My two oldest kids took a two-hour drive and a three-hour hike
and are with a group that is ministering
to a community of Africans in the South African mountains. It is a new
church-plant, and they have just recently accepted Jesus. My wife has
the rest
of our tribe with a family that we have adopted here, and I am sitting in the sun at lunch in the city of Manzini. It is cold here in the
mornings, but the days warm up very nicely.

I am sitting out on a deck of
a restaurant, looking out at the mountains that contend with the Rocky
Mountains. The perfect blue sky, the colorful flowers, magnificent
trees - you would almost think you were in Hawaii or somewhere better. And, just for a second, you forget you are in a third-world place called Africa…

When
you look just a little more closely, you see the razor wire that is on every
fence, the guards that stand by every business, the marijuana being
sold openly in the parking lot below, the trash in the streets and in
every ditch, and the hundreds of people walking by, many that will be
dead in a few years.

So, while writing this blog, I asked the Lord, "What do you see when
you look down on this place?" I glance back up to see children walking
home from a short Friday of school, a witch doctor walking by, sons and
daughters, mothers and fathers, and the Lord says… "I see souls."