Spreadin' the Love: Sanibonani! Hello from Swaziland.

Hope and a future

By partnering with Children's Cup, our community has the opportunity to directly impact the lives of CarePoint kids. I am returning to Swaziland in September and hope to establish the beginning of a long, life-transforming relationship between the active, open-hearted families of our community and the needy, vulnerable children of Swaziland. Children's Cup lifts kids up out of desperation and utter poverty and gives them love, safety, hope and a future. By opening our hearts and lives to these children, we can be a part of building the safe havens, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and raising children who are wholly prepared for a better future. A little bit of love and support from each of us goes a long way when we all join together to make a difference.

Children's Cup International

Children's Cup's purpose is to take humanitarian and spiritual aid into the hard places where war, natural disasters and disease epidemics have devastated societies.
Children's Cup has its Africa offices in Swaziland, a beautiful country that is being ravaged by the terrors of having 43% of its population HIV-positive. This contributes to a sick and dying middle generation, leaving vulnerable children to care for themselves with no adults to keep them safe and healthy.
By building a network of CarePoints in densely populated urban areas, as well as in peri-urban and rural areas, Children’s Cup cares for thousands of Swazi children every day, giving them food, education, medical attention and spiritual training. The most vulnerable children are placed in safe homes with loving adult care-givers.
Children’s Cup has found a long-range development strategy that involves the community heavily. It is proving to be very successful in sparking genuine change in lives by empowering and enabling people to have the desire, skills and opportunity to rise out of poverty.
A CarePoint can be looked at as a school, a medical clinic, a cafeteria, and a meeting place. No matter what program is going on at a CarePoint, each is most definitely a safe haven for hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children that are in such desperate need of hope.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Sanibonani! Hello from Swaziland.

We have finally arrived at Emafini, the place where we'll be staying in Swaziland. It's beautiful. We have a nice view of the mountains from our room, and it smells like jasmine when we walk outside. My good friend Beth is rooming with me, and we even have a kettle so that I can boil water to make coffee in the morning. Life is good.

We began travelling at 5:30 am Thursday morning, and it is now 6:30 pm Saturday evening, so getting here was quite an undertaking. But now that we're here we ae very excited and can't wait to dig in to work. Tomorrow morning we'll go to Healing Place Church--Swaziland and then maybe do a driving tour of some of the areas where we'll be working.

Monday we intended to do some painting at one of the Care Points, but today the king decided to declare Monday a holiday in his own honor, so stores may not be open to buy paint. In that case, we'll switch gears and fill in a septic tank overflow area with large rocks for drainage. This is at one of the Care Points that is not yet fully sponsored and still needs a good bit of work. Apparently the septic system is right where the children like to play soccer, and there's a danger one might fall right in. So we will fix that up and then paint whenever we can get materials.

Tomorrow I hope to begin posting photos from the tip. The connection speed seems ok here, so hopefully I can post something new every day.

I already showed the missionaries the scarves and stickers that we collected, and they are really excited. They said we'll be showing the kids and ladies so much love by handing them out. I think the work we do here is going to be really impactful. Please continue to pray for us. This team is ready to work. I can't wait to report back to you on everything that happens.