October Journal

What a busy month!

1st-We started off the first day in a rural community called Gaigai (gey-gey). We did our first training and crusade back to back. It made for a very long day, but went extremely well. We got there and did training on the importance of children’s ministry and some practical how to’s and some hands on practicing of what we just taught. We took an hour break then got ready to bring in the kids. We have a blue gorilla costume that we are currently borrowing, until we can find our own, and a battery powered megaphone. We brought in over 80 kids in the community and a few adults to bring us over 100 people in this church. Mind you the church is a small room off of the back of a market that has a big pole support beam right in the middle of it. The crusade went from 2:30-4pm and lots of kids wanted to invite Jesus into their hearts and come back for Sunday school the next day! Our goal is to help churches develop or strengthen their children’s program and get the community to know more about the local church and show kids serving God can be exciting. After getting home we about collapsed though. The kids stay with a babysitter during the day as it is too hard to take them out all day and keep and eye on them.
Kylea and I decorated for fall, even though we are headed into the summer here. Another tradition that I want to keep up for my kids, and we really don’t have the true season changes like at home so we do our own season changes with decorating.
We are getting closer on the pool project. Doug has built a waterfall into the pool as the inlet, now we are just waiting for the electrician to come out and hook up electricity to the pump and stuff!!

10th-We are doing a small group with five other couples and going through “Growing Kids God’s Way”. We decided to take a family day and go to Badplaas (bod-plauce), South Africa. About 1.5 hrs from home. It is a very small town with pretty much this little hotel and water park. It was fun though; it in a way reminded me of starting a tradition like camping with all of our family and friends when I was little. They had four speed racing slides and one long winding slide, an intertube run, a kid’s pool and two hot springs pools. It was small, but nice to get out of Swaziland and have fun with family and friends.

19th-Our home church in Issaquah (Eastridge Christian Assembly) came for a trip this week. It was sooooo good to spend some quality time with Pastor Steve and Cheryl (since that is my love language). We had a great time as Pastor Steve spoke here at the Bible College and then in the afternoon’s we hung out. Wednesday, Cheryl came to be a part of the bible study I am leading at my home, which was incredible! Doug and Pastor Steve hit the greens as it was well above the 90’s. The rest of the week we had a chance to eat out and in our home and give them a small tour of some of the local places we have done some work with.

22nd-We had another back to back training and crusade, which went well also. This church is not far and we had 9 workers who came for the training! The kids kept on coming and coming it was great, we had 137 kids there. It is so encouraging to train these leaders and get them right back involved with the crusade, helping with worship, the bible story, etc. It is encouraging to go from church to church and see the people with a heart for kids already!! That night we came back just in time to put some lasagna’s in the oven and get ready to feed the whole ECA team (11). It was nice to have them all in our home especially with all the church has done for us! One of the girls stayed at our home for the next three nights as they did some local ministry.

24th – We took our first swim the pool, finally! It was so nice after waiting for a year of it being
built, falling apart then rebuilding it; things seem to take sooo much longer here. It is perfect timing though as summer and rainy season are upon us and we are averaging 90+ days two 110 degree days back to back, yikes. Coming from Washington, we are not used to this but it is quickly becoming the norm. It will be quite the change going home for Christmas in a few weeks here.

26th-I am realizing more and more how different boy’s are from girls-ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Today I had bible study and there are three little toddlers, 2 of them are two and one is three. Well I decided that I would have them watch a movie in the office on Doug’s lap top while we did our study since none of them wanted to just play. So, I turned on a spiritual movie, veggie tales of course and the next thing I knew was that they came out covered in markers, not just one color mind you, a rainbow of colors. I walked in the office to see markers from my teaching bag everywhere with no lids!!!! As I looked around I noticed the desktop computer turned into a work of art. All over the screen, keyboard and white desk! It took us about 45 minutes to clean it all up using a q-tip to clean in between each of the keys.

29th- We ended the month with our annual little harvest party for the kids. We had 7 families that we had another party for. We had the kids dress up and went around on the campus here to a couple of other missionary homes (some had 3 doors that we went to). We came back to our house where Doug had set up a couple of games. It was fun just remembering some of the things we do at home, it helps us not feel so far away.

Kylea's comment of the month: I had read the story of Peter and Paul to the kids before bed, then taught them the song that goes with it “silver and gold have I none . . .” At the end of the song it says “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk”. So Kylea was walking around the house the next day singing it again and again then stopped and asked me “ Mommy if I told someone “In the name of Jesus Christ stand up and walk” would they?” I informed her that healing had nothing to do with her, but Jesus using her to heal someone. We talked about this for a while that Jesus uses us to love, heal, encourage others. We are not to be proud or get the glory for it, because we did not really do it, Jesus did. I explained that Jesus died on the cross and because of that He has the power of healing people. I asked her if she died on the cross, she thought about it a while and said “No, but I’ve been hurt pretty bad before!”