 12 & up that we are going to do a Bible Study with and mainly just talk about life with. So we met them today and they all wrote their crazy long names down so we could memorize them, and next week we will start the lessons. I am actually teaching the Grade 6 girls in Manzini next week so that should be fun. At the school on Fridays we will split up the guys and girls so we can talk about more gender specific things with them, so I was assigned by Christine to teach next week.

Saturday (Today) - This morning the Discipleship Team at our church in Timbutini put together a fun day for the kids in the community. They had a jump castle and soccer balls, bubbles, frisbees. It was a lot of fun and there were a lot of kids there. They all sang songs and I video taped it. I'm in love with their voices!

Here are some pictures from the week:

 Baby Nothando from the hospital

Sunset from our homestead

This is Tnamiso; I love this kid, he is such a trouble maker

but I'm so drawn to him

Some kids at the Timbutini care point they are so fun

The really good stuffed bread for dinner

on the night I cook with Tori

Me holding a Fat Cake/sweet bread Dad you would love them!

This is our homestead; the building you see is the kitchen/boys room

Me with baby Nothando at the hospital

She is laughing here, not crying even though it looks like it

Our ride on the back of the truck! Me, Liz & Kaci

The others on the truck; Katie Thrasher, Katie Tupper, Zanelle

and handsome Musa :)

Sorry I couldn't upload as many pictures this week the internet was really slow so next week I will put more

Loving God & People in Swazi

 Tori & I...this Friday & I hadn't showered since Tuesday, thank you Africa

 Team Blog Update

 Lots has happened since my last update.  I will give a short explanation of what we did each day this week. I absolutely love our translators and I have gotten to know them very well, they call me GoGo Jesse (gogo= grandmother)

Zanelle, the translator I am closest to gave me a Swazi name this week. She says you have to get to know someone before they can have a Swazi name because here names actually mean something. So a few days ago she gave me the name "Nothando" pronounced (Notando) which means "Love."

Sunday - I experienced my first African church service which was beautiful. The people all have beautiful voices, and you know they are singing with all their heart, where back home I may be in the sanctuary with a couple hundred people and still hear my own voice; the church we go to is about the size of my kitchen, living room & computer area at home (for those of you that have been there) and there were not nearly as many people, half of them children and the singing was incredible; all the kids sing and dance, I loved it!  So the singing lasted a little over an hour and the preaching was over an hour too so the service ended up being close to 3 hours which is crazy considering I start getting anxious after an hour back home but the time went by so fast and I can't wait to go tomorrow.  Also I have been so impressed with the kids here, they are so well mannered and even the youngest ones all sit so still during the super long services, definitely taking notes for one day when I have kids :) 

Monday - we went to a "Game Sanctuary" which is basically the same as a wildlife ranch but the animals are actually supposed to be here which is really cool.  We didn't see much though so that was kind of sad so I'm hoping we will get to go on a safari before we leave. We drove around in our vans for a long time looking for animals and saw some zebras, wildebeests, monkeys, wart hogs and some other weird animals but no giraffes or hippos so that was sad.  Then we went to this really great shaded area and spent 2 hours by ourselves praying and seeking God in what we feel He has for us personally to do as we are here in Africa.  It was really good to hear what everyone felt like they were here for

Tuesday - we split up into 2 teams, so 7 each with 1 translator per group and went to two different care points.  If a place is within walking distance, we walk, and walking distance here is much longer than what I would consider it to be at home.  We walk to church which only takes about 15 minutes, we can see it from our homestead, and that is also the location of one of our care points.  So one team went there, and my team went to another one, which was almost 1 hour walk one way and it was so so hot.  I will probably write about how hot it is the whole time, because it just is and I'm jealous of the apparently crazy winter weather y'all are experiencing back home!  So at the care point we played with the younger kids while we waited for the older ones to get there from school, which they walk from.  (Side note: most people don't have cars so they walk crazy distances just to get groceries then carry them back on their heads which is really impressive).  Once the older kids got there I was the one who got to serve them their food.  It was such an exciting moment for me, realizing I was in Africa serving food to hungry kids who walked miles just to get there.  They have such good manners. Once it's their turn to be served they hold their bowl out, I would scoop the food into it, and they would bow/curtsey and say thank you.  Then when they are finished eating they all (even the 3-4 year olds) go rinse out their bowls and wash it off with clean water, bring the bowl back to me, bow/curtsey and say thank you again.  What would your reaction be if a kid in America did that?  I think I am definitely going to experience some culture shock coming back to American kids!  Then we taught them the story of Noah and had them be the animals and make the noises which they thought was so funny.  I taught them a song I learned when I worked at TbarM, called Bombelela, which is an African song and you say "Bombelela.....Jesu Bombelela" which means "Hold on....Hold on to Jesus" and they all really like it so it's fun for me to teach it to all the kids at the different care points. 

Wednesday - we went to the hospital.  I'm not going to write about that because that's what I wrote about on my team blog so you can read it on there.

Thursday - we went to another care point we have spent a lot of time at, and it is also the place where one of the Americans who works for AIM here has this group called Timbali Crafts, and the women make purses and jewelry that I will definitely be buying as gifts.  So I had the privilege again of serving the children their morning meal.  Okay, so the reason I basically get to serve all the meals is because I go up with Zanelle our translator and start serving, maybe that's selfish but I really like doing it.  So we were at the care point for a pretty long time, playing games with the kids and singing songs.  Then we left and went to the grocery store!  Which is seriously like the highlight of our weeks because it is air-conditioned in there and it's just fun to buy food.

Friday - we went on home visits to some people in Timbutini.  My group went to a man's house who goes to our church; he is 32 and has to use a cane because he's had lots of health problems so we wanted to just go spend some time with him; we walked; we asked him to tell us the testimony he told on Sunday in church because that day no one translated for us so we didn't know what he said but at his house we brought our other translator Titi, so he told us his story from Sunday, then told us how he came to know Jesus; it was a beautiful story and he, Samson has such a heart for the kids in Swaziland; then after lunch we split up again and went to 2 different care points we hadn't gone to before.  The one my group went to is brand new and hasn't had any visitors so the kids were very different than the other places we had been. They didn't run up to us wanting us to hold them like most do and they were just staring at all these white people which probably looked strange to them.  This care point, being brand new only has 2 pots the Mages (mothers) cook with and then they have an area plotted out for where the kitchen will one day be.  The 'framing' was just big tree branches being held together in a square with wire, it's something you wouldn't have seen from the road because it was pretty far back in the bushes.  So we gathered all the kids and walked down to a more cleared area and I started out by teaching the kids Bombelela.  They loved it and wanted to sing it over and over.  We told them the story of Noah and had them act it out, which broke the ice and they started laughing and having fun with us.  After the story they sang some of their songs, we knew one of them because we sang it on church Sunday.  Every time the kids here sing, I feel like I'm getting to listen to the African Children's Choir because they all have beautiful voices.  Then we just started playing random games with them and I ended up playing soccer with all the boys while all the girls played a game kind of like duck-duck-goose.  I preferred soccer and the boys thought it was fun that I was playing with them.  They didn't really speak English but I could tell what they were saying because they would tell each other to always pass me the ball, so I had a lot of fun with them and it has been so great to learn how to get past the language barrier.  We didn't even have to talk when we were playing soccer but we could laugh and joke with each other.  Once again I see that love is our common language. 

So as you can tell it has been a very busy week for us and today we found out, FINALLY, what we will be doing on a regular basis, but T.I.A. and plans can always change.  I don't remember if I wrote before but that stands for This Is Africa.  Fluidity is the key, not just flexibility.  But I was SO excited (mom) to find out that I will be going to that really nice school in Manzini, every Monday and Friday and teaching some music/crafts/Bible stories to Grades 1-2 and maybe 3.  I think I mentioned in my blog from last week about that opportunity and how much I wanted to do it so I was super excited when I found out today that I will be going there every week.  Then we will be doing some hospital visiting and prayer as well as the Hope House and care points every week.  Sorry this is so long but I have one chance a week to tell y'all what I've been doing, so it will always be long!

Love you mom, dad, N&K, Adam and Daniel and everybody else but I have to say my family's name :)

I have had a dreams the past few nights about being home and so the homesick-ness is starting to set in so pray for me that I won't get too sad!

Here's some pictures from this week:

On the game reserve..not what you would expect in Africa?

Crocodile pond; but didn't see any :(

 

Wildebeests (not sure if I spelled that right)

There were so many monkeys jumping through the trees

Me & Zanelle (my favorite of our 2 translators; she is 26)

Cow stomach & rice..Zanelle tried to get me to eat it, I passed

Titi (left) Zanelle (right); they wanted me to take a picture of them eating the cow

stomach that they think tastes so good

One of the carepoints; at Pastor Walter's church (where we go)

This little girl wanted to take so many pictures; 

they love cameras & say "shoot me, shoot me"

The girl above wanted to take this of me

 

 

I want to bring these 4 home!

Happy February From Swazi

(I apologize ahead of time for any spelling/grammar mistakes on any of my posts. We only get one day a week to have internet so I type as fast as I can!) 
              I think it's good that I've waited until today to write a blog because if I would have written one Monday y'all would have missed out on knowing all I was able to see and do this week.  Marius, our contact here, has been so great and exposed us to so many different opportunities that we could take part in while in Swazi.  We have been to a facility for terminally ill patients, a school, care points all around Swaziland and had a little tour of Manzini.  It has been a very exciting week and I know the weeks ahead will be filled with so many life changing experiences for me. 

                Coming in to a trip like this, it is really hard to know what to expect, whether it is what the people will be like, your 'housing', the orphans, etc.  But no matter how hard I may have tried to figure out what it would be like, I wasn't even close! Swaziland is absolutely beautiful, it reminds me a lot of Italy (family).  The mountains are gorgeous, and it is so green because they get a lot of rain this time of year.  Definitely not the "Lion King" place that I imagined.  We (the girls) live in a hut with a grass roof :)  We are staying on Lelo's homestead in Timbutini. People in Swazi live in homesteads, where there are a few different huts that family will live in.  So Lelo lives on this homestead with his Go Go Shongwe (Grandmother Shongwe) and his 2 sisters.  Most homesteads have more relatives on the property but his situation is a little different.  We have had to get used to no air conditioning or fans, the electricity works about 50% of the time and we have outhouse type bathrooms, and a bucket that we shower out of!  We have decided the bucket showers are kind of fun, but not when the wind blows the door open; that happened to a girl on my team yesterday and she started screaming so loud I thought something much worse was happening.  There are 11 girls and 5 guys on my team, which is actually really big for a Real Life team. 

                When we went to Hope House (terminally ill facility) we got to go around and pray for the people there.  It was so humbling to walk into the room and just talk with them and see the hope they had.  One lady I prayed for was there because she had a stroke and although she could still feel her legs she couldn't walk.  After praying she looked up and said "I know that Jesus can heal me, nothing is too big for Him."  It brought me to tears to see the smile on her face, the joy that she was able to have despite here undesirable circumstances, and the hope she had in Jesus as her healer.  I really hope to be able to spend time there every week helping take care of the patients and just being someone they can talk to.  I'm really excited about that opportunity Marius gave us.  Another thing we did was go to care points.  Care points are places that children go to get 2 meals a day.  The Go-Gos (grandmothers) and Mages (mothers) in the community go there everyday to make the children meals.  The kids will walk miles just to get a meal, so we are able to meet them there and play, which is so much fun.  It's really funny because the younger ones that are not as good at English have memorized a few English phrases.  We got out of the combees (vans)  and walked down to the kids and they run towards us, jump in our arms and all at once they started saying: "Hello, my name is _____"  " I am ___ years old (and they hold up their fingers)" "I am a girl/boy". I started laughing it was just so funny because a few of them got confused at whether to say boy or girl.  Although there is a language barrier, I have realized that we share a language of love.  They just want you to hold them and play with them.  They love my watch and want to wear it and push all the buttons.  One day at the care points I was playing tag with a few kids, they love to hold your hand so we held hands and I started running around the field with them.  Then we started playing follow the leader, it was so funny because at one point I stopped and bent over because I was out of breath and they thought they were supposed to keep copying me so they all bent over and acted like they were out of breath.  By the end of the game I had about 6 kids running around the field with me.  This is a dream come true for me.  They win my heart the second you see them. 

                Another place we went was one of the schools in Manzini.  The king's son goes to this school so it is the top school to be at and the kids are very well behaved.  I will most likely be 1 of 4 girls that gets to go every Monday we are here, from 9:00 - 3:00 and teach Grade 1 & 2 crafts, songs and Bible stories.  I am so so excited about this.  All the kids speak English very well so there is no language barrier.  I hope to start on Monday but we aren't sure yet.  I will be helping Christine, a part-time teacher there who is actually from Connecticut.  So pray for that opportunity for me, I really felt like Jesus wanted me to be there and I know I could learn so much. 

                A few things you could pray for:  unity for our team because as you can guess with 11 girls there will be drama (although there hasn't been yet), restful nights, a continual breaking of my heart for the people here, good health for the team.  I actually felt sick this morning but I said "Jesus, I prayed for healing for the crippled woman with faith knowing you could heal her, so I know you can keep me from getting sick" within a few minutes I was feeling better so I was very grateful!  We are each also updating our team blog so check that out because we will all have different stories to share & what I post on there will be a little more 'formal' since it's not my own personal blog.

I miss home and family already! Mom, you are still the best cook in the world, and I already know all the things I want you to make me when I come home.  Happy late February 1st :)

Cute kid I got to play with at a carepoint;

This care point was very well sponsered by a church in California

 

Where the kids get a drink

of water; I thought it was a cool picture

This is Elliot; on our way from South Africa to Swaziland, we all of a sudden stopped on the side of the road and started honking..some boys ran down from the house in the field and handed these bottles to Elliot:  it is spoiled milk and Swazis LOVE spoiled milk

 This is the girls hut..African right? Definitely no fan or Air conditioning

My bed with the green; fam pictures at the bottom :)

Africa today!

I know I updated last night but I wanted to remind y'all that my team will be having a blog. When I'm not able to update this one our team blog will be updated.  They are going to be putting a video they made from our night on the streets in Atlanta up soon.  They showed it to us last night and I think that once you see it you will have a very good idea of what we did that whole night.  So don't forget to check my team blog as often as you check mine!

http://swaziland.adventures.org

Can't wait to get on the plane, even though it is about a 17 hour flight, I know that Africa is on the other side.  All week we have been doing listening prayer. I didn't know what that was before this week but God really used it to encourage me.  We would stand in a small circle with a few people and close our eyes; one person would step in the middle and without us looking to see who it was, we would pray and ask the Lord to give us something to say to them.  It was really new and uncomfortable for me at first but God really touched people's lives with words spoken over them.  One thing a girl said to me, who didn't even know who I was or where I was going: "I see feet running on a road; it's a dirt road and the feet are children's feet"
Okay so that might sound crazy to you, but all day I had been talking about how the children in Timbutini, Swaziland will walk miles just to get to the carepoints we will be working, so they can have a meal.  I wanted to walk these roads and meet the children so they didn't have to walk that way alone.  So, when this girl said that to me I got chills and was just amazed at how God spoke through her when she didn't even know that is what was on my heart all day.  There have been many other times throughout the week where similar things happened.  I hadn't shared my heart for the children there, and so many people as they prayed for me just talked about how they knew that when I held the children, they would feel Jesus' love, and when I played with the orphans, they would see Jesus.  It was so encouraging to hear other people confirm what has been in my heart for years.  In the next few days I will get to do these exact things!  I love my family and friends and miss you already.

Picture Update

This is the cabin at AIM...no electricity, 3 bunks high with all 25ish girls sleeping in it

Top Picture: is my whole team with the painting we did today

Bottom Picture: Tori, she's on my team and we have really enjoyed talking (Mom this is who I was talking about) and she is letting me use her computer to put these pictures up!

Our Team Blog

Today they were talking about blogging while we are in Africa.  Obviously we won't have wireless internet in our little African farm, but we will be about 20 km east of Manzini (Swaziland's 2nd largest city) so we will have the internet cafe there.  I hope I am able to update this blog as well as write on our team blog, but if I am not, then we will be updating our team blog weekly so you can read not only from me but from my other team mates as well. So Mom, they told us to tell parents that no news can be considered good news.  If I haven't updated in a while then we probably just haven't had time to make it to the internet cafe.  Hopefully we will be able to post pictures as well.

We leave for Africa tomorrow. It's so excited that a day I have waited years for is finally here, and I'm so looking forward to holding those orphans.  Pray for safe travel for the team and all our luggage to get there the same time we do, we don't have any connecting flights so if our luggage is on the plane in Atlanta then it should be there when we arrive in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Already miss people, but so glad God chose for me to be here.

Our team blog will be:  http://swaziland.adventures.org

Cold Nights & A Gracious God

So Monday morning I left for training camp which is located in Gainesville, GA. I met my team in the Atlanta airport and we were eventually given instructions to find a way to get to the Atlanta Safehouse. For some reason it didn't even cross my mind that a safehouse is a homeless shelter, I just thought that it was a cool name for a restaurant, so yes dad my blonde moments continue :) . But, that's definitely not what it was! So once we got there we were taken to rooms with lots of bunk beds and everybody quickly claimed one. Then we went upstairs and got our dinner: a peanut butter & jelly, an apple and chips. I was very tempted to complain but didn't see how I could with so many homeless people downstairs. Our next instructions were given to us in an envelope and informed us that we would be spending the night on the streets of Atlanta, seeing firsthand what these people face every night. I was definitely scared and not to thrilled to be honest. After a long day of traveling we were all just looking forward to getting in bed. So we went out around 9:30 that night and were not supposed to come back to the safehouse until 4:00 am. So we went out and just talked to people. It was crazy to see how easy it was for hem to come up and talk to you. Almost every person would start out asking if we would pray for them and then once we did they didn't hesitate to ask us for money. We were told not to bring money with us so we didn't have to lie when they asked us for money and we said no. But once we told them we couldn't give them money they were not interested I talking to us at all. It was really discouraging that they would pull the "God card" to try and get something from us. A few of the homeless would 'prophesy' over us then ask us for money. The first person, Greg, did this to my group. Once we told him that we couldn't give him any money he told us that we didn't need to listen to men (our leaders that told us to not bring money) but to listen to the Holy Spirit who Greg felt like was telling each of us to give him money. He then accused a few people of not tithing enough, it was pretty crazy. It was definitely one of the hardest nights I've had but I'm sure by the end of the trip I will have many more. 


Yesterday we got to the AIM training facilities, and found out we wouldn't have electricity. So last night when it got below freezing I quickly realized I would not be sleeping, which unfortunately ended up being the case and morning definitely could not come soon enough. But God has given me grace sufficient for the day.  Just a few days in and I am already learning so much.  But tonight, they let us go up to the main cabin where we meet & have meals so I am so grateful for a warm place to sleep tonight.  Tomorrow is our last full day of training and it has been pretty intense so far.  I'm having to learn that just because some people worship a certain way doesn't mean that it's wrong for me not to, that my relationship with Jesus is my own.  So I have continually prayed for my worship to be my own, for me to not judge other's worship and for me not to change the way I worship just so it will be like everyone else's.    

I have been told we will be able to update our blogs Monday, February 1 but I'm not sure what internet will be like in Swaziland.  It is Africa so I know things like that are not very consistent but I hope to update as much as I can. Friday we leave for Africa and I absolutely cannot wait to be there. This time in Georgia is necessary for our team to get to know each other but my heart aches to be in Swa ziland. It has been really 'neat' (mom) to see how God put our teams together.  I looked around and saw that each team has its own personality and the girls on my team are so awesome.  Actually right now they are all doing push-ups because we are going to have a workout group in Africa.  We will see how long that lasts!  


I covet your prayers as the Lord is already stretching me. Next time I update I will be in Africa!

The picture is of the homeless shelter we stayed in. Not a very good picture, but it's all I have so far, hopefully the next ones will be of some beautiful Swazi people.