Wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh
In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight
In the jungle, the quiet jungle
The lion sleeps tonight
Have you ever come face to face with a lion? Well, I did just that. Wow, let me tell you, I highly recommend a trip to Swaziland and Hlane National Park. Talk about a real personal experience. The animals are so close to you that for the first time in Africa, I actually experienced a thrill sort of like the kind of thrill you get when you ride the scariest ride in an amusement park. The lion’s roar six feet from you will leave such an impression that I promise you, your ears will remain with the resonant sound forever.
This trip was very different for Hearts Afire because usually we do the fun things at the end. But this particular mission turned out better with a safari in the beginning, because of the bonding. But before we get into the safari, let me tell you about the introduction the team had to South Africa. I arrived in South Africa on Sept. 29, just in time for the yearly celebration at Christian Family Church International (CFCI). This year it was about being the ACTS church. The incredible thing was that the entire team had also received that same message of action, power, growth and miracles. God had shown it to us all. Our team consisted of eight people, plus many from the local church in Swaziland.
During that first week, one of our team members joined me for the celebration, with great anticipation of how we were going to encounter God. During that week in prayer, we not only felt God’s presence but the vision of God formatting the same theme that occurred in Acts 1 and 2, where Christ’s disciples went into the upper room and received the Holy Spirit. It is after that, that Christianity grew rapidly and signs, wonders, and miracles followed.
We were to be a small team but mighty and powerful. It says in Acts that they were all of one accord in mind and spirit. This Hearts Afire team was to be truly of one mind and we had one main purpose: to bring the good news of Christ to those in need. The interesting thing is that “those in need” means different things to different folks. You do not have to be financially poor to be in need. You can be spiritually poor and be quite well off, such as many back home. If only we could really see the Acts church back home in the U.S. I trust and pray someday we will. At the end of the celebration, the rest of the team arrived from the U.S. We celebrated on Thursday, Oct. 4, as we prayed for the power of the Holy Spirit to anoint the whole team. The anointing was so strong that we all got what we call God Downloads. We saw visions of various of our team members walking around the church in Swaziland and praying with patients and watching illnesses heal, blind eyes see, and deliverances occur.
We were now ready to leave Johannesburg and move onto Swaziland. We left on the following day for Hlane National Park, which is in Swaziland. We stayed there for three days building the team unity in both prayer and spirit. God showed us His beauty of nature throughout these three days. Wow, what an incredible safari experience. We had sunrise and sunset drives and even rhino walks. We were so close to the lions, elephants, and rhinos that all it would have taken was to walk two feet to actually touch them. It was surreal. At one turn the elephant lifted one of his feet and grunted at us, warning us of potential danger. At another point the lion looked up, finally disgruntled with our continuous glares, and actually led out a loud roar.
We stayed in cabins and then later these small huts which – though with no electricity – were quite charming. I kind of loved the camping experience without building the tents or cooking our food. Rhinos and African plains were our daily view from our restaurant, with bonfires at night and devotions in beautiful pavilions by day. Hey, you know I just remembered? Where are my fanholders and my servants. Isn’t that how it worked in Out of Africa or Lawrence of Arabia? Hmmm. Well I can tell you, I now know how it must have felt at that time without electricity, in the beating sun living in the wild, hearing the sounds of the wild and feeling the leftover heat plastered to my skin as I lay down to sleep. Then of course there are the small critters to periodically deal with as you walk out of your hut at 5:15 a.m. You also hear the call of the wild, which is the roaring lion and the grunting elephant, which by the way made me run so quickly to the waiting safari lobby that you would have thought my pants were on fire.
We enjoyed five safari adventures, and every night we continued to bond. When our safari was over we headed for Pastor La’salette at Christian Family Church Swaziland. What an incredible adventure because Pastor La’salette has this oasis in the middle of the sugar cane fields. Her testimony is so incredible because she and her husband came all the way from Portugal to work in the sugar cane industry. However she began to see a great need with the orphans and especially the HIV orphans. She then felt called by God to start these care point centers which feed, educate, and take care of basic essential needs for these children. She now has nine care point centers throughout Swaziland taking care of more than 2,000 children.
In 1999, she founded Christian Family Church Swaziland. In 2007, her husband died, but this only served to make her heart even more passionate about the lost and forgotten of Swaziland. Hearts Afire has co-labored with her to bring the love of Christ through healing and medical care to this region of Tabankulu. One of every two or three people are infected with HIV. The AIDS orphan situation is horrendous in this region.
God brought us a personal experience with this while shopping for food and medications for our clinic. While we were waiting in the parking lot, two young brothers, ages 10 and 12, approached our car asking for food. D.J. Lambert immediately saw their need and God spoke to her to feed them. Meanwhile, while waiting in the car, I looked down and saw that the young boy had no shoes and his feet were knarled from walking for hours without shoes. By the way, we happen to have parked in front of a shoe store. Well, you can’t possibly see this and not do something. It was very obvious that the Lord needed us to act. We asked the store clerks to please open the store and let us in and all of a sudden his older brother also showed up with a clothes pin holding up his pants – dirty and torn – and he also had no shoes. The Lord blessed us as we were able to carry out the gospel in action.
Feed the hungry and clothe the naked and love them all. So often we think we are asked only to carry out one piece of the gospel without the rest, and we think that God has us only for our small area of duty, but that is not true. We are used in all of the ways that the gospel says, but it may be just at different times, obviously not all at once. Well when we all finished our small shopping spree for the children, they came away with new clothes, gym shoes and socks and obviously fed. We learned that the children had no parents, because their mother had died and their father was not with them. The man they called Grandpa tried to take care for them but he had no real ability to do so. They were hours away from home and had to walk all these miles back home with no shoes on a cold night. They begged for food because they had not eaten the whole day.
I believe that God gave us this opportunity for many purposes, not just to act out the gospel but also to be a witness to the store clerks who looked at us and couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It also created more of a bonding for our team. However, most importantly it changed the life of three young boys. Obviously the two who received Christ and were taken care of by the Lord were unforgettable.
Thank you Lord for giving us the opportunity to be a blessing! I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
