Youth Celebration @ Fonteyn!!!

It has been a while since I posted but a lot went on the last week between school terms. I had posted about Mangwaneni's Youth Celebration on May 2nd but Fonteyn was not to be outdone!!!

May 13th was a beautiful day and the youth had a great time!! (Check out the spy in the tree)

We started with rhythm and musical games! (yes that is die hard musical chairs!)

Then went to team games.

We had fill the bucket by passing handfuls, wrap your team in toilet tissue & carry your team races!!!

Of course we had the one handed hand stand, find the right shoe and pyramid stacking races!!!

What would races be without who can eat and swallow 4 bananas the fastest!!

And Jabu finished her bunch first!!!!

From pop your balloon first!!! (Note the popped pink balloon - He won!)

To down the soda fastest!!

And the winning team was!!!!

Then it was time for praise and worship and teaching from Harrison on 1 John 4:4!!

Those that had been attendeding Youth Club regularly received their 2010 "Creating Christlike Leaders" bright orange youth T-shirt!! We all had a great time fellowshipping and learning about how great God is!!!!!

Tribute to Gugu wami

Today is the memorial and all night vigil for my closest Swazi friend, Gugu Dlamini "Goo-goo Slah-mee-knee". Tomorrow before dawn she will be buried. I have been to burials before but this will be my first all night vigil. It will take place at the husband's parents homestead and will be outside under a tent all night (it should be nice and cold--remember we are heading into winter here). It is part of the mourning process here in Swaziland. We will sing, people will preach, we will sing, preach, sing, preach, etc. until just before dawn when Gugu will be laid to rest. Unlike the US (burial being before the sun rises is also unlike the US) we will not only have a short service by the grave but we will lower and bury the coffin, shoveling spadefuls of dirt on and packing it down every so often. It is a hard but a meaningful time.

I affectionately called her Gugu wami "goo-goo wah-me" (my Gugu). She is the Swazi friend who gave me my Siswati name; Nomathemba Dlamini "No-mah-tim-bah Slah-mee-knee" It means "You bring hope". She would call out "my Noma" when she needed me in the office. Most call me Make Sandra (momma Sandra) but I was always Nomathemba to my precious Gugu.

Gugu had a way of making you feel at home and loved from the first moment you met her. She gave great hugs and could always made me laugh even when I was in a bad mood.

She was God's hands and feet. Gugu's life was not easy by any means but she never let you know that. Even on really bad days, she would bring joy and love to the office.

This past Monday, the office staff met to share and mourn and rejoice Gugu's life. It was unanimous that the one word that we would use to describe Gugu was LOVE. No one ever spent any amount of time with Gugu and did not feel cherished. She was the heart of the office. We joked that you could not even go to the kitchen to get tea or to the restroom without passing Gugu's office door and getting a big smile! If we could just love on people half as well as she did. She was absolutely God's hands and feet!!!

She is survived by her father, her husband and 3 beautiful daughters, Khetsiwe "Ket-see-way" (far left), Noncedo "Known-tay-dow" (eldest and in front of Gugu) and Sethu "Set-too" (next to me) who are pictured below at Roger and Mary's engagement party 18 months ago.

1 John 3:18 says "Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions." Gugu wami, you showed us well!!! I love you and miss you and look forward to dancing with you in the presence of the King for all eternity!!!!!

God is AMAZING!!!

God has been growing me in such leaps and bounds, and stretching me beyond my comfort levels. Amazing, exhausting, scary and special are the words that come to mind. So before next week and several different ministries occur, I must share some of the more personal things God has been blessing me with.

I’ve been reading Richard Blackaby’s book Unlimiting God. It is an excellent book and one scripture has been challenging me, repeatedly. It is 2 Kings 4:1-7, where the widow came to Elisha to say the creditors were coming to sell her sons into slavery. “He (Elisha) instructed her to gather all the containers she could borrow from her neighbors. ‘Do not gather just a few,’ he urged her. She was to pour her meager amount of oil into those containers, then ‘set aside the full ones.’” And then the question in the book that has haunted me “If God gave you that message, how many containers would you collect? When would you decide you had gathered enough?” “The flow of oil ceased because the widow had no capacity to receive anything more from God. It wasn’t that God couldn’t keep the oil coming; the woman simply was incapable of receiving any more . . . God responded to the level of her faith.”

Oh, to grow my level of faith!!!

He has blessed me with so much, not so much materially as He has in joy and peace and hunger to know Him more. I thought the opportunity to take a trip of a lifetime through Southern Africa was beyond my grasp, financially and time away from the office. But God let the oil flow.

The trip was birthed in an effort to give support to a former colleague, Karabo "KB" from Botswana by attending his wedding and helping out the day before. KB is a testimony of God’s grace and love as God he grew this young man, whose life had reached the bottom, through his mom placing him in a teen challenge program in foreign country to overcome his addictions. Her graduated from there and pursued bible college and become an instrumental worker in discipling our cooks at Children's Cup and now he had found a godly woman, Lebo, to share his life with. It was an honor to be able to attend.

If that was not enough, God enabled us to be able to see one of the 7 Wonders of the World, Victoria Falls (just a few hundred kilometers beyond the wedding)

And then to travel down to see the ministry going on in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe through Celebration church and Children’s Cup and to spend time with Zinty, who used to be my right hand person with Mission of Mercy in Swaziland, and her husband Lungile.

God’s hand was evident the whole trip; from the shoestring budget, the safe roads, my truck not having any trouble, smooth passage at the borders, and no problems with the police.

He blessed us with getting to spend time with old friends who had moved away and to make new ones.

God is so faithful!!! What if I had brought Him more jars to fill?

Youth Celebration @ Mangwaneni!!!

Children's Cup youth discipleship leaders are going to every CarePoint over the term break and celebrating the youth clubs. This past Saturday, Mangwaneni CarePoint had their youth club celebration day!!! What chaos!! What fun!! What surprises!!

They played challenge after challenge from unwrapping a roll of toilet paper the fastest around your team to eating a bunch of bananas first, from getting a straw in your mouth first without use of your hands or blowing a balloon up until it pops to pair chugging of a 2 liter soda. Sweets were to be had for all winners. Laughter resounded off the walls as 14 of our youth participated and many younger children watched with longing to be older. Harrison, assisted by some of Mangwaneni's youth, had a time of singing and worship followed by a teaching on 1 John 4:4 "Greater is He that is in me, than He that is in the world." The youth also won sweets for sharing other verses they had memorized. At the conclusion, after prayer, those who have been attending the youth program regularly were rewarded with a brand new, bright orange, youth club 2010 t-shirt with "Creating Christlike Leaders" on it. Swaziland, watch out for these youth as God starts working mightily in their lives. (Sphesihle Bhembe "Spay-see-sleigh Bim-bay") is one of those. Keep her in your prayers as she tests on May 22nd to attend an advanced high school. If she passes, this will be a great opportunity for a brighter future for her and we will work with her to try to raise the funds for her to attend.) Check out the pictures of all the fun!