Sanibonani! (Sah-nee-bo-NAH-nee):  Hey y’all!

A brief update on our gardening efforts and the constant highlight of my week:

Around the farm—the 1000+ little seedling plants we worked so diligently with Sherri to plant last month are finally huge and ready for harvest!   Bitter spinach (like mustard greens), Swiss chard, broccoli, and cabbages are all being harvested and taken to the local supermarket called Pic-N-Pay, where most people do most of their grocery shopping (including us).  

The garden plots that belong to each of the kids’ houses here at Hawane farm are also doing quite well.  All the homes at Hawane get a small garden plot to tend to, and then once produce is ready to harvest, it gets put together and divided up evenly among the homes for the moms (bomake—boh-MAH-geh) to use in preparing meals for the kids in their house. I must say the house that I call “mine” (because theirs is the home I visit weekly, sometimes for dinner but most often to share friendship), is one of the best. Make Nomvula (prounounced MAH-geh nom-VOO-lah, meaning Mama Nomvula) and her girls’ garden is one of the biggest and most productive of all the Makes’ gardens.  J I’m so proud of them.  

Aside from their great gardening (which takes a LOT of dedicated work- all done by hand, and without chemicals, machinery, or pesticides, mind you), I can also say they are one of the best homes because of their collective spirit.  On any given night, though I usually visit on Thursdays, I can find them together around their oval wooden table eating dinner.  Some are quiet like Anele (age 9) or Nothando (age 12), others tired from a long day at school like Ncamile (age 15) or Lindo (age 17, and head prefect –aka-top girl in the high school and thus responsible for setting a good example and keeping order in the whole school, Monday – Saturday), but it is usually only a matter of seconds before Celiwe (age 16), Setsabile (age 14), or even Make herself have everyone cracking up and nearly rolling with laughter, all the way down to little Phiwa (age 5).  After a dinner of rice, beans, and sometimes mincemeat (ground beef) or chicken pieces, someone clears dishes, and someone else begins to wash them, while we might play a game together (last week I brought/taught them UNO) do some Swazi singing and dancing, tell jokes, talk about the real facts about HIV/AIDS, or work on homework until 8pm.  Then we take turns reading the daily selection from a devotional book that they read once in the morning and once in the evening, give a brief synopsis of what we read with some take home points, and then pray together, African-style—all together, out loud, all at one time.  After devotions, if Phiwa hasn’t already collapsed on the couch, she goes to bed and the rest of the girls continue with homework, or if they are finished, they study for a while before bed.  Sometime in there between clearing dishes and forcing myself out the door, I manage to collect about 43 hugs, a few braids in my hair, and more love than I thought possible from 8 of the coolest women in the world.   It just so happens that March 29^th this year, my birthday, was on a Thursday.  I can’t tell you how delighted I was to not only have Antje and Jessica (great friends from home) visiting IN PERSON and bearing tangible gifts and cards from people at home who love us, but also to get to be doing our regularly scheduled activities for a Thursday, which included visiting Make Nomvula and the girls J Salanikahle! (Sah-LAH-nee-GAH-hle): Stay well, y’all!

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I’m sure you’ve had that slightly awkward Thanksgiving day conversation that starts out “Everyone say one thing they are thankful for…”

I’ve always heard that practicing thankfulness is healthy and good. The advice is pretty common. Counselors sometimes advise people to write down three things that they are thankful for each day.

However, though the advice is common, the actual practice is rare. Complaint is much more common than thanksgiving. Don’t believe me?

Listen to your own thoughts for an hour. How many times do you point out what could or should be, what’s lacking, instead of giving thanks for what is?

Listen to those around you. Do you hear more gratitude, or grumbling? More appreciation, or bellyaching?

A story.

This past week we were traveling back to Hawane from Bulembu. The Bulembu road is notoriously unfriendly: 18 kilometers of unpaved dirt and rock carved into Swaziland’s most mountainous region makes for slow, uncomfortable travel. At times, we drove slower than walking, navigating the ditches and bumps, trying to minimize the bruises to our backsides. On this particular drive, our van was overloaded and four of us crowded onto the middle bench. I sat on the outside, one cheek on, one cheek off. As we bumped along the road, I held on, trying not to slam into the door with each bump. The one cheek on was getting quite sore.

Finally, our painful journey ended as the dirt road gave way to pavement. Not for the first time, I complained silently about having only this single vehicle for our group. “A 4-wheel drive vehicle sure would be nice right about now.”

As our wheels contacted pavement driving into Pigg’s Peak, we passed by several ladies walking towards Bulembu with bags of groceries. I hadn’t noticed any homesteads, so it’s likely that some of them will walk several miles to get home. I silently swallowed my complaint. Our drive was just 45 minutes, with my own bags stowed conveniently in the trunk. But these ladies will walk for an hour or more carrying heavy bags of groceries. And they make that trek every week. I asked God to forgive me for my attitude and I thanked Him for providing us with a vehicle, even if it does wear out my one cheek on the Bulembu road.

Why does my heart default to complaining?

Owning a vehicle is rare here in Swaziland, and is a sure sign of wealth. Not only are they expensive to purchase, but they are incredibly expensive to maintain. One of the ladies on the farm shared that half of her living expenses go towards gas for her truck. Half.

A lady from the UK who helps manage the orphan care at Bulembu did not have a car for her first three years in Swaziland. She had to ask for rides and send her grocery lists with others, hoping that they brought back the right items. She was sometimes unable to catch a ride for weeks at a time, able only to travel as far as her two feet could carry her. She said that time helped her to identify with the Swazis she worked with, to better understand their way of living.

In a place where vehicles are so rare and valuable, surely I would be thankful that we have a vehicle rather than complaining. Without the van that we have, we would not be able to do many of the things on our schedule. Surely I would start off with gratitude.

But like many of you in the West who will read this, my heart has been trained to want. It’s the lifeline of our advertising, our entertainment, and our materialism. It’s a message I have heard hundreds of times a day, every day, for many years. More is the heartbeat of our economy. And it runs in my veins, as well as yours.

What I am learning now is that I already have more. I have much more. More to be thankful for than I ever realized.

Elizabeth and I have our own room. We even have our own bathroom. Many people here share a room, if they even have a roof over their heads.

We have electricity, most days, to take a hot shower, even as the winter approaches. Many homesteads are without electricity or running water. They will carry water from a water pump to be heated over a fire in order to bathe.

I have a laptop that I can write this blog post on. Computers, like cars, are a rare sign of wealth. Most people do not have them.

When I mentally recall just the stuff that I packed to bring with me to Swaziland, not even counting what we left behind in storage, I am struck by how much more I have, and how much I have to be thankful for.

But my thankfulness shouldn’t stop with mere stuff.

A few years ago, a man named Ermi from Ethiopia stayed overnight at my apartment in North Carolina. He grew up on the streets of Addis, the capital city, and God rescued him from street living. He now runs a home for homeless boys to help them transition off of the streets. He begins each day at 4:30 in the morning with a time of prayer. The night he stayed at my apartment, he asked if I would like to join him for prayer in the morning. I agreed, though I was thankful that there would only be one morning of waking up at that hour!

The next morning, at 4:30am sharp we sat in my living room, and as I struggled to keep my eyes open, he began praying.

“God, thank you for waking me up this morning. Thank your for my breath.”

He paused. He breathed in and out deeply a few times. A minute or so passed. It hit me that he was truly thankful to God for his very breath, and he was experiencing it the way one might enjoy a beautiful sunset. Wow.

Are you breathing right now? As you read this, are you thankful that God woke you up this morning? That you have breath in your lungs?

Ermi continued praying, thanking God for his heart, the blood coursing in his veins, ears that allowed him to hear, eyes that allowed him to see.

This man who had spent many of his years homeless, sitting in a cozy apartment in America, was deeply thankful for even his breath. When I asked Ermi later what he thought of America, he gave me an almost pained smile. “It was very kind of people to fly us over here, but I’m ready to be home. I’m ready to be with my boys.”

Ermi knew where he was meant to be.

What I’m learning, in countless ways, small and large, every day, is that thankfulness is a choice, not a feeling. It’s an attitude of the heart that I must choose. Trained as I am in a culture of more, if I don’t consciously choose thankfulness, my heart will complain.

May you know that you already have more, and may you be willing to be slightly awkward as you choose thankfulness.

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” – 1 Thess. 5:18

At home in North Carolina, there a lot of trees. Tall trees. As a result, we don't get a lot of what I call long views. Views that stretch for miles and miles. Views where you can see the sun sitting right on the horizon. Views across valleys and hilltops, fields and houses. Views like the one we now enjoy out our back window every morning. Views like along the MR3 as we drive into Mbabane from our house in Hawane. Long views.

Since arriving in Swaziland, I've noticed a funny thing. My eyes are adjusting to the long views. I can see more than I could see when we had first arrived. I can pick out a group of men crossing a field a half mile or so away. I can spot a herd of cattle, grazing on the other side of a valley. I can see detail in rock formations topping a hill several miles away, or a tree atop a ridge in relief against the blue sky. My vision for the long view is adjusting, improving.

Moving to a new country is requiring a lot of adjustments, often in ways that I didn't expect. One of the things I'm learning here in Swaziland is how to take the long view. Real change, whether in nations, in families, or in us, calls for taking the long view.

Poverty

Poverty will not be wiped out in a single year. Poverty is not simply a lack of material wealth. It is cultural attitudes, oppression and exploitation, and societal sins like greed, fear, and hatred. Coming from the West, the lack of material wealth is the most apparent problem to and so appears easiest to address. However, even solving for the lack of material wealth in isolation is futile.

One of the things that I'm starting to be able to see through experiences here in Swaziland is that everything has an upkeep cost. The law of entropy is blind, punishing the possessions of the impoverished and the wealthy. Physicists tell us everything is falling apart. "Creation is passing away," as the Bible says. The difference in America is that when it breaks we just buy a new one. Even if we can't afford it right now, we put it on the credit card and pay for it later.

You might think that you can help solve for the lack of material wealth by giving some of our stuff to those who are living in poverty. But the infrastructure is not present for a gift to be well-used and maintained. Does it require batteries? A pack of batteries cost as much as several days worth of food. What happens when it breaks? There are no repair shops except for the most common and basic items, and even then parts are scarce and repairs are expensive. Every day that I walk down to work in the garden, I walk past a broken-down tractor, and then spend the rest of the afternoon hoeing and planting with a hoe by hand. Part of what sustains the material wealth in the West is the ubiquity of Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. Anything you need, you can have it shipped to you in mere days. Not so in countries dominated by poverty.

And lack of material wealth is the easy and obvious part of the problem of poverty. It's important to see that material wealth is just a surface symptom, a red herring, an effect rather than a cause. Truly addressing the complex roots of poverty requires thinking long-term. When you commit to working to end poverty, you need to take the long view often, realizing that every day is an investment in a future that you may not even see.

Family Patterns

Nations aren't the only ones to struggle with poverty. Often our families are impoverished in one way or another, and the roots are no less complex than a nation bound by poverty. I'm starting to see more clearly that the weaknesses in our families are rooted not just in our parents, but in our parents' parents' parents. A pattern was set many generations ago, be it a way of speaking to one another, a strategy for disciplining children, or a way to handle money. That pattern is either a blessing or a curse to the generations that follow.

For a long time I misunderstood the concept of blessings and curses. When the Bible talks about blessing nations and cursing people, I had in my mind some sort of spell or supernatural punishment from God. What I'm coming to realize is that God is way more sophisticated and powerful than simple miracles. God designed the world, and He knows how it works, not just it's physical laws, but also the psychological and emotional laws that govern it. When God warns about curses that befall people, He isn't saying "don't make me angry or I'll strike you down." Rather, He is saying "my child, trust me, I know what's best for you. If you get involved with those things I call sin, I know the irreparable damage they will cause to you and to all those around you, including your children and your children's children."

God designed the world to work a certain way, which He reveals throughout the Bible. And the crazy thing is that those blessings and curses show up in people's lives regardless of whether they acknowledge Him as the creator. "For He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust," it says in Matthew. I'm starting to see how every day I'm establishing patterns which will either bless or curse those around me and those blessings or curses will live long after I'm gone.

Taking the long view in our families means asking ourselves every day, "is the pattern that I'm establishing today a blessing or a curse to my family?" This is a critical question to ask, because it's not just our spouse or our children that will be effected, but the generations to follow. That's a weighty responsibility. But that's what it means to take the long view.

I love the views in Swaziland. Staring across the beautiful landscapes with rolling hills fills me with peace. And I love the way that God is opening not only my physical eyes, but also my spiritual eyes, to see things in a way that I've never seen before. Each day, I wake with expectancy, knowing that He has something to show me today. And that is truly a blessing.

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Many of you are wondering what we “do” in our time here.  The answer is complex and full!  Here is a list of our schedule for a week as it stands right now.

Sunday

AM- Church at Potter’s Wheel or CLC-Hawane

PM- play with kids on the farm

 Monday

AM- AR team discipleship and prayer

PM- Hospital Ministry meeting or individual time for study/reading/writing/prayer/reflection

*Alternate Monday- The Luke Commission (TLC) – mobile medical ministry

Tuesday

Before we continue telling stories of “what our hands are doing” here, you need a better understanding of this culture than what I’ve yet given you.  This will help you to rejoice when we say “such and such things happened!” because you understand a bit more about who Swazis are and their challenges. Part one is intended for the faint of heart, while part two gets more gritty. Buckle up!

 Part I:  A splash into Culture, the light version

Swazis speak SiSwati, and have traditional cultural dress and dances! Much of the singing is done a cappella with layers upon layers of harmony.  The men also make a loud, birdlike sound of chirping trills with their mouths during the traditional songs. Both men and women dance rhythmically, and have an incredible alternating kick in which their feet literally go over their heads.  It’s quite mesmerizing and jaw-dropping at the same time.

 In the rural areas, women wear skirts to the knees (with leggings if it’s cold or even over jeans), but breasts showing are no big deal.  People in the peri-urban and rural areas live on homesteads, a collection of either round grass huts (old-style traditional) or rectangular stick and mud buildings with corrugated tin roofs held on with concrete blocks or rocks.  This collection of buildings, with one or several kitchens and separate sleeping areas, is surrounded by a fence made either of woven grass, wooden posts, or sometimes barbed wire.  A homestead may have a few animals like chickens, ducks, or cattle (goats, cows, or sheep), and maybe a garden plot.  There is rarely running water or electricity, so cooking is done over an open flame and water is carried in buckets on a woman’s head from a local stream, shared with livestock.  As a sign of respect, men take their hats off and call out, “En-KAI-yah!” before entering the gate of the homestead.  Respectfully, married women are called Make (pronounced MAH-geh) married men are called Babe (BAH-beh), and grannies are called Gogo.  If you don’t know if a woman is a make, you can just call her “Sistah” (pronounced SEEs-tah). When speaking respectfully with someone, keep hands out of pockets and in full view.  Give and receive things with the right hand only or with both hands, but never with the left hand only.  Women carry massively heavy things on their heads. Many Swazis will go to a “traditional healer”, what we call a witchdoctor, for a long time before seeking out more formalized or Westernized medicine. 

Authority structures are a big deal. If a Swazi citizen wants to move from one place to another, they must have a meeting with the chief of the area where they want to move and get his approval first.  Also, if you want land, you must ask the chief, and he will decide whether or not to give it to you, and what the price is based on how much you are offering.  However, all land is the king’s land.  This is a kingdom, after all.  Traditionally, men are considered kings in their own homestead, and women are property, purchased from their family for a price of a certain number of cows, which is their “bride price.”  Women and men have totally separate roles, except for the gogo, who has her own hut or house and is revered as a “safe place” within the homestead.  Men get the best of everything, and “ladies first” is a foreign concept, traditionally.  (Thankfully, most Swazis we work with are not of this mindset, although some of the ones we serve in the community still maintain this mentality.) Children are caned (disciplined or beaten with a stick), or worse, regularly, both at home and at school.  Going to school, even national (public) school requires uniforms and school fees*.

Part II:  Culture: Into the deep end, the dark version

We are coming to understand some difficult realities of life in a kingdom.  For example, everything must be put in a positive light—no negative expression about political events, culture, or the way things are is publicly acceptable.  I see it as a forced mask of positivity, since it seems obvious to the outsider that the population is quickly dying out due to AIDS, orphan rates are dramatically increasing, not to mention other ills that come from ritualistic delving into the occult.  Citizens can be jailed for treason if they engage in public negative commentary about the monarch or the governing authorities.  In fact, many of the films we watched prior to coming, such as “Dear Francis” or “Beat the Drum” or “Without the King”, to get a better idea of what Swaziland faces culturally, physically, and politically are banned material within the country.  Possession of such material is grounds for arrest, citizen or not.  We were relatively dumbfounded by this, especially coming from a context of an electoral year in the US with free-flowing speech of all descriptions about our ruling authorities, which as a democracy, we believe is actually us, the people.  Debatable.   Living in a kingdom is different.  There is no document listing the “certain unalienable rights” like freedom of speech or religion, women’s suffrage, etc., etc.  That’s not to say we are suffering ourselves, but we are only just beginning to understand the complexity of a world outside our own country.

(There is more to say in the following paragraph than what is said, but it is all I can say publicly at this time, so please be aware and pray for the Kingdom.)

King Mswati III is the ruling monarch whose picture is listed literally highest on the wall of most public buildings followed by his mom, the Queen Mother, and then the photo of the Prime Minister. The King has governing structures called Ministries of many things—Finance, CULTURE, and Commerce to name a few.  These are like the guardians of what and who can come near the king, from people to information.  Although technically he could buck a lot of traditional culture for the sake of another cause, there are powerfully strong reasons why he doesn’t.  I can’t say more about this now, for respect of the people and culture, and for fear of “treason” but please know that society and politics here are complicated.  A king is not a dictator.  Please pray for him to have strength, wisdom, and Truth. I am coming to realize that to simply blame the monarch for the state of this country is simply not fair nor is it a fully aware response.  If you ask a Swazi who is desperately suffering, in fact, even he would be loathe to speak any ill at all of his king.  Can you see why?           

A brief observation (and certainly not the full answer to why HIV/AIDS is so prevalent in Swaziland):

Swazis are kept in relative darkness about the actual plight of AIDS and their country.  I still don’t completely understand why this is, but it is extremely frustrating to me. Knowledge and education are power.  Yet the most enlightening educational materials about the topic are considered contraband!  What?!? Also, through roots in the culture itself, as well as ignorance, sexual perversion is RAMPANT.  Whether through ritualistic bestiality, infant and child rape based on a false teaching that intercourse with a virgin cures one infected with HIV, to polygamy derived from traditional custom, to ancestral worship which requires certain undisclosed acts, I could go on.  Add to that poverty in and of itself which drives people to use their bodies for food or money for the most basic necessities.

* If you don’t have a mom or dad (the case for too many children here), and you or whoever is caring for you, perhaps an auntie or a gogo, doesn’t have any income (also very common), you will likely not go to school and will have to do some form of labor to contribute to the home.  If you have no skills, you have your body, and due to the pervasive sexual perversion, you can almost undoubtedly make something that way, even if it’s just enough to buy food for one day.  Many, many children who do have families have been abused physically, sexually, or emotionally.  The children we live with on the farm often come under this category.  Many here have lost one or both parents, usually due to AIDS, or their home has been deemed relationally unsafe (read: abuse, neglect) by Social Welfare, and they were referred to Hawane Farm (also known as Lighthouse Ministries, also known as Challenge Ministries, Swaziland).

 All in all, this place is one of the most beautiful in the world to me, and the people in general are fantastic.  Yet the spiritual forces are alive and darkness and light are in constant battle. Hopefully some of the photos from the cultural village paint a picture of this colorful country.  Pray for courage for the King and for redemption!

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These are a few photos from our arrival in Swaziland, on Hawane Farm (they raise gardens, pigs, and rabbits for sale for profit to buy food/supplies to run the farm and feed the orphans living there.), and at the cultural village we visited.  More to come on culture and life here :)  It is beautiful and we are ramping up slowly and becoming adjusted to the ways of life.  The photo of the big reddish brown house is the largest building on the farm-- it is called the farmhouse, and it is a duplex for a family of 5 (British pastor and family) and some of the volunteers from various ministries (including us).  So that's our home away from home!

Much love!

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We are now here in South Africa!   Pretoria, to be exact.  The journey was long, and the longest plane part was about 14.5 hours.  It wasn't so bad, if you could sleep part of the time, seeing how it was an overnight flight. 

In Pretoria, we are staying in a fabulous guest house in one of the best areas in town, thanks to a great discount Allan was able to get for us. We have tasted a few of South Africa's best-- such as Biltong, a FRESHly cut beef which is kind of like jerky in the States, and a S.A. braii-- which is basically like a wood-fueled grill-out.  We had EXCELLENT steak, which is really cheap here and delicious chicken, along with some vegetables like crushed pumpkin leaves (kindof like spinach) from Zambia, and cabbage and the famous Pop.  Pop is a white corn-based starch like grits but cooked solid, so you can pick it up with your hands and make little scoops out of it to pick up other food.  It's also a much finer grain than grits.  We like it.

Needless to say, we feel spoiled in such luxury, thinking we were going straight into poverty, but we are relishing each moment, because that will soon come!  Hot showers, cool swimming and a refrigerator, we do love you!    Friends and family, we love you too! 

Please keep praying as Allan and Clever are potentially going to get a new vehicle for the team today.  Pray for the right one and a good deal, and no issues.

We are currently sitting in an internet station in a nearby shopping center, but internet is expensive, so we won't be able to do it much.  The next you hear from us will probably be several days/weeks from Swaziland.  We are traveling there tomorrow by land.  Hopefully next time we will have pictures!

Sitting on the tarmac. The day that we have waited for, prepared for, prayed and fasted for is finally here. The engines whine to life as the nose of the plane turns to point down the runway. Too late to turn back now, short of something truly drastic. This plane is taking off, with us aboard. We start to inch forward, slowly gathering speed. Six months of preparation have brought us to this point. My chest is tight, and  drawing breath has an expectancy to it. Elizabeth, on my right, is staring off into the distance. Intent and exhausted. Expectant and scared. Flooded with too many emotions to even begin to distinguish them from one another.

Swaziland. Africa. Another continent entirely. Another language - siswati. Another life. The plane is really moving now, as the wheels become lighter on the pavement. We begin this journey today on a tarmac in North Carolina. But how will we have changed when our wheels again touch down on this familiar ground? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, they say. Our journey is beginning as we sit back and the G-forces press us into the seat.

Lift off.

As the ground melts away beneath us and we pass through the clouds, I find myself thinking of everyone who has helped us get here. Our parents and families have been so incredibly supportive as we announced our decision to quit our jobs and move to Africa for a year. Elizabeth's parents even let us live with them for the past six weeks! Nathan and Rebecca Clendenin had their own African journey a few years ago, and their experience inspired us tremendously. Nate Massey originally brought us pictures and stories from South Africa during his visit to the Clendenin's. Nate also prompted me (pushed me?) to consider Africa again. My friend Michael Parenteau once said that to succeed in life you have to learn to kick your own butt, but if you find someone who will kick it for you, thank them! So thanks Nate.

The greatest thanks are due to God and to Elizabeth. God interfered in my life in a big way a few years ago and changed my heart, transplanting a desire in my heart to serve in the developing world. Someday I'll share the whole story here. And thanks to Elizabeth, my awesome wife and adventure partner, who had the patience and wisdom not to push on me her own desires to serve in the developing world, but instead allowed God to speak to me when he was ready.

We're as ready now as we'll ever be.