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Journal Entry
Journal Entry:1-12-11Ah, Father. What a wonderful sigh I breathe before you. Yebo Jesu. This is, again, one of the best days I’ve had so far. It’s a day I won’t forget! It started with a soaking morning of basketball—my “drip-drips” as my old teammates had called them, are now back to full force. Oh how
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The Continuous Game of “Seek Tenele”
After the week at Cape Town, it was nice to be back “home.” Prior to leaving, I had arranged to meet Tenele and Nomphilo at church for Christmas, which of course they didn’t end up coming to. Once we were back, I tried to look for both her and Nomphilo at Mangwaneni without success. Someone
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Christmas Break
Christmas in Swazi hardly felt like a Christmas at all with the heat. It felt like a fake Christmas in July celebration. But we tried our best to make it feel like Christmas at home. A week prior to Christmas we spent every evening in one of the boys’ homes to do a Christmas prayer
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My Kids
After Johannes’ letter to me (see blog post below), I felt it only fitting to title this as “my children”, so let me introduce you to these vibrant children of mine: Johannes: 15 years old, starting high school, wants to be a pastor or doctor, lives with Auntie Gugu who is paying for his schooling,
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Letters from Johannes
My own words will not do Johannes justice, so instead I am going to show you the letter Johannes wrote me today. For Christmas, I had given all my kids new journals to write in, so he wrote this in that journal to thank me and then continued with one of the most moving letters
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Torn Into Pieces
After the emotional encounter with Tenele as she poured out her tears, I was so encouraged and felt this was definitely a turning point in her life, which I still know that it was. But I also was a little weary as to whether or not she would let me see her after she showed
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Letting the Tears Fall
So, we prepared for mission Capture Tenele. I had a basketball game later that morning, so we had to get her before the game. I called Tenele and told her we were coming to get her. She said, “okay” and I asked her to meet us at the kitchen and she said, “okay” but of
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Stepped on a “fork knife” or STABBED?
After the splendid meeting with Tenele as told in the previous blog posts, I didn’t hear from her in a over a week. She said she’d meet me, but never did, and when I looked for her in Mangwaneni, I met Nomphilo but no Tenele. Her phone was dead, and the one time I got
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Tears into Rivers of Laughter
Journal Entry: 11-30-10 OH MY SWEET, SWEET JESUS! Oh my magnificent Master! Oh my powerful and mighty God! PRAISE you! PRAISE YOU, PRAISE YOU, PRAISE YOU!!!! ONLY you, God…ONLY you! You have turned my tears into rivers of joy–waterfalls of laughter! I am breathless and in utter awe of you! THANK you for answering prayers
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I Promise I Won’t Run
Monday, November 29th: After speaking with Gugu on Sunday about Tenele and finding out about her background, I was very moved and encouraged to keep pursuing Tenele. I cried so hard for her…again, but this time with tears of understanding. All I wanted to do was find her and hug her and hold her and
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An Evil I Cannot Fathom
My friend Ludger and I were talking about we cannot fathom the evil in this world. Just the other day, he was up all night because he got a phone call from one of the house fathers of one of the boys’ boarding homes. One of the boys had been stabbed. Ludger drove to the
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The End of my Strength is Only Your Beginning
Though I am oceans away from my old university and beloved campus church, I can still hear Fr. Mark’s praying words ringing in my ears: where our strength ends, Yours truly begins.” Acknowledging my limits in Tenele’s situation is more difficult than I thought, but it is EXTREMELY important. For only when I acknowledge what
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Hosea
I needed some encouragement this morning, so I went to the greatest source: the word of God. I decided to open up to Hosea, in hopes of learning something about prostitution that could encourage me with Tenele’s situation, because Hosea was commanded by the Lord to take a prostitute as an unfaithful wife. There are
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So that’s the story; here are my thoughts…
I just cannot understand Tenele’s situation. As much as I wish I knew what exactly was going on in her head, I can’t. I do not understand how she can pass up opportunities for a better future. I can’t imagine her actually wanting to be in prostitution or to live in the environment she does.
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Tenele Update Continued…
I arrived back in Swaziland the beginning of this week. One of the first things I did was call Tenele. Still dead. I talked to Thembi and found out Thembi had the same results. I called Tenele every day this week…same result. I just had a bad feeling and was really started getting worried about
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Update on Tenele-Bell
Not much has happened, while much has happened. I have been avoiding updating you on Tenele because I didn’t feel like there was much to write about. There’s seemingly no progress, and sometimes I feel like my energy in this is worthless. Sometimes I feel like I should be doing so much more, but I
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The Five Facts Everyone Should Know
Let me share a few facts with you:1) Traveling is always an adventure2) Don’t fly with Delta3) Tears make others soften up, though they don’t really accomplish anything4) The Atlanta airport hates me5) God can make good come out of any bad situation So, if you read my previous post, you know that I came
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Divine Interruption
At 2:30 in the morning last Friday, I received a surprise phone call from home…it was my mom delivering terrible news: my grandpa had passed away. We had known that he was sick and struggling for awhile; in fact, the doctors did not think he would last much longer after I left for Swazi. But
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“It’s Not My Fault”
After teaching yesterday, one of my students came to me at break time and said her friend was sick. So I went back to the classroom to find Fungile lying on her desk, with her head buried in the crease of her elbow. “Unani sisi?” I asked. (What’s wrong?)She didn’t respond.“Uyagula yini?” (Are you sick?)She
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