Healing Place Church Swaziland

Healing Place Church Swaziland has started to reach out to a CarePoint in Mbabane every other week. Mangwaneni is a community about a mile outside of town. It is situated on the side of the mountain as an informal settlement. The area is full of people who moved to town in order to find work. Some residents have money but the overwhelming majority live in poverty.

412, the HPC Swazi youth group, visits Mangwaneni every other week to reach out to the teens and pre-teens of the area. They meet at the CarePoint to play games, build relationships and speak truth. This is an important outreach because it goes beyond the four walls of the church. See the HPC interns reflections about why they like to go to Mangwaneni and why it’s important…

Paul Chasusa – I love the fact that it’s a bit different to 412. It’s having God praising God in a different way. I think it’s important because a bunch of the youth can’t make it to church because of transport and other issues. This is our chance to take God, HPC and specifically 412 to them.

Karl Zowa – I like that when we go to Mangwaneni, the 412 youth that come with us go all over the community to invite people. There is a unity amongst the youth and all of  us share a purpose. It is cool and it’s important because our mission is to change the situation and lives in Mangwaneni.

Tyrone Dlamini – I like the experience in the Kombi, its crazy…we’re laughing and we’re having fun together outside of a Church Service. It helps the leaders at 412 to grow and expand in their ministry. It is helping to set the foundation for our church to impact the whole community of Mangwaneni.

Tamara Chasusa – I like the fact that we get to hang out with other youth that do not come to 412. It teaches our youth group the importance of going outside of their comfort zones in order to reach out to people. It is important because it teaches the youth to talk to, pray for, and believe God for people that are a bit different than they are.

A beautiful landscape surrounds me as I look up to a multitude of smiling faces. The green of summer is fading to gold as summer begins to relinquish its grip to the inevitable dry air of winter. I sit at the Mbekelweni CarePoint adjacent to the soon to be developed Swaziland Dream Center. A group of brawny mountains frame a quiet lake to form the backdrop to Cup’s Youth Explosion @Mbekelweni.

A group of 40 young people from 4 CarePoints and Healing Place Church converged upon the community of Mbekelweni. Earlier in the day I stood in a classroom surrounded by these 40 young people. We prayed together for our humble seed to take root. We decided to avail ourselves to the purposes of God for that day. Serving one by reaching one…we determined in our hearts to be on mission.

The crowd is silent as a group of young people from Ngwane Park take the stage. The excitement in the crowd is tangible; it is like you can breathe it in. My attention swings back to the stage. One young man from Ngwane Park playing the part of an old man evokes memories of the talent I’ve seen on display during a Broadway show. I keep thinking to myself when did these young people develop into such amazing actors & actresses? The drama ends, the crowd bursts into applause. Immediately a group of ten young people take the stage. My body’s attentiveness to what I’m seeing is abruptly interrupted by both my ears and my body sensing the familiarity of a Joyous Celebration Song. Ten set of eyes suddenly meet the on looking crowd, smiles flash and a flurry of movement ensues. The young people dance in unison as they alternate between styles. All of a sudden Ntombenhle comes to the front of the group. Her foot goes about 5 feet in the air and just as suddenly crashes down to the floor. The crowd goes wild as the dance team takes turns freestylin’ before finishing together.

I stand there at the end of the day astonished. It’s amazing the things God is doing in young people’s lives. Tyrone Dlamini, nineteen years old, just finished sharing his heart and what God sees when he looks at these young people. This is bigger than me…truly I need to understand the phrase I’ve so often heard. Jesus is here and anything can happen…

We at HPC Swaziland just got done with our first ever Go Global African Leadership Conference with nearly 400 pastors in attendance.

The whole experience was absolutely phenomenal. From seeing the smiles on the Pastors faces as they went through registration to seeing them being utterly transformed by the presence of God

The first night, Wednesday night, was incredible. We had an awesome time of worship and a great time of prayer at the end when the pastors responded in numbers to the alter call.

It was simply amazing to see hundreds of Pastors put aside their differences and come together to serve some of the communities on Thursday afternoon as we had our servolution event.

All in all I can say this conference was a complete success and I look forward to seeing all the wonderful things that God is going to do in Southern Africa through the lives of these Pastors.