Talking about Christ at Government mtg!

Hello everyone!!

After the cool “divine appointment” with the attorney on Tuesday, I wrote in my journal the next day how letting God lead your life is such a blessed adventure – “Lord, I love the adventure of life with You at the helm…such a blessed adventure with You. I love it. I love you.” Then the next day, I was amazed yet again by another day of cool opportunities…

I spent all day Thursday with one other YFC staff member, Sara, at a Government consultative workshop to help revise the Botswana National Youth Policy, which hasn’t been revised since 1996. We suggested policy changes and strategies in the areas of youth employment, poverty and hunger, the environment, science and IT, leadership development, vulnerable youth/orphans, recreation/sport/creative arts, education/training, health – HIV/AIDS prevention and care, moral and spiritual development, gender issues –i.e. working for equality and empowerment of females, and positive cultural values.
Some quick facts listed in the policy are that according to a 2001 Census the youth account for 38.4 % of the national population in Botswana. The estimated 2009 HIV prevalence was 12.3% for those 20-24 years and 25.9% for those 25-29 years old. So in my age bracket, 1 in 4 people has HIV/AIDS.

There were people there from the government, private sector, NGOs, and youth organizations like YFC. Sara and I were the only two makgua (white people), the only two non-Batswana in the meeting of about 25 youth representatives. Basically the government wants to create a new National Youth Policy and Action Plan to implement the policy because the 1996 is definitely outdated in terms of current concerns. The hope is to present it in July to the Parliament to be approved and implemented. They want to publicize it so that it is well-known through newspapers, a press conference, radio, TV, and on their website. Our comments would help revise and enhance the policy.

So they split us up into groups, each group focusing on three of the strategic areas mentioned above. I was in the group that worked on the last three – moral and spiritual development, gender issues, and culture values. There were 5 people in my group, and I knew nothing about them. So when we began talking about strategies to foster moral and spiritual development, I did not know where they stood in terms of beliefs…
The conversation initially focused on whether we should have a law passed where youth have IDs and are carded at pubs, and underage youth are not able to purchase alcohol. They were discussing that for quite some time (mainly in Setswana), but after awhile I shared that while it’s not bad to have such a law, I think we need to focus on the deeper issues of the youth’s moral and spiritual development. Instead of focusing on how to catch youth in pubs and forcefully changing their behavior, why don’t we try to change their hearts and morals so that they won’t want to go to the pub in the first place? I shared how the youth are thirsting after something to fulfill them, to satisfy them. They are searching for love and acceptance, and they think it can come from their peers, which then increases the peer pressure to engage in risky behaviors, like drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. I shared that as a Christian, my relationship with Christ fulfills me…and likewise when I was a teenager, I didn’t feel the need to engage in those risky behaviors to fulfill me. So I shared that if we could help youth grow spiritually, then we would see the morality falling in line as a result.

Then I mentioned how Youth for Christ goes into schools and helps promote a lifestyle of morals and abstinence from alcohol, drugs, and sex until marriage ….all flowing from a personal relationship with Christ. The secretary for our group wrote down as one of our strategies: “Young people need spiritual guidance to build their morals, teach them about responsibilities—that teaching can be done at schools by youth organizations like Youth for Christ and BOFWA.” I wasn’t expecting that she would write YFC into the suggested strategy, but hey, that’s cool with me!

For gender issues, one of my suggestions was written down for our group and shared with the whole group: “Teaching girls job skills and how to start their own businesses (possibly with micro-credit/micro-loan programs) so they can be financially independent.”

For the culture section, I suggested that the government enforce policies that protect people’s religious freedom and ensure that the teaching of culture does not violate religious freedom, e.g. it does not force youth to embrace or take part in traditional religious practices which they do not believe. This is currently a big issue in Mochudi (for more details, email me and I’ll email you more). I was one of our group presenters and thus was able to share those things with the whole assembly and the government youth representatives present. I was also able to suggest that perhaps the government could help groups like YFC to get in to more schools to share about moral and spiritual development, because now it is hard to get into schools. How cool to think that the government could actually help to get Christian groups into schools to present to students! [It was interesting that to start this government-led workshop, one of the government youth department workers asked for someone to pray and ask God for wisdom and guidance in our meeting].

We won’t know how much bearing our comments will have, but it was a very encouraging day to be able to share our thoughts, concerns, and strategies in all these areas and see that our comments and thoughts were valued and recorded. It felt like such a privilege to be there and have the opportunity to make some small impact. They are doing several of these consultative workshops throughout the country to gain feedback and insight from the youth and young people. It was also very refreshing to see the people of Botswana acknowledging and addressing the issues facing youth and working to create strategies and action plans to implement them. The proposed National Youth Policy which we were revising is 55 pages long (and we can still read through it more thoroughly and send in our revisions and ideas to the Department of Youth office. The Action Plan to implement the strategies is 48 pages long, and most of the policy and action plan I totally agree with already and hope that it can be implemented effectively.

Ok, back to more of the cool stories of the day. After I had shared with my group about how Christ fulfills me and if we can help youth experience that, they won’t feel the need or desire to engage in risky behaviors…soon after that, it was tea time and one of the other group members told me that she is a Christian. After tea time we finished our strategies and then the conversation unexpectedly turned to focus totally on Christ. The group members were often speaking in Setswana, but all of sudden, the one who identified herself as a Christian said in English to the young woman next to me… “We died with Christ, and were raised with Christ...we have been justified, and now we are being sanctified…and there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So that was like, “Whoa…ok, apparently we’re talking about Christ now!” So I whipped out my bible, which I had decided to bring along for some reason. I was able to find the verse she was trying to cite (Romans 8:1) and show it to the girl next to me. Then the guy to my left asked her to share about why she is born again…and then I asked him the same question.

He then shared that he realized he was such a sinner and that he needed to instead be on the straight and narrow way. He shared how he had been living with his girlfriend in 2005 and one day when he went to Gabs (the capital), she was murdered. He was the prime suspect because he was the boyfriend, and he was thrown in jail. He was imprisoned for 8 months until the lawyers fighting for him could prove that it could not have been him. During that time in jail, people from Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry, shared the gospel with him and he gave his life to Christ and has been living for Him ever since! He invited me to his church, so I might check it out some Sunday. The other young woman told me how to get to her church too. She was sharing with me that it’s great that God could use his imprisonment to help bring him to cry out to the Lord. She said it often happens that we cry out to God and spend more time with Him when things are bad…and we talked about how we should spend time with God even in the good times because He is worthy and we should praise Him at all times. While we were having this conversation, the next seeming divine appointment arrived…

Right then, a 19-year old guy came up to me and showed me a riddle he’d been trying unsuccessfully to figure out. He said he got it from his pastor. He had it written down in a notebook and held it out for me to read. It was something like this:

A word gives birth to a word, and this word becomes extinct so that many words could have eternal meaning.

Well, I said it sounds like a very unique, interesting (not totally accurate!) way of explaining the basic gospel message…that a Word (God) gives birth to a Word (Jesus, the Word made flesh), and this word becomes extinct (dies on the cross) so that many words (people) could have eternal meaning (eternal life). I showed him John 1 where it talks about the Word being made flesh…and then John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” I said it’s important to note that it’s not just everyone who has eternal life, but only those who believe and trust in Christ. Then I just felt led to ask him, “Have you done that? Have you believed and trusted in Christ?” And he honestly said, “No…I just go to church, but I haven’t made that commitment yet.” I asked, “What’s holding you back?”

After he shrugged, I felt led to share the Victoria Falls analogy about how it’s not enough to just go to church, do good things, or even know that Jesus died and rose again (even demons believe that). So I drew out a picture of it and was explaining the gospel with my bible there…we were almost finished when we had to break for lunch. We intended to continue the conversation later, but the conference went an hour past schedule (so it was 8 am- 5 pm). Meanwhile, Sara had invited him to come to the Coffee Bar outreach where we could talk more with him. In my bag I had a little booklet that briefly explains the basic gospel message, so I was able to give that to him so he can read it over before we talk again at Coffee Bar. It was just really cool to see how God orchestrated that…using a riddle that refers to the gospel. And how these opportunities opened up at a government meeting, so that we were talking about Jesus for much of the day! If you feel led, please pray for this 19-year old guy and for our conversations in the future. We don’t have Coffee Bar this weekend, but next.

I will be on the missionary conference Monday through Wednesday, so I'll update you after that!

Blessings,
Em