Sunday and Monday's Activities

We've been so busy, it has been hard to update the blog. I'm sorry. The team worshiped with the congregation at Lomngeletjane on Sunday. It was a wonderful service. The team really enjoyed the spirit that moved so beautifully amongst the people. Below is a picture of some of the congregation dancing with joy of the blessings they have received. Following the service they served us a delicious meal of semp and sugar beans, white and red skinned native sweet potatoes, maize, maize bread, salad, beef in gravy. It was all wonderful.


After lunch, we visited the Swaziland Cultural village. Below are a few pictures of some of the team learning to dance the traditional Swazi dances! After the dancing we took a short tour of a traditional homestead and then went to Mantenga Falls which are very near to traditional homestead.





Today, the team was back hard at work at Lomngeletjane. We had several work groups going on. One team gave the grade one children play dough to play with. They had never seen play dough and at first they weren't sure what to do with it. But they caught on real quick! Another team took individual pictures of all of the children and teachers in the preschool and primary school. That was a lot of fun working with the children to try and get them to smile and look at the camera at the same time! Barbara and Ann had the patience of a saint. The pictures will be given to the children on the last day. These children have never had a picture of themselves so this should be quite a treat.
A third team worked on painting the latrines. Just the coat of primer on the outside walls makes a huge difference! They are racing against the clock to get them finished before they leave. Then a fourth team worked at scraping the paint off the windows. When the windows were originally painted by John the builder, he did a rather quick and messy job. The team repainted the windows on Saturday and then today started scraping off all of the paint that was on the window panes. They look fantastic. A fourth team worked with a few of the local men digging the trenches for the foundation of the teacher's house.
We also had a few ladies from St. Paul's that planted about a 8 or 10 trees that had been donated to the school. And last, but certainly not least, several of us ladies helped 4 Swazi ladies take the maize off of the cob so it can eventually be ground into mealie meal which is then cooked for the children to eat at their break (lunch) time.
Tomorrow will be another busy day. We are going to start earlier than we have been starting because everyone is getting anxious to finish some of the projects before we leave on Thursday morning for Kruger National Park.
I will try to get some updated pictures on the website on Tuesday.