Halloween in Africa – can
you imagine? We have a “Real Life” team here right now from America.
These are about 18 young people that have given three months of their lives to serve the people of
Swaziland.
Of course, my incredible wife took it upon herself to make sure that each
one of these kids got to celebrate “Harvest”!
The team of young missionaries went around the room and told
Lisa and me of their horror stories of Halloween in the past – mostly how their
parents made it into such a “demonic” thing that they were scarred for life!
Now, they
are fully alive and aware of the real horrors of life – 140+ million orphans in the world, young ones being sold as slaves into the sex trade, and other injustices.
We really had an amazing night. The team and our own kids got a
break from the heaviness of Africa, and Lisa
was overflowing with the joy of being a mom!
Oh, and a couple of the locals dressed up;
now that was scary!
As I asked around Swaziland if they new what
Halloween or Harvest were, the locals told me that they did not.
Most have never even heard of such a weird
holiday and couldn’t figure out why we would celebrate in such a way: dressing
up like pirates, Harry Potter, Muslims (they see them everyday by the
thousands), princesses (they see them around as well – the King of Swazi has
15!), and even superheroes.
Noah, our five-year-old, was Spiderman, and Tyler, well… I just laughed and told the Africans to play along
with the silly Americans.
We like to pretend!
