stephaniecron - Home Sweet Home

After
spending a week living out of my suitcase I was ready to be at the place we
were going to live at in Swaziland to settle down. At training camp we were told to set aside
our expectations; we have no right to expect anything. It was really hard to keep myself from
thinking about how I thought it was going to be like. Are we all going to be sleeping in the same
room? Will there be electricity? What
are the bathrooms and showers going to be like? No matter what, I tried to not
expect. We were soon brought to reality.

Theses are our out houses...The
one on the far right does not have a door on it so we can either risk someone
walking up the road and seeing in, or just waiting until the sun goes down :)

Inside the girls hut.

It is a large round building with the bunk beds
lining the walls. It does have
electricity. Our AC come in the form of
wind through the windows. It can get
pretty warm in there but nothing awful.

Our
kitchen. We are all paired with a
cooking partner and we each cook dinner one night a week. For breakfast we eat either cereal or
oatmeal; for lunch we always have peanut butter and jelly; and for dinner it
varies.

Our shower
house. Here is how the shower taking
works: find a friend to help you carry a bucket of water to the house to pour
into the silver bucket, cup water over your body, soap up, then rinse. It can
be a little chilly, but we are getting used to it. The girls help wash each other's hair using
one bucket of water, trying to conserve water.

Lelo and his
family have been so kind to let us live on their homestead for the time we are
here.

It has
definitely been a challenge adapting to taking bucket showers, the smell inside
the out houses, the small cooking area, and doing our laundry by hand. However, I know that persevering through what
the American life style would call suffering, the Lord is building character in
me. I can honestly say that through
these experiences, and many more, I will not return home the same person I was
when I left.

Romans 5:3-4