<–Mandesa- she’s hillarious!
Another week in Africa.
This week our team took some time listening to the Lord as to where we felt led to minister. We’ve been taking another week to get acclimated to our surroundings and build relationships with others. It takes a while to understand concepts of their culture since it is so different from ours. Some examples- most of the time it isn’t appropriate to call an older woman by her name. It’s similar to the concept of Mr. and Mrs. but rather mage or gogo. Also, when offered food it is always considered rude if you reject. Thankfully I have yet to experience being offered something repulsive, although some girls on my team ate cow stomach.
This week we have been working a lot with the care points and trying to establish relationships with the kids. We’ve taught some Bible stories, songs and games a few times this week. The kids here are generally so much better behaved than the kids in the U.S. They are taught to be respectful and they are all so soft-spoken. Aside from the care points we visited the hospital in Manzini. I really felt this was somewhere I would see the broken hearted. One of the big differences was that there is absolutely no privacy among patients. The beds are lined up out in the open in a large room. Some people are clothed and some are not. A lot of the reasons why people come into the hospital are extremely preventable and usually rare in the U.S. Some of the younger children were there for snake bites. Some were there for malnourishment. There were a wide variety of reasons.
In the women’s ward we had really sensed spiritual warfare and got the feeling that there were women who were relying on witch doctors for healing. Everyone here is very open to prayer because they don’t want to disrespect anyone. We were able to pray over all of the patients aside from those who were in the hospital for TB.
In the children’s ward I saw the cutest little baby girl. Usually the families sit by their children and care for them because professionally help is so overworked. I asked one of the ladies if the little baby girl was her child and she said no. She proceeded to tell me that this baby girl had been abandoned. Her mother asked someone to hold her while she went to the bathroom and she just never came back. Next to this baby girl was also a little boy who had been abandoned. His mom had left him at the door of the hospital. These stories just broke my heart. They said they were working on finding their families but who knows when or if this will happen. I just held the little girl for the rest of the time in the hospital until we had to leave. She had the cutest little smile. Next week I’m pretty sure some of our team will get to go back there. I look forward to checking in on the people I got a chance to pray with and the baby girl.
As the weeks go on we’ll have more of a set schedule. For now I am a part of the group that will be going to the hospital. I also will likely be a part of forming relationships with gogos who are a part of Timbali crafts. I haven’t had a chance to really do this yet so I can’t really explain what that looks like.
