The Swaziland Experience

Sanibonani,

Hello from Swaziland. I have had an exciting four weeks since my last update. My time included one final tourist trip of my time in Africa, a 10-day trip to Mozambique to learn how to scuba dive.

I now have less than one month left in Swaziland. I plan to spend as much of my remaining time as possible with my favorite people here. I am not looking forward to good-byes, but that’s part of the deal. I am looking forward to being home and watching the Cubs on TV with my family.

Please read on for experiences from Mozambique, some updates, and a couple new projects.

1. Cubicle Land
Sometimes I think about my upcoming return to the sea of cubicles where I’ll soon spend so much time. I know that I’ll run into people when I get back to work, and they’ll say in a passing manner to me, “Hey, how was Africa?” Can you imagine? What will I say?!? That would be like asking a new mother of a 5-day-old baby, “So, how was your last week?” For me, it has been like nothing I could have ever imagined, and nothing I could ever fully describe. It has been in certain ways the best time of my life, the worst time of my life, the most exciting time of my life, the most boring time of my life, the most encouraging time of my life, the most discouraging time of my life, the happiest time of my life, and the saddest time of my life. I’ve learned more than ever before, but I couldn’t answer many exam questions from it. There has been both good and bad, but no scale can measure how the good of my time in Africa outweighs the bad. This time has been such a blessing.

2. Diving With Manta Rays, Swimming With Sharks
I returned from a 10-day tourist trip to Mozambique last week. When I found out that some of the best scuba diving in the world is only eight hours away, I decided that I would like to learn how to scuba dive. So, I traveled to Tofo, Mozambique for a 4-day PADI Open Water certification course. This included about one day of classroom training, a day and a half of pool training, and a day and a half of diving in the Indian Ocean to learn how to dive up to 18 meters.
I decided to take a little more training for an additional deep-water dive (about 27 meters) to see Manta Reef, regarded as the best dive in Tofo. This was an amazing experience. It was just like on the National Geographic channel, except I was scuba diving in the ocean rather than sitting on a couch. There were so many amazing sights: beautiful fish, great plant life, amazing colors, big fish, schools of fish, and great reef formations. The highlight was swimming above, below, and beside huge manta rays. This dive sight includes a manta ray cleaning station, where the rays come to have small fish clean them. The manta rays are huge — about 4 to 6 meters in wingspan. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this dive.
Another exciting moment was snorkeling with whalesharks. Whalesharks are actually huge sharks that eat only small organisms, so swimming with them is perfectly safe and quite fun.
It wasn’t all glitter and gold though. I had unhappy moments on two consecutive days with sea sickness, which seemed to be pretty common for visitors to Tofo. On the remaining days, I found out that Dramamine really does work. This made me very happy.
I took the trip alone, but I met some really great people staying in backpackers hostels. I enjoyed my time with tourists from all over the world, and these situations always provide new perspectives and a healthy understanding of how big this world really is.
Three links:
Manta rays: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manta_ray
Whalesharks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark
Giant Moray Eel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_moray

3. Johane’s Leg
Johane’s leg continues to heal. We switched the brand of bandages in late March, and it has been healing more effectively since then. I am pretty excited about this. When I finally have to say good-bye to Johane next month, I want to leave him behind with a healed leg. Time is running out, but the wound continues to make progress. God is making quite an impression on Johane. It’s not every day that a 15-year-old wound heals.
I know that an unbelievable amount of prayer has been raised for Johane. He and I thank you. I love to tell him that people in the United States are praying for his leg to heal. It makes him so happy.
I don’t know where Johane’s heart was concerning Jesus before I started visiting him. I will tell you this: Jesus is sure breaking through to his heart now. I love it.

4. Lavumisa Church
In my very early updates, I asked for prayer for a potential church plant in Lavumisa. We began meeting in late February in a round hut on the homestead of a Member of Parliament in the Lavumisa area. We are trying some new approaches for this church plant. Instead of pitching a tent and asking everyone to come (which has shown poor long-term results in Swaziland), we are beginning with a small group that meets in a home. We are exploring more of a discussion-based format for church. We are using many of the ideas from David Watson, who is involved with church plants all over the world. In particular, we are interested in the group inductive Bible study techniques from this page: http://www.cpmtr.org/?q=node/25
I was away for most weekends in March with visitors. Since then, I have been working closely with the Lavumisa church, and it has been exciting. We’ve regularly had about 10 women, 7 men, and 50 children attending. This might not sound like many men, but for Swazi church standards, it’s very good. In fact, I’m most excited about the fact that many of these men were not attending church before our group. One man stood up and explained that he’s quit drinking since he started coming. Another said that he wants to change his life but doesn’t know how. I talked with him for a while, and we prayed for him. The men are actually excited about church.
Working with this group has been great. They have been open and even excited about trying new methods for church. I’ve actually been surprised at how welcoming they have been to me and to trying new things.
This church has quickly grown very close to my heart. I will never forget being packed into an African hut as the only white man with 70 Swazis. Standing with them and singing Swazi praise songs has been a blessing beyond which I could ever describe. They love that I know many of the songs and am working to learn more. All I can say is that it has been pretty special.
On April 20th, we read from Luke 14:7-14. In one of the verses, Jesus talks about throwing a banquet and inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. We talked about a desire to reach out to those who have been rejected. We want those people in our church. When I looked around the room, I saw a crippled man, a blind woman, and many people who are poor and extremely hungry.
Clearly, a succession plan is needed, as I will be leaving soon. Please pray that they will be able to continue on and grow without me. In fact, one of the steps in David Watson’s church planting plan is that the church planter should leave. It might be a little bit rushed with my departure in June, but it seems that God has done everything to prepare this group to thrive.

5. Nkhulunkhulu Mukhulu Kakhulu
In siSwati, the word for God is Nkhulunkhulu. This literally means “great, great” or “big, big.” If you want to say that God is a big God or a great God, then this is written: “Nkhulunkhulu mukhulu.” Or, you can say, “God is very great.” This would be written: “Nkhulunkhulu mukhulu kakhulu”
Go ahead, try to pronounce it. It’s fun to say. Some tips:
siSwati “kh” sounds like an English “k”
siSwati “k” without the “h” sounds similar to an English “g” as in “gum”
siSwati “u” sounds like an English “oo” as in “moon”

6. Four Frustrating Situations
A – Usually, I type my updates on Eduard’s computer. He is a 21-year-old Afrikaans South African who works on the farm. I brought a computer virus home from town and messed up his computer. He didn’t lose anything important, and we’ll reinstall next week. Nevertheless, I feel badly about it.
B – I left my ATM card in the ATM machine in Maputo. I called my mom, who did amazing work to cancel the card. This will turn out okay since my time here is running out, but was a bit frustrating nevertheless.
C – Taiwan asked me to cut her hair with my trimming set that I bought in town (I shave only once or twice a month, so I trim first and then shave). I never should have agreed, but it looked pretty simple when Jackie Timm gave me a buzz cut before I came to Swaziland. Taiwan wanted it short, but not too short. Well, the length-controlling adapter (what is that thing called?) fell off between swipes, so I accidentally cut right down to the skin. I felt terrible. Nontobeko took over and finished the haircut, but Taiwan ended up almost bald. Okay, this isn’t uncommon for females here, but it wasn’t exactly what she bargained for.
D – I saved the worst for last. On Sunday driving back from the Lavumisa church, I severely overheated the McCubbins’ SUV. There is extensive engine damage. The McCubbins have shown incredible grace in the situation, but it is still weighing on me quite a bit. This also means that I probably won’t have a vehicle to travel to Lavumisa for my remaining time here. We’ll see how this all works out.

7. Pasture Valley Project
The McCubbins are interested in helping several Swazi families in the very worst of the worst conditions. They asked me to assist in the process to identify several families with the greatest needs. I was part of a group that visited about 15 homesteads that are in great need in order to find the ones with the greatest needs. This is a tricky task — it’s difficult to walk away from a family where the children are hungry, severely malnourished double orphans and say that they are not in bad enough shape to qualify because they have a grandma who can walk and an aunt who lives with them.

8. Bonginkhosi
When visiting the homesteads for the Pasture Valley Project, there was one boy named Bonginkhosi who really stood out to me. I liked him so much. I could feel his ribs and big belly through his shirt, signs of severe hunger. I held him for a while and really just wanted to take him home.
Two weeks later, Michelle visited this same homestead. And, with the proper permission she actually did take him home. He is now the 12th Pasture Valley Children’s Home child. The idea is for him to stay here temporarily while he gains nourishment. He is four years old and about the same size as Piwayukuhle (last time I said his name was Piwayinkosi, but the child services group initially told us the wrong name), who is a malnourished one and a half year old. I helped give Bonginkhosi a bath this week, and it really tore my heart to see his body.

9. Prayer Requests

• Piwayukuhle and Bonginkhosi as they recover from malnourishment
• The Lavumisa church and for leaders to continue to emerge, especially since I am again without transportation
• Upcoming good-byes, and upcoming readjustment to the USA and corporate America
• The families that Michelle is helping with the Pasture Valley Project
• Johane’s leg
• Fansile, Thobile, and Lwazi
• For the four frustrating situations, particularly the SUV repairs
• Praise for a safe and fun trip to Mozambique
• Praise for continued and sustained joy during my time in Africa