.
During our last interview, my daughter...
What did we talk about?
As I was saying, my daughter described what life was like for her team out in a rural Swazi homestead.
Oh, that's right.
Before we move on, Indie, is there anything else you want to say?
The people who lived there [the Swazis] were really hardworking. One morning, after the cows had broken in to our compound, the gogo [grandma] just picked up a cow patty and threw it into the burn pile with her bare hands.
Were the gogos in general pretty willing to do whatever needed to be done?
Yes, they were polite and practical and not squeamish.
Do you want to clarify anything else about your living conditions or your teammates before we move on?
Is it fully established that by this point I'd really gotten to know everyone pretty well and loved everybody and hopefully made some lifelong best friends.
So any wrong first impressions were pretty much dealt with by this time?
Yes, Chris is not a snob and there were no cliques and Ray was not an emo kid. I thought he was going to be an emo kid.
Did anyone or anything else about the team surprise you? I'm guessing that living together 24/7 and working together as you were really stripped away the masks.
Yeah, we learned a lot of stuff about each other and even some things I would have been okay about not knowing.
But through it all y'all just got closer and closer.
Yeah.
Okay, so on to ministry while you were at Timbutini. Obviously, just the daily taking care of each other was ministry.
Ha! Especially cleaning the squattie potties.
And going to the bathroom with each other in the middle of the night?
Yeah, those were experiences. It's funny how people say things in the middle of the night and they don't remember them in the morning. One time I had a whole conversation with Rachel when I was going out with her to the squattie potties and in the morning when I mentioned it, she didn't remember it at all. I wonder if she slept walked.
And you were the favorite squattie escort, right?
Yeah, because if they took me they didn't have to take another person because I wasn't scared of the dark or the animals or anything else and I can be kind of scary looking when I'm mad.
Now that's a unique ministry.
Anna laughs out loud from my bed...
Yeah.
Okay, so anyway. What did you all do with your days when you weren't doing massage trains or cleaning squattie potties or dancing to Michael Jackson or Johnny Cash music?
We went to the carepoint at the Timbutini Church every day. Several nights we went to the revival that was being held at the Timbutini Church. A lot of times we would "ATL" walk around the Timbutini area.
Stop for a sec, for those not in the know, what is ATL and what did you do on an ATL walk?
ATL means "Ask the Lord". What we would do on an ATL is we would pray that God would just lead us how He wanted and we would go in groups of about 5. If we felt an urge to, we'd just go up to someone and talk to them or pray for them. We would also do home visits [on the ATL walks] and those could be interesting. But home visits would usually be a seperate thing that we would set out to do with someone who could intrepret for us.
Can you tell us about a specific time or two that something special happened during the ATLs?
One day the leaders set out a group with just teenagers. It was Chandler [from Mississippi], Megan [also from Mississippi], Kirstyn, Ray, and Chris. They let them go out on an ATL home visit on their own. When we would walk to the carepoint, there would always be these women and kids that would wave and call out to us. So, they decided to go up to that house and talk to them. The women told them that they had been praying that we would go up there and visit them. They kept thanking them for coming to see them. Later on, our driver who drove us from Swaziland to South Africa told us that it was his homestead and his family that had been visited. And he thanked them, too, for going to see them.
You know what, I don't think I'm doing a very good job of doing the interview tonight. We should pick up this stimulating conversation another time.
All the French cajun songs and love songs I've been listening to have killed my brain.
Plus, you've not been feeling very good today.
Yeah, that too, but that's just a little thing.
Okay, we'll end it for now.
Y'all keep praying for Indie as she still needs complete recovery from the infection she brought back with her and also just keep praying for her and the team as they continue to process what they saw and learned.
As she lays on my bed dressed in early-90's grunge with blue ear buds hanging on the OUTSIDE of her ears.
I want you to be able to enjoy the music, too.
That's my girl.
Goodnight all, or as the Swazis would say, lala kahle!
No comments:
Post a Comment