Hello all!
Real Life Revolution!
Well, yesterday was the day we’d scheduled to start the abstinence club at the Senior Secondary School in Mochudi. However, that of all days is when the entire school system in Botswana switched to a new schedule that runs right through the club time! We just found this out yesterday that it affects all the schools, not just the one we were at Monday. Now students will be in classes until 4:30 pm (the club was going to run from 3:45-4:30). I’ve been unable to talk with the guidance/counseling teacher who coordinates the clubs because she’s locked up in meetings discussing these changes. So…we postponed the start of the club until, hopefully,next week.
This might be for the better because, though we put up posters at the school, the school-wide announcement about the club was not made on Monday as planned because the teacher who was to give the announcement was late. This way, we can have the announcement made Friday at General Assembly and then more students will know about the club for the first meeting. We’re not sure how clubs will work in this new schedule. It sounds like clubs might be kind of cut out of the curriculum perhaps. It used to be that classes were done at 3:30 and then the students were supposed to go to a club of their choosing. But now that classes extend to 4:30, they may not urge, encourage, or require students to attend a club. And honestly, if you’ve been in school from 7:30 am until 4:30 pm, would you want to stay at school longer if you didn’t have to? So just pray for a good solution to the situation we now face.
Back to the club itself, we decided to name it Real Life Revolution, because the youth will discuss real life issues that affect them and because choosing abstinence will help them have real, abundant life. The need is great – in the last 3-month term, there were 9 known pregnancies at that school! It is sobering to ponder how many teens are contracting HIV in such an environment. We are praying that this club will help decrease the rate of both HIV transmission and teen pregnancy. If you feel led, please pray for the youth to be drawn to come to the club and be impacted in their lifestyles. We will be reporting the progress/effectiveness of the club to Face the Nation (since it is a follow-up club to their AIDS-prevention program in the schools last term), who in turn will report it to the Ministry of Education of the Botswana government.
Another Divine Appointment??
Perhaps I’ll share more details about this later, but please pray for one of the students there with whom I met on Sunday. She is going through an extremely hard time. The student had called one of the Face the Nation volunteers Sunday just in tears…the volunteer (for whom I was a prayer partner) was far away in Gaborone, so she asked the student if it would be ok for me to come to talk with her. The student agreed, so the Face the Nation volunteer told me to call her. As it turns out, I had called this student for the first time the day before to set up a time to give her Philip Yancey’s book Disappointment with God, because we think it would be good for her situation and she had agreed to read it. I’d been having a hard time finding the book in Botswana, so Philip Yancey was willing to mail it from the US, but we’d just found a copy here. So I had already planned to meet the student Sunday evening for the first time to give her the book.
When I called her Sunday afternoon and she couldn’t even talk through the tears, I asked if I should just come right away instead of waiting the hour and a half until our scheduled meeting (yes). I was at the YFC office for our interdenominational prayer meeting, so that meant I was literally just a 2-minute drive from the school. So I hopped in my car and was able to meet her. She totally opened up to me (which surprised me for having just met her) and shared the heartbreaking story of the past couple years, and especially the last weeks and days.
Please pray that God speaks to her through that book and that she can come to see God as loving and good despite the bad things that have happened in her life. And I’m grateful for any prayers for wisdom in what I to say to her as we work through her serious issues. I called and checked in with her Sunday and Monday nights briefly, and we plan to meet again on Saturday to talk, though she knows she can call me before that if she wants /needs to do so. She has agreed to more professional counseling and now have options set up for her.
Yarona FC!
For awhile we at YFC have felt led to change and improve our Coffee Bar drop-in center on Saturday nights at the YFC office. We decided on a new name Yarona FC (Yarona means “us”/ “we together” in Setswana) and FC is “For Christ” so it’s still YFC. However, in this soccer (football) saturated culture, people will see FC and think “Football Club” like Barcelona FC or Liverpool FC, etc. So it’s meant to appeal to the youth and be a place that together with them is ours…where they can feel like it is their club, a place where they belong. We took each of their pictures and will create nametags so they feel more like they belong to the club. Three weeks ago, we had the launch of Yarona, introducing the new name and giving them each candy, chips, and pop as a special treat. We also unveiled the new ping-pong table and other games that the Canadian short-term team had donated. A bunch of us had a great game of basketball (netball) outside in the dark with the spotlight from the office on the court.
Last week it was my turn to share the message at Yarona FC. The Botswana government has declared September to be the Month of Prayer Against AIDS, so I was planning on speaking about AIDS and abstinence to the youth. That morning, as I was falling asleep in my daily 20 minute nap to heat my jaw with a heating pad, I was thinking about Vision 2016 for some reason. [Vision 2016 is the national vision of Botswana drafted in 1996 of what they want the country to look like in various sectors by 2016. Regarding AIDS it states, “By the year 2016, the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS will have stopped, so that there will be no new infections by the virus in that year.”] Then I fell asleep in this nap and had a dream where there was a big double/queen bed with a headboard (like for a married couple) in the middle of the road (the dirt road by the YFC office). In my dream I thought, A bed is definitely not supposed to be in the middle of the road. It’s in the wrong place…it should be in a bedroom. That’s a big, dangerous roadblock! I awoke from my dream, remembering it vividly and thinking, What is that supposed to mean?! (if anything).
And then I remembered how I’d just been thinking of Vision 2016, “toward an AIDS-free generation with no new infections by 2016”…and I realized that is the destination we are headed toward, the road we are traveling down, but people having sex outside of marriage is a major roadblock on that road. God designed sex to be within marriage, not outside...just like the bed should be in the bedroom, not outside in the road. If people are having sex before or outside of marriage, it is in the wrong place…like that marriage bed out in the middle of the road…and that is one of the main roadblocks hindering this country on this road to Vision 2016, an AIDS-free generation.
I felt like I was supposed to add that dream and insight into my talk at Yarona FC that night. Popular message to share, eh? Not so much. But I knew I had to share it and encourage them to keep sex within marriage. I asked if they are sick of hearing about AIDS? I think they were a bit surprised that I would say that, but seemingly they agreed. They know about AIDS. They know their ABC’s (Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomize if you choose to have sex). But I told them it’s not enough to know that stuff or pray against AIDS if our behavior is still possibly spreading it (if we’re sleeping around). We all need to “be the change” and make choices to help HIV from spreading. I shared that it’s because we care about them and don’t want to see them dying of AIDS someday and orphaning their children that we share this with them and encourage them to change their behavior.
Change is possible…in their individual lives and for this nation! I told them that a relationship with Christ can really help them as the Holy Spirit comes to live inside them and empower them. I shared how Uganda saw their HIV rate plummet as so many people came to Christ and practiced abstinence and/or faithfulness in marriage. I also told them about the Real Life Revolution club that we’re starting to support and encourage them in this (in essence to create positive peer pressure to choose abstinence). I left them with this point to ponder: “I want you to think to yourself—Is my behavior part of the problem or part of the solution of AIDS? Is my behavior helping spread HIV or stop its spread?”
Cape Town, here we come!
An exciting announcement is that there is an upcoming staff conference for Southern Africa YFC (10 countries that the Botswana director E.J. oversees as Regional Director). There hasn’t been one since 2005 I think, and they are usually at the same YFC conference center where we just had the youth leader conference in northern South Africa. However, this year, that venue is unavailable and so the conference has been moved to near Cape Town. So, though it is much more expensive to travel there, we are trusting God to provide the funds for all of the YFC Botswana national and international staff/volunteers to go down there. Flying is way too expensive, and the trains are not running right now for some reason. So driving it is! It’s about a 20 hour drive each way. We are staying overnight half-way at either a church or a retirement home. This past Saturday, the YFC Botswana staff did a sponsored walk fundraiser where we all hiked to the top of Kgale Hill, the highest “mountain” in Gaborone. It was fun to hike again and to see the view of the dam and surrounding hills.
I’ll have to share later about my experience Friday at the hospital in Mochudi, visiting and praying for the sick. I’ll be heading back to the hospital tomorrow and/or Friday as well.
Thanks for your continued interest, encouragement, and prayers.
Love, Em
No comments:
Post a Comment