Nicole Keen, a May 2007 CU grad and former CW Program Staffer, is spending the better part of the academic year serving as a missionary in Africa.  Following is her latest entry from Swaziland, where she will be serving through the spring.  Please keep Nicole and others serving in Africa in your prayers...along with the people of that beautiful yet so often broken land.  CLG

Hey Everyone!

After some of you got my pictures last week, I want to clear something up.  First of all, I do not live on a golf course. One of those pictures was taken from a golf course, but I just wanted you to see the beauty of the scenery in Swazi.  Sorry if that confused any of you! We are near a golf course and we do occasionally go swimming, but we are not living the high life over here although it is pretty nice.

We just got a refrigerator on Thursday…it is so nice to finally be able to have cold food, cold MILK, butter, etc.  We are not allowed to keep personal items in the fridge because there are so many of us, but we can keep a few goodies in the freezer if we want.

This has also been a really long week even though I emailed on Monday.  I have gone to the school everyday…meaning I wake up between 5-5:30 in the morning, leave the house at 6:50, and return around 3:00.  This also means that I have been going to bed between 8-9 every night because I am so tired!

On Tuesday I taught in the 6th grade classes again and in the afternoon Allison and I went to teach in the 7th grade class.  The 7th graders LOVED us, we ended up staying in there for 3 hours and hanging out while the teacher sat in the lounge and did nothing. They kept asking us if we know people like Jean Claude Van Damme and David Beckham.

Tuesday afternoon we went to the library to talk about volunteering there, or actually to tell them that we could not, but the librarian conned us into volunteering on Tuesdays for an hour.  

On Wednesday I taught in the 6th grade classes again and we hung out in the 7th grade class again in the afternoon. Apparently the teacher was at a workshop all day long and so the students simply did not have class.  Swaziland has not implemented the "substitute teacher" concept yet.  Allison and I stayed afterschool on Wednesday to hang out with some of the girls who wanted to get to know us.  We sat in the shade of a tree and talked for an hour.  The girls were trying to give us Swazi names and were teaching us Swazi phrases…it ended up being really fun.  Wednesday night we went to the Manzini house for dinner and hanging out.

Thursday was spent at the school again, but I only taught in the 6th grade class.  We take public transport to the school everyday and they drop us off in the same spot.  The past few days this older woman has asked us to buy mangos from her, and today she asked us to walk her grandchild and her friend to the carepoint that is right beside the school. The little girls are between 3-5 and are so cute!  We went to the care point afterschool to say hey and hang out because we finished teaching around 1:00, and when we walked up, the little girls got their bags and were ready to leave with us!  We ended up walking them home about half an hour later, along with 10 other kids who decided to join.  The kids have to cross a major highway and accidents are very frequent here, so Allison and I walk the kids across to make sure that they are safe. Many parents just send their little babies to the care point and the school walking by themselves.  It is really unsafe for these kids.

Afterwards we came home and went to the pool that is right down the street from our house, called the Timbali Lodge.  We all hung out there for about 2 hours and then came home to eat and relax around the house before going to bed.

On Friday we also walked the little ones to the carepoint and went to the school to teach. On Fridays the kids get out at 1:00, so we were done with school early!  We came home and hung around the house. Some people went to the International Church for youth group on Friday…many of us stayed here and made cookies and watched movies. It was a nice end to the week.

Saturday is our family ministry day, and it was raining and cold on Saturday so we went to the hospital.  I hung out in the children's ward again, saw Thandela and colored with some kids in the next room over.  Two girls on our team have spent most waking hours this past week at the hospital with a little boy who was found locked in a house by himself.  He is about 3 years old and looks as if he is 1.  He weighed 10 pounds and was extremely malnourished.  Melissa and Amber took became attached to this little guy, we hung out with him last weekend at the hospital but he took a turn for the worse this week.  Since he is abandoned, no one is there to make sure the nurses take care of him. Melissa and Amber fed him every 3 hours and just sat by his bed.  On Saturday he was very unresponsive, I was sitting with them for about 45 minutes and he was on oxygen the entire time.  We all left at about 11:30 to go to the grocery store and they were going to meet us in Manzini for dinner. About 2:00 Melissa and Amber came home; the little boy had died.  They were really sad and upset, but we all know that the little guy knew more love in the past week from them than he has his entire life. That is the hard part living in Swaziland…one out of every two people will die from AIDS.  Most people we meet will die from AIDS in the next few years, or at least in our lifetime.  It brings a sense of urgency to the Gospel but also a new meaning to loving your neighbor and pouring yourself out. If you want to read more about what I am learning, my blog this week is about that! By the way, AIM is using my blog to send to new recruits for FYM and it will also be in the AIM newsletter…..haha.

On Sunday we went to Mbabane Chapel again and the service was so good!  We are starting a study on the life of Abraham and this week was an intro to what we are getting into.  We read Genesis 11:27-12:3 about the call of Abram and Pastor Ken talked about what we were going to learn through Abraham.  We also had Communion this week. Sunday afternoon we went to the Royal Swazi to swim for awhile and then we had a special dinner because it was Michelle's 21st birthday.  We has fettucini alfredo, garlic bread, and a really good salad. We also had ice cream sundaes for dessert!  A couple of us then watched "Without a Trace," one of my favorite television series.  

This week has been very tiring but also pretty fulfilling.  My schedule is pretty intense for school and it is very demanding.  I brought each of the kid's journals home this week to read and correct their essays about themselves….let me tell you that many of them have not grasped English in the least. On the other hand, some of them are extremely good at English.  Each class is all over the board in their abilities, so this makes it hard to prepare lessons that will accommodate everyone.  Not to mention that they have many behavioral problems…there is no standard of discipline other than getting a beating!

I think that is about all I have for this week, let me know how you are all doing and send me some recipes if you have the chance!

Nicole