home visits

Went to the village the other day to check up on three of the girls that we took on retreat. The first one we visited, called Dina, we spotted along the road as she was running to her home. She quickly brought out chairs for us to sit in and then ran off to the local town center to get sodas and mandazies for us her guests. (the picture with pig is Dina's grandmother and Bena as we wait for Dina to come back.) she was running everywhere, we could tell she was excited to see us again. One of the difficulties in visiting people in the village is that they always want to prepare something for you the visitor and you can spend hours under a tree by yourselves while the host prepares something, then the whole point of visiting is missed. In this case we only had to wait about 30min for our host to sit down with us...she went to get the sodas, came back sweating, b/c she was running everywhere she was going, needed to bathe, than she finally came back to us when her brother told her to go get more sodas and mandazies for us, there she went running again, but finally made it back, I confirmed with her that she should not bathe again we just wanted to sit with her, allow her to share and pray with her. (this is us sitting and sharing)

Her story is a hard one. Her mother gave birth and then pretty much handed her over to the grandparents to raise, no one knows who her father is. Now her mother has died and she still lives with her grandparents. I should say with her grandmother b/c the grandfather is actually staying with his other wife a few kilometers away so he's not really around most the time. Her uncle is only 2 years older than her so he grew up like a brother of hers, yet the grandfather has refused to pay for school fees any longer for this 17yr old girl. she made it to her second year in secondary school when her grandfather thought it time for her to stop wasting his money and get married. But she didn't want to, she wants to go to school, we think her grandparents could even afford the school fees and yet they won't let her go b/c they don't want to waste money on her. sometimes the auntie that's around will say mean things to her and tell her to go find her dad, then she goes away for a week to visit another auntie and calm down and clear her head. She loves the Lord and we really see her come alive when dancing and doing drama. And she loves singing in choir at church. After she shared with us some struggles, we prayed for her and her family and went on our way. We headed to the next house..that of mary's. But I think that's enough posting for right now. I'll have to talk more about her in another post later on. Please be praying for Dina, especially that she might be aware of her identity in Christ despite those around her not caring for her so much. Also pray that somehow she would be able to go back to school again. thank you.