Musings from Graceland

A SWAZI SUNDAY, Part I
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Yesterday I started posting my diary entries from last year's trip to Swaziland, Southern Africa, with Children's HopeChest. Today's entry describes how we spent our Sunday in that beautiful mountain kingdom.
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1/27/08 11:53 pm
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Today was a day filled with with extreme joy yet extreme grief.

We attended Pastor Walter's church and what a time of rejoicing, worship, and truth it was.




The singing was joyful and spirit filled. I loved watching and participating. We were only able to stay for 1.5 hours before we had to leave. I think all of us wish we could have stayed much longer.


We ate Kentucky Fried Chicken wrap-ups on the way to Kevin Ward's ministry farm, Hwane Farm. It is a beautiful orphan care facility ...with a school, homes for the orphans... a small clinic, a gift shop selling handmade crafts...and sustainability projects such as a catfish pond......rabbit hutches...
...a piggery, agricultural plots, etc.

Kevin Ward [in the white shirt above] is a white Swazi citizen whose family has lived here for a long time. He was a pastor of Mbabane Int'l Baptist Church a few years after the Davidsons [my head missionaries] left. He is now the pastor of another church [Potter's Wheel ].

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I also met & spoke to his wife. She and I agreed that we must have met sometime because she used to attend MIB Church when I was there.

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It was then that I had my lowest moment so far of the trip. We were discussing different things about Mbabane including that the preschool is still going strong----when we started talking about people dying of HIV/AIDS and the subject of my maid Fikile came up. I shared that I was worried that she had died because I had not heard from her in years. Kevin's wife [Helen] said that it was quite likely considering her age and the circumstances in S'land.

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I lost it at that point and started weeping. In the van I totally lost it and just wailed with grief. Sweet Mair prayed a powerful prayer for me. It was a comfort and so was the presence of the other folks in the van.

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By the end of the day, well even before, the joy has returned but I still hurt for all my lost loved ones. [Because with the death rate as it is, surely many I know from my missionary days have passed away. In fact, I've been told by my former supervising missionary that one family in our church had died from HIV/AIDS.]

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