A broken toe and a llloooonnnggg post!

Yipee...I am finally getting time to update! We are in Mbanane, Swaziland!!

As I write this I am sitting in a hotel room! Bob and I needed some time to ourselves and so our leader allowed us to have the night off. We got to this beautiful hotel around 4pm, went for a little swim, showered and then went to the restaurant for supper. We had a huge buffet supper, and the room has free wireless internet, it's not the fastest, but it's better then nothing!

I hope and pray everyone had a great Christmas, I know we did! It was a little weird to not have snow; in fact I actually got a sun burn on Christmas day. We got to talk to my parents as well as the Barnes side of the family on Christmas day, so that was really special to me.

As I haven’t blogged in a while I have lots to share, so here I go.....

We have been busy. We are staying at the YWAM base, it is a 45 minute walk into town and so we can’t get to the internet as much as we could in Jbay. Also, the internet is so slow at the shop, that just the other day I bought half an hour of time, and it took like 10 minutes just to download blogger and then when I went to post, it wouldn’t let me open it.

We arrived in Swaziland on the 17th (after a tearful goodbye to the other half of our team on Sunday night) and thank God we had no problems at the border. Since we have been here we have been to the hospital twice just to minister to people. The first time we went I was with 2 other guys and we ministered in the men’s ward. I was able to minister to a wife of one of the men in the hospital. It was really sad, but also really good, the people are really open to hear about God, and that day, there were 4 men that gave their hearts to the Lord. Also the wife that I was talking with said the sinners’ prayer too. It was awesome!

The one thing that was really hard, was when we first got in the ward, there was one guy in the corner and we didn't talk to him right away, something drew us to another guy, and then not 15 minutes later, the first guy we saw, his wife came in and he had died right then and there! Like not even 5 minutes before!!! It was really sad and really hard to watch. We ended up just going and sitting beside her and praying for her as she cried her eyes out! The second time we went (which was just today) I stayed in the children’s ward in the room where the kids that have been abandoned stay. I just sat and held one little baby and sang to her. Then I helped Bob feed one little girl that has cerebral palsy. To see the conditions of the hospital it brings tears to my eyes! It is just so sad.

The other thing we have done since being here was we attended one night of a youth camp. Boy, I have never felt like such a minority, there were about 500 youth there and we were the only white people, and there is only 6 white people on our team. It was also a huge eye opener to see how much we really do have in North America! We are so blessed to be able to say that we come from such a rich country. For example, we went into the bathrooms at this camp and all it was was like 3 toilets with no seats and no toilet paper and just garbage all over the place.

Also since we've been here we have also gone to an orphanage. We went this past Saturday with some of the youth from the Alliance church. (One of the staff from the base here goes to the Alliance church) There are 18 kids that stay in the orphanage and they rang from 5 years old to 16 years old!

We had such a great time with them on Saturday and we enjoyed it so much that as a team we decided we wanted to spend Christmas with these kids! As a team we put our money together and ended up getting each of the kids a care package with a whole bunch of hygiene products and then a special toy or something for them! We also did a braai (bbq) for them for supper. Christmas Day was so special....we ended up getting there around 3pm and just visited and played games with them, then we had our supper around 6:30. Which consisted of salads and braai pork! (I put some pictures on Facebook and will hopefully get some up on photobucket too) The cool thing with having a braai in Africa, is you don't use any silverware, so we got to eat salads and meat, all with our hands! No napkins or anything! It is so much fun, not very ladylike, but lots of fun! Also, I have fallen in love with 2 of the girls from the orphanage, they are twin girls aged 7. They only speak a little bit of English, but, oh my.....they have captured my heart!!! I am in love! I can't even begin to describe how much I love them!

Well, sorry this post is long. I am trying to keep a diary of things that we do so I can share them with you all. I will do my best to try to keep you updated. Oh, before I forget.....one thing, on Wednesday (yesterday) we were at one of the churches in the nearby villages and everything in Swaziland is on a hill and as we had been working in the garden all morning and as we were walking back to the kombi, I slipped and fell right on my left leg! It hurt so bad and there was lots of blood, also my one toe really started to hurt really bad! I tried to be strong, but all the way home, I was in so much pain! I have wrapped up my leg and thought that maybe I just sprained my toe....well I woke up this morning and my toe was hurting so bad, I looked at it and it is all black and blue!! I don't have to go to the doctor to know that it is broken! So, if you could please pray that my toe heals fast and also my leg, both really, really hurt!

Ok, now I think I have said enough for now...take care everyone, lots of love to all.