All of this brings us to Swazi! Contrary to Romania, stepping onto the tarmac in South Africa felt like stepping into the promise land. Swaziland is truly one of the most beautiful and wild places I’ve ever been. As I wrote in my intro post, we live very far from basically anything. The area we now call home is full of fruit farms, cows, dirt roads, and all sorts of creatures. The small piece of land we tent on is shared with about 7 types of deadly venomous snakes, tarantulas, and bugs the size of my hand. The other day, I saw a stick bug the was the size of a squirrel. Creation runs untamed and free here. Honestly, I’ve adjusted to the bugs and the sunsets make it all worth it. One of my favorite memories is walking down to the front of the property every night with my entire squad to watch the African sun set and throw its colors across the sky. Then, within the following hour, the stars paint the heavens above.

I joke with my family that I’m now on a sun schedule. I wake up with the sun in the morning, and I head to bed at around 8:30 every night. Our typical ministry days looks as follows. I wake up around 6 and spend the first hour or more with the Lord, then grab a solid breakfast of cornflakes and instant coffee. At around 10, we leave for ministry. Usually, we will be at ministry until 4. I then come home, take a cold shower to wash the dirt and sweat off, and head to watch the sunset with my squad. After sunset is dinner, then bible study,  then bedtime. Every night, two women who live nearby come cook dinner for my squad. Because of this, we get to have a lot of traditional Swazi food! In between these daily events, we have a lot of downtime. There is no phone service or places to go, so my squad spends a lot of time just hanging out. Currently, we’ve been playing a lot of games like dutch blitz and rummi kub.

Here in Swazi, there are 2 different ministries that we work with. The first is with local Care Points. The Care Points are located all over the country, and are all associated with Adventures in Missions. They are green and black buildings where children in the communities come to get food and water after school every day. For many kids, its their only meal. Its also one of the few places that have a well, so many people come to the care point to get water everyday. Our job is to hangout with the kids and make them feel loved. If both of the childrens parents are alive, which is rare in Swazi, then both will usually work 12 hours every day. The kids typically don’t receive a lot of love at home just due to the harshness of their reality. The kids see the care points as a safe place, and they see us as friends. Sometimes you’ll have kids fall asleep in your arms, or accidentally call you mom. We usually will put on a program for them as well, sort of like a VBS.

While being in Swazi, I have had the incredible opportunity of working with a local clinic to do medical outreach in the area. Its truly one of my craziest stories from the race. Way back in Romania, I asked the Lord to make it clear that He wanted me to go to nursing school. I asked this because I really did not want to go back to school, but I also felt the pull to do medical missions one day. He had been teaching me about how privileged I was to have the opportunity to go to school, after being with so many children who didn’t have that. On our first day in Swazi, we met a missionary named Nelson. He told us he was from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and had moved their family over to Swazi so that his wife could start a clinic. Megan, Nelson’s wife, had a nursing degree and started a clinic to bring much needed medicine to a very poor and rural part of Swazi. He then told me that Megan had gone to Delaware County Christian School for 9-11th grade. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?!?  We are out in the middle of Africa and somehow I meet someone who went to my tiny high school? Not only that, but she is now doing my dream job? Guys if the Lord wants something to happen He will make it happen. I took this whole ordeal to mean that the Lord wants me to go to nursing school after the race. Now, I work at that clinic 3 times every week. Usually, I do odd jobs around the clinic so that the nurses can see more patients. On outreach days, We take a Land cruiser and drive way out into the hills to service villages who would never receive care else wise. During outreach, I get to act as a nurse, taking vitals or filling medication orders. It has been such an insane opportunity and I have already learned so much.

Swazi has been such a sweet place to finish the Race. I can’t believe we leave to head to the states in 2 weeks. The Lord has shown me so much and has been moving in some amazing ways here. I’m hoping to write another blog post about my time here soon, but I wanted to leave you guys with an excerpt from my most recent journal entry.

“Fully happy, fully Sad. The beauty of life in Christ is that He has now made us fully alive. Our minds and bodies are full, but I also believe that our emotions are renewed as well. We now know joy in radical and unheard of ways. But we also know sorrow just the same. Its something I struggle to explain but also somehow understand like a favorite childhood book I’ve read again and again. The coexistence of joy and sorrow is written all over this land. It’s in the children who are missing clothes, and yet to busy dancing and singing to the Lord to care. Its in the women who walk miles and miles to the care point to receive the only food their families will eat all day, and stick around to giggle at my friends chasing piglets. See, its only when we understand true sorrow that we can understand complete joy. We walk through a horrifically broken world everyday as evidence that there is wholeness in Christ Jesus. And yet we ourselves still succumb to the weight of our brokenness at times. Thats the whole point though. Christ took all our sorrow to the cross, not so that we would never experience sorrow, but so we could experience both through Him. Actually, so that one day we could experience completely and full joy in heavenly communion with the Father Himself. So feel it. Sit and weep in the sorrow and pain, and learn to dance in the joy. Allow both to wash over you and point you home. He’s waiting for you.”

-KJ