From scraping a wall of the soon-to-be-museum with a iron brush for four hours, to removing decomposing household refuse with your hands, to giving a small barefooted child a loving hug … The Swazi 1000 experience is made up of moments where small, positive changes are adding to a major shift in the re-weaving of the fabric of the Bulembu community.
Most of the changes are not visible on a grand scale at first.
As one walks down the hill from the tent camp there is a view of the village. From this perspective, there doesn’t seem to be much happening in the town slumbering in the blazing sun. As one comes closer you start to see dirty volunteers happily doing what is needed in whichever capacity they are functioning on the particular day. Scrubbing showers, playing soccer with the children, removing alien vegetation, breaking down walls after waking up to pray at 3am, sewing costumes for a school play, smearing peanut butter on 500 slices of bread … Just a bunch of God’s friends anonymously loving people that they haven’t met before in their lives.
We are almost at the phase of the Swazi 1000 process where the beautiful Biblical concept of perseverance is set before us as a choice, and the unseen actions that don’t seem to make a major impact initially are becoming the tests that challenge our motives.
There is however, such a sense of encouragement when one starts to notice the visible changes sprouting up. The information signs painted on the buildings, the Dvdvuzi building site that is slowly but surely transforming into a refuge for orphans, the dirt patches in the grazing fields of the dairy that are starting to turn green, a small girl feeling safe enough to make herself at home in your lap …
Transformation comes as we, through these seemingly insignificant actions, challenge our own selfish nature and a resulting culture of apathy. The unseen tasks snowball into moved mountains, and a generation is radically renewed by love.
“Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the perseverance of Christ.”
2 Thes. 3:5 (NIV)