Why I'm SO Excited about November 2nd - 4th!

This post is my attempt at sharing the burden on my heart about Swaziland. I feel like I have talked with anyone who will listen, and posted on Facebook and blogged, and on and on, but that it's not enough. This is not about a humanitarian action, though it is that too. It's not about a bandwagon I've jumped on, though I sure am passionate. The reason is that children's lives are at stake.

Next weekend will be the culmination of what God has led us toward since Alli and I returned from our trip in May.  We will host three events over three days, to reach as many people as possible with the need of the Swazi people, and how we specifically can help the children there. This is an effort to reach out to our community, with a feasible way that folks here in Alabama can hear in person the impact of sponsoring children. We have the amazing privilege of hearing from Wil Crooks, who works with Children's Hope Chest, and his job is his passion. Speaking with him for a few minutes makes that clear. He helps churches and communities like ours connect with a care point to facilitate sponsorship.

Wil and his family

Steven and Amy

On hand at different times throughout the weekend will also be the precious friends who first really educated us on Swaziland and shared their hearts for the place they were going to make their home.

Allison and 2 carepoint children

I'm so grateful for the fact that God worked out details so they could be here for the weekend!

Here are the details on each event. We would love it if you could join us for at least one of them, and consider sponsoring a child at Lesibovu. $34/month is a life-changing investment. If you realize the great good that HopeChest does, and the way those funds truly go to support their community, $34 is such a small amount.

Feel free to invite anyone who is interested in orphan care, vulnerable children, Africa, or reaching those who need to be loved on with Christ's love!

Friday night free dessert/coffee bar -  https://www.facebook.com/events/340913202672303/

Saturday morning free come-and-go brunch - https://www.facebook.com/events/425091370887720/

Sunday lunch details - https://www.facebook.com/events/423276887721992/

Another view

I recently read an article by a new Facebook friend who is living in Manzini, Swaziland right now. I asked for her permission to share it because it touched me deeply. Kimberly shared her thoughts after working on the profile information for these children mentioned below, some of who walk three hours daily to get food. These are children from Lesibovu, children we met and hugged on in May, little ones who were scared of us, and big ones who held our hands and asked for photos to be taken with us.
These are the kids whom we are seeking sponsors for, beginning November 2!

I cannot imagine walking three miles for one meal. I surely cannot picture my 4 year old doing this every day. Yet, there are kids around the world so desperate for food that they really have no choice. We know of these children, and of this community, and we can help them. They have a pastor, a church building, and a few adults already willing to invest of their time and cook for them. However, they need more.

They need: 

- hope and the knowledge that they're loved and valuable.

- to know that there is a Sustainer who sees their hardship and their tenacity.

- to hear of the Savior who provides so much more than physical nourishment.

They are worthy of time, prayers, emotion, resources, and the efforts here, by some folks in Alabama, to try to make a difference, to give them opportunities to hear the wonderful news 

that He loves them, and we do too. 

Please read this beautiful perspective and pray for these children, and for the Lord to provide partners for their futures.

It’s Just a Three Hour Walk

by kimberly woolridge

I’ve been helping Adventures in Missions with some administration here in Swaziland. Doing admin can start to feel tedious and it’s easy to lose focus on the purpose behind it. However, I am realizing that I kind of enjoy doing admin, especially when God helps me see the impact it really has in a ministry.

One of the things I was able to help with was entering children’s sponsor profiles into the system for the new Lesibovu care point. A care point is a type of community center where often hundreds of kids come for a safe place to be during the day or after school. It’s also a place for them to get a meal and in some cases, get education if a school is attached to the care point. Lots of children and young adults from surrounding areas walk to the closest care point every week day. The children at each care point have papers filled out with all kinds of information about their families, schools, and homes. The profiled children are then put up for sponsorship by people all over. One of the questions asked during profiling is how long it takes them to walk to the care point. Many children walk only 10-30 minutes to get to their care point. As I was entering this information for the Lesibovu care point, I saw that most children don’t have too far to walk. But every now and then, I discovered that some children have to walk for three hours to reach their care point.

Did you hear me? A three hour walk. To a place where their basic needs can be partially met. A walk to a place where they can be a little safer. Each care point offers something, but even so, not all needs are met. My point is that many children walk barefoot, for three hours, to reach a care point that offers a little bit more than their families can. The Lord is using AIM to come along side care points and help support them. People here with AIM are getting to know the Swazi people in order that they can meet basic needs and also spiritual needs. It’s so important to meet physical and spiritual needs, and God is equipping his people here to do so.

When I saw that three hours, it really gave me some perspective. I’m still not sure how to connect how seeing that children walk for three hours fits with the importance of administration, but I know it does, and I’m trying to process it. But I do know that it hit me like a ton of bricks. There is purpose in the tedious.

 {originally posted at http://kimberlywoolridge.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/its-just-a-three-hour-walk}

First "Support for Swaziland" Night

I'm still on that mountaintop right now, after last night's event. We invited everyone we knew via this blog, facebook, and email, to join us to hear about Swaziland - what we learned while visiting, how God is working, and what we can do to help. We were hopeful folks would want to hear about our trip and the way we have been challenged since our experiences there. But, asking folks to come out on a Sunday evening is risky. We knew that. We just had prayed and that was the best and only date in the near future that would work.

Folks showed up! Over 70, plus a whole passel of children. It was such an exciting thing, to watch loved ones walk through the door. I squealed and hugged so many people from all periods of my life....Alli and I were very touched and feel very loved.

Sunday morning we were both super nervous and uneasy. We felt unprepared and incapable of truly communicating how important the topic was, and the weight of that responsibility was a burden. I had numerous very tearful moments. Thankfully James was able to talk sense into me, and friends loved on and encouraged us both, reminding us that God would equip and direct us. And, thankfully, He did and we were able to let Him strengthen us. Worship that morning in church was powerful and precious, as always. We sang this:

Water You turned into wine
Open the eyes of the blind
There's no one like You
None like You
Into the darkness You shine
Out of the ashes we rise
There's no one like You
None like You

Our God is greater, our God is stronger
God, You are higher than any other
Our God is Healer, awesome in power
Our God, Our God...
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsty.com/chris-tomlin-our-god-is-greater-lyrics.html]
And if Our God is for us, then who could ever stop us
And if our God is with us, then what can stand against?

I cried more, realizing my own weakness, His great goodness and felt so silly, worrying over talking about something I think is important. If the children in Swaziland matter to me, how much more do they matter to Him? Then, I got home and checked Facebook. Guess what Alli had created and posted?

 

And with it, do you know what she wrote? 

"<3 Our God is greater. <3" 

Tell me God isn't aware of our fears and struggles, and doesn't work in beautiful ways sometimes, to just smack us in the head and say, "I KNOW. I get it. It's ok. Just relax...." Go ahead, and I'll call you a liar. :-) While I was singing and crying through this song in church, Alli was at home, posting this and typing the same words. God was reminding us and working on us both, and wow. He sure is awesome that way. 

Anyway, last night was so great because we did not want it to be about us. We wanted to share our passion for Swaziland and the beautiful, painful lessons we learned (and obviously are still learning) about trust and God's faithfulness. We just wanted to be useful vessels and do it in a clear, effective way, without sounding overly dramatic with some pretty hard material and facts. 

Thankfully, our sweet audience gave us wonderful reviews and apparently God did use us to explain the beauty and pain in the country of Swaziland. We had very exciting news to share also, and that got some folks FIRED UP!!

So, the news is not a shock to any of you who guessed what our prayer was as soon as we got home from our trip, but until we sought more counsel and support, we could not proceed. However, now we are ready to announce:

We are partnering with Children's Hope Chest to become a Connect Community with the Lesibovu care point in Swaziland.

What does this mean?

What will we do?

Can you be involved?

Great questions! Stay tuned, but you can check out the link above and pray in the meantime. Thank you for caring and loving us. Please pray for Lesibovu and that we are able to be used to impact lives there in long-term, practical, cycle-breaking, future-changing ways.

Support for Swaziland Night

Dear friends and family,

THANK YOU to all of you who have been so supportive these past few months. Through your financial gifts, items you sent to the children we visited, or words of encouragement and prayer, you blessed Alli and me as we traveled to Swaziland, Africa. Our trip was an amazing time of stretching, and our eyes were opened to how God is working in a lovely country, despite so many differences and hardships compared to our own world. It truly was a life-changing experience.

We would love to invite you to come hear about our trip, and what God is doing in Swaziland, plus some ways you can potentially be involved in the great ministry happening - here or there! We are going to have an evening devoted to stories, photos, video clips, and questions and answers next Sunday, August 26 at 6:00 pm, at The Church at Shelby Crossings. Childcare is provided and this is a casual event, with our taking turns sharing perspective stories and highlights from the time we spent there, and what we are still learning today, as a result of our trip.

Who should come?
We would love for you to come if:
- you have a heart for orphans
- an interest in missions
- a desire to help the ministry in Swaziland
- or if you just love us and want to hear how God used you in our lives as we went to Africa!

It is sure to be a night of laughs, maybe some tears, and hopefully, a time that will help demonstrate the light of Jesus despite dark times many in our world face every day.

We will also have more Timbali crafts like a number of you have purchased already, as well as other African art for sale, and all funds raised will go back to the ministry in Swaziland. There is a rumor we may even give a doorprize or two away! We would love to fellowship with you, and hug your neck for being a special part of our lives.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Hope to see you soon!  Alli and Jennifer

Settling and Reflecting, part 2

Sometimes I'm just really surprised by the sweetness of God. One example happened recently, and I'm still reveling in how specifically He answered a prayer I almost was afraid to pray. (If you have been paying attention, this is a recurring theme during the Africa trip. Yes, I am a little dense.)

Way back when Alli and I first started considering that maybe God was really telling us to trust Him and try to travel to Swaziland, we kept wondering what in the world we could DO there. We had the desire to go, just felt a bit ill-equipped to make much of an impact. Several encouraging friends reminded us of our passions and that the Lord could use those if He desired, and we were grateful to imagine the possibilities.  They said that maybe we'd do more once we got back; we had to go to be stretched and shown how it would change us, and then when we returned, we would be able to act and encourage others to as well. 

Our conversations and thoughts generally came back to these ideas:

What if the storyteller and writer wannabe in me actually got to hear a few 

Swazi testimonies and could write them down to come back 

and share with our American friends? 

How cool would that be?! How amazing would it be if Alli could take photos, 

something she enjoys so much, and then those photographs could be used to 

share the actual faces of people in Swaziland who need support and prayer? 

We even asked that ya'll pray we could do that in some way, back on this blog, in February. We dreamed and giggled over how we would just love that, and then scolded ourselves in the next breath over thinking WE could do something that would reach others. Then we'd admit that really, it would be God anyway, and we hoped He would let us be part of something super cool. We were dreaming on a more local level - like sharing with our girlfriends and families we know and love - not a big-scale TV broadcast or anything. We just hoped and thought and repeatedly said, "Who knows what He might do? Whatever it is, we can't wait to see!" 

So much challenged us in Swaziland that we really felt like was exactly for us - lessons we needed to learn and moments of trusting that were a huge part of the point of the trip. Sometimes we wondered if we were really actually sent to Africa to learn lessons we just had been blind to here at home. And, that would have been a huge answer to prayer in itself, if that had been the only things we gained. But, we sure did gain a lot more, and witnessed a world so different than ours that to this day, I still am perplexed by...the great disparity in lives here and our friends in a continent across the ocean. Processing continues, praying for guidance as we ask, "So now what?"

Then, the cool, surprise, dream came true. A new friend asked if perhaps we could write an article and submit some photos for an online magazine she helps edit.

!!!!!!! 

Can I just say that this pretty much rocked our socks off?!! I wish you could have seen how excited and giddy we were, and how it made both Alli and me teary multiple times. We hardly knew this young lady, didn't know she was an editor, and did not even have to ask for the chance to contribute. We were being given a neat opportunity, to share from our hearts, and whoa - the pressure to not mess up was also there too. We didn't want to blow that opportunity by saying anything frivolous, but how to summarize a life-changing week into 500 words or less was a daunting task. After piddling with it many days, and coming back and forth to it, trying to decide how to really explain the beauty of the Swazi culture and the faith of those people we love, and also humbly admit our own shortcomings and doubts, was complicated. And, it was a bit more than 500 words. Surprise! :-)

I'm so grateful that the editors had favor on me, allowed the whole article to be published, and that Alli's beautiful images grace the story we shared. Also, her word picture led me to the Scripture that then inspired the title and became the crux of the story I tried to convey. Thank you, wonderful friend! I'm especially glad that being asked to write about the trip helped me finally put words to the thoughts I had been struggling with. What a precious blessing and how amazed we are that again, God has been so generous to us. We are praying that others are touched by the story, but also that through this process, we are even further reminded of the knowledge we gained through a week in Africa. 

If you want to read the story, and see the images Alli captured, just click here. You should subscribe to MORF anyway, a wonderful periodical for parents of teens and workers in youth ministry.

Settling and reflecting, part 1

We have now had a few weeks to settle back into life here at home. Many times daily I am still caught up in wondering what is happening at a care point right at that moment, how MuMu is progressing, what adventures our friends have had that day, and what God is doing with all that we saw and learned. Thankfully, we are feeling more peaceful about major lessons we needed to learn and how God has revealed His amazing goodness in our lives. He is so patient to give us bits and pieces of truth about ourselves so that we aren't completely overwhelmed. Because honestly, this trip brought out some hard stuff.

I mentioned previously that one odd factor in the trip was the fact that just before we arrived, the internet went out at the McAdam's home. We weren't concerned and assumed it would be fixed quickly. Apparently not only is it true that this culture isn't usually in a hurry about much at all, there is STILL a problem and their internet isn't working correctly or often. Let me tell you, that was a struggle for us, to not be able to easily communicate with our precious families and friends who wanted to check in on us. We had been so dependent to tell everything we can to our friends. We love keeping people in the loop, and for something as big as this trip, we planned that we would be able to update them frequently on how God was working, what prayer needs there were, and just documenting the adventure in general.

Not being able to easily call home and communicate with our families, when we just knew we'd be able to Skype with them, was really painful. It was a huge lesson for us in trusting God was providing and meeting their needs, when we could not check in with them daily and make sure. Alli and I both hit a breaking point quickly with that, and our obvious struggle in realizing we couldn't care for these loved ones while across the world was one of the most humbling parts of the trip. There was some u-u-u-u-ugly crying and fit pitching on our part, I hate to say. I believe one of us said, "WHY won't He make the internet work? He could! Why can we not talk to and see our families?!"

Looking back, even a couple days into the trip, we had better perspective and could see how we were having to focus on the tasks at hand, and really just relinquish that desire to have some pseudo-control of our kids and husbands, or at least over conversing with them. That had to be part of God's timing, to narrow our gaze to Swaziland, and to not forget our families, but truly, let that worry go. They survived just fine, our kids hardly even struggled one tiny bit, and our husbands, friends, and family cared for them so well. We had nothing to fear, and God proved that He was their sustainer, without our help. ;-) That theme of sustaining proved to be a big recurring one throughout our time in Africa and applied to many situations. This was just the first aspect of it. 

We had prayed and asked you all to pray that during the trip, things wouldn't all go smoothly. We wanted Africa to change us - for the experience to be more than a cool trip. We wanted to submit to the Lord's will, and realize that He would allow trials and blessings both, that would give us needed stretching, and we were willing to accept that. It was still hard, but it really was what we needed. This short poem really summed up well how I feel about what seemed like a 'hardship' for us: 

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.  

John Piper

Getting there

We left for Swaziland on Mother's Day. Though that could've been hard, it was the best day for multiple reasons, mainly dealing with James and Dean's work schedules, and to maximize the time with the McAdams when they weren't hosting another team. We had worship with our church family that morning, then were blessed by their prayers for us and our sweet friend Rachel who was heading to Rwanda just after us. After running home and getting last minute items, we all arrived at the airport a couple of hours early for our flight. Though my goal had been to leave without our kids there to say goodbye in the airport, since I thought it would be more difficult, things just didn't work out that way. There was little drama, but it was painful for Elijah most of all, to say goodbye. The other kids hugged and were excited, but he was broken hearted and James had to carry him out sobbing. That was pretty tough, but once we were through the gates, Alli and I both could breathe a huge sigh of relief. We had no problems on the first leg to Atlanta, and then had such a brief time between boarding our next plane there, that we could barely get an iced coffee before taking off. We did meet a sweet Texan girl while waiting, who was a nanny in South Africa. First connection made!

I had a love/hate relationship with these informative screens.

Here is the little screen facing me shortly after leaving Atlanta. Ya'll, it was 15 HOURS of sitting, which is so-o-o long. Thankfully, it was already evening and we could sleep some. We were excited but also very tired from little sleep the night before, and were able to rest for several hours. Right on time, we arrived in Johannesburg.

So close!!

 

Our room at Airport Lodge

Amy and Steve had set up our hotel and driver to pick us up at the airport. We met Johan, an older "proper South African" gentleman who was kind and helpful getting us to our room for the night. We settled in, ordered takeout with help from the front desk "girlie" as Johan called her, and then paid to use internet. Electricity is a different current than here in the US, and so we had to use an adapter for Alli's laptop, and tried to call and Skype with our husbands and kids. It was a frustrating hour or so, and going on very little sleep, we were pretty delirious and goofy. Finally we at least let them know we were there and ok, but since I could not use my phone, we warned them we would probably have little regular contact if Amy's internet was down too. Little did we know... 

We slept reasonably well, and had a good breakfast the next morning. Another driver took us back to OR Tambo Airport for a quick one hour flight to Matsapha Airport. When we flew out of the city and saw the landscape change, and knew we were about to see our friends and those we loved, I really felt such joy and excitement. It was the moment we'd prayed for, for months and finally was almost here!