Photos

The house we are staying in

 The view from our house

Brian's house with the roof they are working on

Blessings

I’ve been continuing to study Respectable Sins, which I had begun to study with the ladies Bible study back in Telkwa. While I continue to read the pages I’m surprised at how many sins I’ve chosen to ignore in myself and feel compelled to make a better effort to change. One of the things I often forget to do is to give thanks, to remember where all good things come from and to thank God for the many blessings He has gifted us with. Some of the things that I’m especially thankful for right now include:

•    Being in Swaziland, it felt like we’ve been waiting for this to happen since Arlyn made his first trip here last February and now finally a year later, we love being here
•  I thought I was moving into a tent but block walls surround me;that feels so much safer and more comfortable to me. We’ve been especially grateful for the house recently when there have been heavy rains or thunder and lightening.
•    We have electricity, most of the time, and can store cold drinks in the fridge and use a fan to help us sleep better.
• Its been hot, extremely hot, but the recent rains have cooled things down 
• I’ve begun volunteering at a children’s home and it seems to be a good fit; I wanted to work with kids and they needed some extra hands at the moment. 
•  All of the children call me “Auntie Maria”, which reminds me of my nieces and nephews back in Canada! 
• I get to work alongside two great Swazi women at the children’s preschool and I’m really enjoying my time with them.
• Arlyn’s been learning to be even more patient with me; I get scared on the back of the motorbike when I think we’re moving too fast and I hate turning around corners when he has to lean into the corner but while I’m attempting to conquer my fear he’s being extra patient and understanding with me and even drives slower than he wants. 
•   We got to spend a recent weekend with Dr. Barry Lester, an optometrist who works in Smithers near where Arlyn grew up. It was so wonderful to see a familiar face here and to show Dr. Lester where we’re living now, where Brian’s building and talk to him about what we’ve been up to here. We also got to visit him on Sunday in Siteki, the area where he was staying and working and it was wonderful to see another beautiful part of this country, meet some great people and be part of their house church. Dr Lester also spoiled us with a wonderful braai for lunch.
• Arlyn’s taken a new interest in birds and so many beautiful ones here surround us, its fun to discover new ones that we haven’t seen before.
•  We went to church yesterday and were surrounded by so many wonderfully welcoming people. It was great to meet them and to feel so welcomed. Listening to everyone sing was brilliant
•  Arlyn used Valentine’s day as an excuse to spoil me and took me out on a wonderful date where we enjoyed swimming in the pool and a delicious dinner. 
•  I am so grateful, we are so grateful, for all of you who have made it possible for us to be here. We’re so excited to see where God leads us here and how He’ll use us and we’re thankful and humbled that you are taking this leap of faith with us. 
•  I don't understand why the font has changed but I'm thankful that this internet cafe is still open so at least we can post!

Week 2

Well, I’m already failing at posting weekly, I’m not surprised though and if you know me well you’re probably not surprised either..sorry, I will try to do better. Things have been going well for us and we’re really enjoying our time here so far. Having just arrived 2.5 weeks ago, we’re still finding our way, and we’re enjoying this journey that we’re on. We’ve already experienced some wonderful opportunities. Arlyn has been staying busy helping Brian with his house. They’ve made a lot of progress and after some long hours, lots of sweat and lots of deliberation they’ve figured out how best to put up the roof. It’s ready to be thatched so some local men are going to start on that process tomorrow. 

Many of the homes here in Swaziland have thatched roofs; which gives a cooler covering than tin. Swazi homes are also often built in a round formation and usually families will live on the same plot of land together, with their own separate houses, which are round or now more modern rectangular block homes and they’ll also have an extra building on their land which is always round with a thatched roof and is used to conduct meetings and host guests. 

While Arlyn’s been helping at the house he has also been enjoying getting to know the local people. Brain has three Swazi guys that are helping build his home and kids from the local community often stop by to check on what the white guys are doing!

I’ve begun volunteering at a Christian children’s home called New Hope Centre which is located outside Matsapha and is almost 40km away from where we are staying. New Hope Centre provides a home for true orphans, children are admitted if they are between the ages of 2 and 12, and they all live there together as a family. Right now New Hope Centre is providing a home for 50 children aged between 2.5 and 18 and some of their older children are studying abroad. 

Every weekday morning the children and staff attend chapel at 8am, they sing praise and worship songs together, dance and praise God. I’ve got two left feet and my singing voice is definitely not sweet but surrounded by those children singing so beautifully even I’m encouraged to try and sing along and attempt the actions to their songs. After singing together some of the children with a staff member lead a study time; they read a Bible story, talk about how it relates to their lives and then learn a memory verse together. Everyone then prays together, on my first morning there I was invited to introduce myself and then all the children prayed for me. It was such a humbling experience to have some little ones come and lay hands on me while they prayed together that my time there would bless them and that they too could be a blessing to me. 

New Hope Centre has a preschool and uses the ACE curriculum to run a primary and high school on site too. The children are all involved in extra activities like swimming, ballet, gardening and music lessons. They have chickens and cows on site and some of the older children are currently involved in a milking programme to learn how to better care for their cows. 

I’ve been spending my time there helping out at the preschool, which I love. I’m enjoying getting to know the children and spending time with them, playing, learning and exploring. This past week we studied days 5 and 6 of creation, sung songs, made lots of fun crafts, watered the flower garden and learned about the number 3 and colour brown! The young children have already begun learning Bible verses and even though the youngest are 2.5 they’ve mastered toilet training and help out with little chores too. I was so surprised on my first day there when one of the 2.5 year olds had finished her lunch she took her plate to the kitchen, stood on a little chair by the sink and began to wash her own plate, spoon and cup. The children all help to contribute to the household chores and learn to give back at a young age. Some of the older children are involved in ministry to local schools, they visit the sick at the hospital’s children’s ward and even go and visit the prison too. 

New Hope Centre has created such a joyful place, all of the buildings are brightly painted with murals, music plays, the children’s laughter can be heard and it’s hard to imagine that the children all come from such devastating backgrounds. So many of these kids know loss that I can’t even imagine, have suffered abuse or have been neglected by society but through loving care at New Hope Centre and lots of prayer their lives have been transformed. I’m so grateful that I can help out there, just a little, get to know some of the children and learn from them. 

Arlyn was able to purchase a motorbike helmet recently and I’ve been borrowing Brian’s so Arlyn’s been taking me to NHC on the motorbike in the mornings before he joins Brian on the work site. We’re so thankful to be able to use Brian’s bike as it’s a much faster way of getting around and it’s so much cheaper to run than the truck.

What We've Been Up To

We’ve been able to spend time at the piece of property that Manna has purchased. Brian is currently building a small home there and we too hope to build a home there. Arlyn has been already planning where he can place an aquaponic garden to teach people how to grow vegetables while using fish in a limited amount of space. The Manna property is beautiful; we travel on dirt roads up a mountain to get there and can enjoy beautiful views of the surrounding areas.

Brian’s home is almost finished the building stages and Arlyn and Brian hope to begin working on the roof soon. We went on a fact finding trip to try and purchase special pressure treated wood to build the roof and drove almost half way across the country in just over an hour. Unfortunately there are many cultural things that we need to learn and although we found some wood we didn’t realise that Friday was payday so the boss wasn’t working and we couldn’t discuss price. We also were able to go and look at grass that might be used to build a thatched roof.

Driving around in Swaziland we were able to experience the polite nature of the Swazi people. Most people will salute you when they drive by and like to flash their lights to thank you if you pull over while they overtake you.

These first few days have been spent getting to know the area and trying to adjust to the climate. It is so hot here, hotter than Haiti, and after experiencing -36 degrees Celcus just a few weeks ago its been taking us a while to adjust to Swazi heat. We’ve been able to go to the grocery store and get some food items and I’ve been shocked at the availability and choice of food, which is priced, similarly to Canadian/Irish food prices. I hope to visit an orphanage next week and begin volunteering there.

The only thing that we’ve been disappointed with so far is the internet connection. Swaziland has very slow internet that seems to work sporadically. Unfortunately I’m not the most patient person and after trying for a long time to load a web page I get frustrated and quit. We don’t think we’ll be able to respond to email too often but we would love to post about what we’re doing here on this blog, hopefully at least once a week.

Pleasant Surprises

So far Swaziland has been full of pleasant surprises. My favourite surprise has been a selfish one; we were supposed to be moving to Swaziland to live in a tent until we have enough funding to build a house. When we arrived to the farm where we are staying Brian drove up to a little house and told us that the current tenants are not here so we three can rent this home for an unknown period of time. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be a gracious tent dweller and not having a lot of camping experience I wasn’t sure how I would do moving to Africa, learning to live in a new culture and doing all that in the comfort of a tent. I am so grateful that our life in Swaziland can begin in a house. It’s nice having this home comfort that we are used to while we adjust to this new culture and place.

Our little home has been filled with unexpected comforts such as running water, electricity, a flushable toilet and Brian purchased a fridge to store my insulin in. We were able to purchase a foam mattress in a near by town and having been sleeping so well. I had been used to sleeping very well in our log cabin in Canada, probably a bit too well and didn’t rise too early in the mornings. Here we’ve been waking before 5am to the sound of birds singing outside our window and although that early hour would have shocked me a few weeks ago I actually enjoy waking early to have some quiet time before we go about our days activities. We don’t know how long we can rent this house for but we’re definitely grateful for it.

I think I was expecting Swaziland to be similar to Haiti probably because that is my only other experience in a less developed country. Swaziland seems to be so different from what I was expecting. It is such a beautiful mountainous country with so many green fields; many people have little gardens in their yards mostly growing corn, which provides them with their food staple. The country is full of trees and flowers, it is so clean and the air smells fresh.

The farm where we are renting has a large sugar cane crop that is irrigated by a sprinkler system. There is also a chicken farm here, a few livestock and goats this provides employment for a lot of people. The farm is located in the countryside, just outside of a little town called Sidokodvo, which is 15 minutes away from the larger town of Manzini.

The Swazi people are incredibly friendly and many of them speak English, so that’s been helpful for us to communicate with them. We would love to learn the local language, SiSwati, so that we can develop deeper relationships with people here. Everyone is so polite and they love to wave and smile at us or stop and talk with us. We are very excited to get to know the people here.

Safe Travels

Arlyn and I were blessed with safe travels on our trip to Swaziland. All of our flights went well to Johannesburg. All of our connections between flights were short so there was a lot of fast paced walking in airports (thankfully I perfected my fast paced walking skills in Haiti!). Our longest flight, from Atlanta to Johannesburg, was 14.5 hours long. This is much longer than I had ever spent in a plane before, we watched lots of movies, tried to sleep, and with the time change we arrived pretty tired.

Brian Wallace, one of the Manna board members, who is starting this mission in Swaziland, was waiting for us at the airport. Brian drove us to his sister’s house, which is about an hour outside of Johannesburg, and we spent the first night in Africa with her and her family.

Arlyn had visited here last year and although he had told me what the area was like I had trouble imagining it like he had described. I was surprised that the airport was so big, that the roads were so good and that the area looked so developed. There are big buildings, nice motorways, nice houses but yet as you continue to drive the houses start to change, people have electric fences guarding their homes, there are signposts warning you of areas that are unsafe to stop in and the poverty becomes more visible.

When we arrived at Brian’s sister’s house we were treated to a South African traditional bri (sp), barbeque that tastes delicious. It was a huge plate full of meat with chicken, sausage, steak, boerwors (a traditional SA huge sausage), salads and our hosts apologized for not having more meat! People are so hospitable here and we felt so welcomed and well cared for.

On Thursday morning we began our journey to Swaziland. Before we set off for the long drive we visited one of Brian’s school friends and had breakfast with his family. Again we were able to enjoy the local people’s hospitality and friendliness. Our breakfast was very similar to a full Irish breakfast, another plateful of meat and we were ready to go!

The drive to Swaziland was beautiful. We passed thousands of cornfields, lots of forests and wood mills, coal factories and millions of green fields. The landscape is a little similar to Ireland’s with all the green fields and the mountains and hills. Brian had purchased a motorbike in SA and we unloaded that before we came to the boarder. Arlyn’s favourite part of our trip was riding the bike through the boarder and to our new home just outside of Manzini. The landscape became more mountainous in Swaziland and this area is not as developed as South Africa. The views as we drove were breath taking; it’s been wonderful to see another part of God’s awesome creation. The drive was about 6 hours and even though we were exhausted after travelling we kept our eyes open the whole time, making sure that we didn’t miss any of the spectacular views...and of course the fresh air from the motorbike ride kept Arlyn wide awake (and also kept him smiling, it was a good change for him after being cramped on a plane for so long).

We are so excited to be here and are excited to see what God has in store for us in this beautiful place. Unfortunately this is a picture less post because the internet is incredibly slow. Hopefully we can figure out a way to access faster internet or I can become more patient because I would love to share pictures so you too can see the beauty that we are surrounded by. We are still adjusting to the time difference and the heat but are so happy to finally be here.