Today was an early start for us all but so Simon as the Men’s
Prayer group met at 7am. We then all
came together 8am for the regular Monday morning meeting which include introductions
of new teams, visitors and news. In
small groups, we then prayed for three of the eight countries that Hands
support these were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi and Zimbabwe. George Synman had recently visited the DRC
and had provided a prayer list to help.
We then met with our hosts for our orientation and to talk
about the week ahead.
The service centre
team then joined us to make up our team for the day.
We had to go via the pharmacy on the way to the care centre as many of the care
workers are ill and in need of medicine. Unfortunately, we can easily forget
that these care workers have their own problems, whether health or other, but
still manage to come to the care centre every day to look after the most
vulnerable children in their area. This is the epitome of the sort of work that
Jesus advocated for – helping others before yourself.
Once the children arrived and were waiting for the food to
be cooked, we taught them the song ‘Our God is Great Big God’ and they taught
us ‘Shine’. After a time of prayer, it
was time for food. We helped to serve it
but unfortunately had to leave early in order to sort out paperwork and travel for
Swaziland tomorrow. However, we will be back at Mafambisa Friday and it will be
lovely to see some of the children from there again as they are such a loving
and friendly community. It was actually a perfect first day.
Due to lacking basic necessities such as electricity,
running water and other amenities this will be our last blog for three days but
we will be able to update you all on Thursday night with our experiences from
Swaziland.