Just when I think I have it all down pat, God has a way of stirring things up!!!! Since I returned from Swaziland God has reawakened my senses to His hand reaching and touching and moving in mighty ways. Sometimes we get a little complacent and serve Him out of routine and stop seeing through His eyes! God has been mixing things up and I have been having several opportunities to see Swaziland (where I have been working for almost 5 years) in different lights!!! WOW!!! God is working!!!
I have gotten to spend some full days at CarePoints (a missionaries dream) and realize what a hard working, love giving staff we have. I spent 2 1/2 hours walking and doing "home visits" at one CarePoint and hearing their love for the children and the community. I have hiked up and down hills at another and hear the pride and joy from other facilitators. I am honored and humbled by their dedication.
I also have had the privilege, the past couple of weeks, to visit some feeding sites where we are helping with some Feed My Starving Children rice packets. I, along with Stephen Prince have met some ordinary, every day people who are striving to help the young, weak, orphaned or lost people in their community!!!! Do you ever think you are the only one doing anything? We are not!!! Let me tell you!
I was humbled today as we went to a community that took 1 hour and 55 minutes to get to from Ezulweni which means another 15 min to our office in Mbabane. 55 minutes of that drive was on the roughest and longest dirt road that I have ever traveled. (It would make a pregnant lady give birth!) We bounced along for 30 kilometers to a community that not even transport ventures so far. Here is where Pastor Mkhonta "Em-cone-tah" has his church. Here is where he brings back food to feed over a hundred children from his community with distended bellies, many who are orphaned. Here is where he and his congregation are building a church, piece by piece, little by little with visions of helping his community. He has a vegetable garden and raising chickens to sell and he has a heart that is soooo big and soooo moving! How he can do any of this so far out there is a testimony to perseverance and courage and faith!! This is a pastor that has no vehicle to bring in food or building supplies but has to try to organize somehow to get it there. This is a community that if someone gets sick they have to be carried by friends down and up the next mountainside to the road where transport comes. I think of the story in the Bible where the friends carried the man on the pallet to Jesus. Pastor Mkhonta is letting His light shine and changing his community for the better.
Again and again, whenever I get comfortable with being labeled a "missionary" God opens my eyes to see that we are all missionaries! Whether we are ministering across the ocean or in our back yard we are called to share Christ's love with a hurting world! A world that need to know, really know His love!!! God is at work through each one of our facilitators at the CarePoints, through pastors and communities across Swaziland and through us if we let Him!!! Our God is an amazing God!!! I am honored to get opportunities to see God working through others! May I be inspired to let my light shine for Him even brighter and longer and with less whining!
