Healing Place Church Swaziland

So, today was day 5 of our Servolution… even though it was raining and cold we managed to brave the weather and make a difference!

We went out to a few petrol stations and offered to wash peoples windscreens!

We got to clean all sorts of windscreens from little cars to the huge trucks and buses, but it wasn’t only the cars that came in all sorts, we also had a whole bunch of different people that we were able to serve and show God’s love.

Some were really happy with us and what we were doing whereas others weren’t too excited with the idea; even so, we were still able to touch people’s lives. HPC Servolution Day 5!!

 Saturday was Day 2 of out servolution. We got all our people together and went out to Mangwaneni – a local community to do some construction and gardening for some of the widows and elderly!

We split up into 3 teams, each team went out to do a different project in the community, and here is what we did:

Team 1:

Went out to one of the houses in the community where they helped a widow with building a part of her house.

She was quite old and could not easily get around.

She had a part of the house that was only half built and we helped her by putting up part of the roof and filling up the ground and getting it ready for the floor to be put it.

She had a little garden also that had clearly not been looked at for a long time and while there, we helped with removing the weeds from the garden and cleaning out any trash that had made it’s way into the garden.

There were piles of sand and crushed stone that was to be used for the floor and we helped her by moving that to a safe place where it would not be washed away by the rain.

The team did a great job of making the place look great and getting the house close to being ready for people to live in! Servolution Team 1!!

 Team 2:

Went out to one of the homesteads in Mangwaneni. We were there to set up the base work, structure and roofing for a new stick and mud house!

This was for an elderly lady in the community; she with her eight children and grandchildren all lived in a one-room stick and mud house!

We started by putting up four corners in the ground that would make the four corners of the house and the support for the walls and roofing.

We had to level the ground and mix up cement with shovels in wheelbarrows that we would use for creating the concrete floor for the house.

When we got there in the morning all we had was a bear piece of land, but by the end of the day we had the flooring done, a roof up and the structure ready for the walls to be put in.

Its amazing that in the 4 or 5 hours that we spent there, a few guys with a some pick axes and hammers, were able to get all that done and show God’s love while doing that!

HPC Servolution Team 2!!

Team 3:

We also got to go to the Mahlalela homestead, but we were there before our tools and plants were there, so the elderly Mr. Mahlalela and his wife wore skeptical looks perhaps wondering if we were going to clear the weeds with our bare hands.

But as soon as all our stuff was there we were on it; the girls in our group-numbering five –initially set out to do the hard work but after an hour they were drained so the two guys had to quit raking leaves and get to grips with a slasher and a fork.

The old man, Mahlalela would from time to time come,  stand a distance, watch and then leave. In three hours we were done but as we were about to leave the old man took some time to pour his heart out: About his humble circumstances, how his disability -right hand and eye are not functioning- meant   he couldn’t do all the things he would like to do like the garden. The hurt that other people who had come with all these great promises about helping them out made them not trust that we would do their garden voluntarily….and of all people “these children” as he called us seeing as we had more teenagers than twenty-something’s.

The sweaty brows and smelly armpits were really worth it at the end because, it felt really good to help and show God’s love to someone who really needed the help.

Servolution Team 3!!

Team 4:

We were tasked with repairing a house for one of the older women in the community.

When we got to the place we first had to tear down some of the old structure so that we would be able to replace all the old and dangerous material with new ones that could last for a long time.

Tearing down the old part was fun but then came the hard part; we then began to re-plaster the walls with a mud mixture – both the inside and the outside. It was great to see our team getting serious and using their bear hands to put the mud up on the walls.

A couple of our guys also had to get up on the roof and replace the rusted roofing with a new layer, that would stop the water from the rain leaking into the house.

From mixing the mud and water to putting it up on the wall, servolution team 4 had a great time expressing God’s love to the people that lived in that house.

Servolution Team 4!!

Today was our fourth day of Servolution and we @ HPC decided to cook and give out free lunches to the local businesses around the church!

We had a bunch of the guys and ladies from church help with preparing a nice beef stew and salad for the people that work in the businesses around us. And at about noon we went and handed them out to the people!

We had a lot of people looking surprised and wondering what we were doing but most of them were happy when we explained and really appreciated the food – it was free food

We had a few interesting incidents such as where one of the men was not happy with us and didn’t really want the food, but we bumped into his wife just outside his office and she took two plates one for her and one for him… also the police allowed us to park in an illegal parking space just outside there office when they found out that we had free lunch for them!

All in all it was great being able to give out the free lunches and – once again – show everybody God’s love.

At HPC Swaziland we decided to take our church service on the road for Servolution! So on Sunday morning we closed our church doors for a while and went to clean and paint the local bus rank.

We had our painters there from as early as 7 am to start priming the walls and getting them ready for the new coat of paint that would give the bus rank a brand new look!

Everyone else gathered at the church a couple of songs to get us pumped for serving and a quick briefing on what we were to do. The church was split in to teams and strategically tackled the bus rank!

The local bus rank was not a pretty site as all the paint was pealing off the walls and it was filled with all sorts of garbage! But we at HPC went out and repainted most of the walls and we moved from one end of the bus rank to the other picking up all the trash we could find – we made sure that even the smallest items of trash on the ground would not evade our serve teams!

It was amazing to see the sea of red shirts flooding the bus rank and doing what they were doing simple because they wanted to show God’s love to the people of the city!

KFC is our kids’ ministry here at HPC Swaziland, it stands for Kids For Christ and on Saturday they really showed that they are kids for Christ!!

While the older people in church had servolution on Saturday the kids decided there own servolution!

So all our kids at HPC Swaziland went to a nearby orphanage to play there part in servolution.

The kids helped to weed out large parts of the orphanage garden and pick up all the trash that was laying around in the yard! After, they spent some time loving and playing with the kids at the orphanage and showing them the love of Jesus.

It’s amazing that as little as the kids are, there hearts are so open that they can show the love of Christ in the biggest and greatest ways possible!

Its Seven days of SerVoLutIOn!!!! Seven days of Servolution is from the 3 – 9 of April but we @ 4 12 got a head start on everyone else… We set up a challenge for our students… in which we wanted to see which school or community could perform the most and biggest serve events during that week, and the team that did would receive a prize at the end of the week during our youth service!

All through last week a bunch of our students went out and did a whole lot of serve events in there schools and communities!! 4 12 showed what Servolution is all about last week as they shared God’s love and changed lives through simple acts of kindness such as washing there teachers cars, cleaning the classroom, putting away there classmates lunch trays!

It was incredible to see the amazing things that these guys were able to do throughout the week!!