The Heat

   SOO. My Life skills class with the 7th grade boys is now officially awesome. I have gotten to know all of the guys and we talk about everything. Sometimes the teacher gets carried away with conversations about the world cup or Arsenal, but for the most part we stay on track.    This is what Friday mornings look like for me.   One of my Friday morning Talks, with Bheki translating/making me sound better.        Proudly showing off my stolen water bottle.     I have so little time left here. I’m trying to make the very...

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happy birthday, my bheks!

I almost feel like a broken record saying that we have got to love, but we’ve got to. That’s what we’ve got to be about. We have got to love God above anyone else and then we must love others. Good, bad, ugly, pretty, old, middle aged (that’s for you Dad), young (and you Mom) brown, black, white, yellow we have got to love!!! Let me tell you a story… We’ve been here in Swaziland for almost 2 months now. If I couldn’t peel dirt off me like you do with a bad sun burn I wouldn’t believe that we’ve been here that long but I can…...

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Celemephilo.

Timbutini care point. The sun is beating down. As usual, half of my team is sitting under the tree outside the church.The kids are laughing and asking us our names in a circle over and over. They’re jumping and running, lost in the afternoon. I look up to find my eyes fixed on a shirtless little boy with his belly pushing outward in hunger. His green pants are torn and dusty, barley able to stay up. He has scars and scratches all over his body along with oozing sores on his head. The flies are surrounding him and there is fear in his eyes. I ask him his name in siSwati and...

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I want to go home!

“I want to go home!” screamed Lungile during a church service last Monday. When we took her back to her room, she still persisted, “I want to go home!” She had no idea what she was asking. Calie and I visited Lungile, a 39 year old woman, every Monday and Friday for the last month at the Hope House, a long-term care center in Manzini for the very sick and terminally ill. Lungile had moved in the week before we first visited her in early February.  The first time Calie and I walked in we found a fun woman with a lot of energy. Our...

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Broken Homes and Broken Bones.

On Tuesday I visited a care point later in the afternoon. we told the story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. The kids loved it when they got to be the sea and “swallow” the Egyptians into their crowd. While we were telling the story I noticed a boy sitting by himself behind the main group of kids. His leg was all wrapped up and he couldn’t walk on it. Neil was sitting next to him during the story....

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Learning His Voice.

  On Wednesday Myself and six other girls went with our translators to do a few home visits. One of the GoGo’s that we visited was in her late nineties. I could hardly believe how young she looked! when I first saw her she was carrying a sack of corn in from the field. She was a petite woman with a cane on her right to support her arching back. This woman was the mother of eleven children, she has grand children, great grand children, and even great great grand children. We only asked how many grand children she had, after about ten minutes of counting and thinking,...

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