I'm back.....

My friend, Laura and I arrived in Swaziland on Wednesday afternoon February 4th. Richard Bosart was kind enough to drive us over. Much to our surprise, it misted most of the way from Johannesburg to Swaziland, and by the time we got to the border it was outright raining. The summer (which we are in down here) is the rainy season, but this rain is very out of character. It has been raining a lot over the last two weeks.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that they had called Lungile, the girl who normally does some laundry and cleaning for me, to come and clean my house. I didn’t have to walk into a mass of cob webs and lots of dust. Unfortunately, because of the rain the clean floor got muddy very quickly.

My toilet bowl wouldn’t fill after flushing, but Richard cleaned out the filter and fixed that problem and my phone didn’t work. But other than that everything was fine. What a difference from last year. I called the phone company today and they came this afternoon to fix it. Amazing.

I’ve only turned onto the wrong side of the road once so far so things are going good. I saw Thoko today and we had such a good time catching up, although there is much, much more catching up to do. It sounds like she and the volunteers did a super job while I was gone, which I had complete confidence and faith that they would.

One of the real blessings that happened while I was gone was that as we had planned, food parcels were taken to the homesteads of the children we are helping through one of the grants. As it turned out, the chairman of this committee went as well as one of the associate pastors. When they took the food parcel to Mthokosiwe’s homestead, his father was there. Mthokosiwe is the young man who will now be going to school thanks to a grant from the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. He also acts as the head of household to three younger children because the mother’s whereabouts is unknown and the father would rarely come home from where he works about 3 hours away. The father met Thoko and the others and expressed how bad he felt that he didn’t come home more often and that he couldn’t provide much for his family. Indeed that is part of the reason he stayed away; he felt so bad and people kept giving him a hard time. But he was so touched by what the children had told them the ladies have done for the family. He said obviously God loves his family and he wants his children to go to church to know God better. The father stayed home for the holidays and started building again on a house he had started so the children will have a better place to live. Praise God! Miracles do happen every day.

We tried to drive up to Lomngeletjane today to see if the kitchen/storage/office building was completed, but the mud was so slippery that after three attempts, Richard turned around. The rain has stopped a little bit this afternoon so I am hoping we can make it up there tomorrow. I need my kid fix and I can’t wait to see the finished building (hopefully).

It was a great time in the US. It was so great to spend so much time with so many of you. Thank you all for your support – financial and emotional. I have carried it back with me. I look forward to an exciting 2009 serving God by loving and helping his children one child (of any age) at a time and heart at a time.

God bless you all.